questionnaire

 Alessandro Bosetti
 Alfredo Costa Monteiro
 Andrew Drury
 Axel Dörner
 Bechir Saade
 Bertrand Denzler
 Bhob Rainey
 Bonnie Jones
 Bruce Russell
 Bryan Eubanks
 Burkhard Beins
 Christian Weber
 Christof Kurzmann
 Cor Fuhler
 Dieter Kovacic (dieb13)
 Doug Theriault
 Dragos Tara   new
 eRikm
 Greg Kelley
 Günter Müller
 Heddy Boubaker
 Howard Stelzer
 Ignaz Schick
 Jason Kahn
 Jeff Gburek
 Jeph Jerman
 Jesse Kudler
 Joe Foster
 Julien Ottavi
 Kai Fagaschinski
 Lee Kwang Goh
 Liz Tonne   new
 Lucio Capece
 Mattin
 Michael Renkel
 Michel Doneda
 Reuben Radding
 Róbert Rózsa
 Robin Hayward
 Ruth Barberan
 Sharif Sehnaoui
 Thomas Ankersmit
 Tomas Korber
 Valerio Tricoli
 Will Guthrie

2. What kind of equipment/instrument do you use, and what is you relationship towards it? What do you think lies behind your choice of the equipment/instrument?

Alessandro Bosetti:
      At the present time I use a number of different instruments and devices. Most of the time I don't own them but I find a way to have somebody lend me something for some days when I need it. I use a lot the laptop to organize and process my materials. It's actually my main tool in performances. Recently I've been using my voice, many many voices and words from others, a shortwave radio, cello, electric piano, piano, different kind of cheap and less cheap guitars, electric organ, harmonioum, a bunch of many different objects (I'm composing a series of pieces where I play just one object for each piece, like a coffee machine, a bride dress, a jewel case, a tractor etc..). And there's my soprano saxophone of course.

Alfredo Costa Monteiro:
      I use different equipment or instrument, depending on the project.
For me, it’s not only the music that should mark a difference between different projects, but also the instrument or equipment itself.
      I use the accordion in acoustic contexts, but also prepared electric guitar or turntable. I’ve always been attracted by apparent simplicity, that leads me to go directly to what the purpose is. This means that I’m pretty much interested in low-fi devices or equipment not only for the particularity of the sound but also to make the music more direct. The use of objects, as an instrumental extended technique, leads me to reproduce some gestures that are not so different from a context to another, it’s the particularity of each context that makes them sound different. I’m not searching a form that could give me an identity mark, but rather a way of doing that could construct this identity.

Andrew Drury:
      The situation plays a major role in determining what equipment I use. 
      In my work in free improvisation I usually use a floor tom and various objects which I place on or near the drum. By striking or bowing these objects (metal dust pan, china type cymbals, a sheet of thin aluminum flashing, a bronze gear, other small pieces of bronze or steel) vibrations are generated and the drum functions as a resonator that amplifies and filters the vibrations.  The filtering function of the drum can be altered by applying pressure to the drum head externally (by pressing objects against it) or internally (by blowing into the drum and tightening the drum head).  Sometimes I generate vibrations by acting directly upon the drum, e.g. by scraping or rubbing the drum head, or by hitting it with something. I also do a lot of blowing into drums, exploring the sounds of wind, exploring the potential of the drum as a wind instrument. I rarely, if ever, use drum sticks in this setting any more. I use chop sticks, shish kabob skewers, threaded rods, hands, and a bow mostly. I also rolled up paper, and other materials and percussion instruments.
      For some of my improvisation work (usually in especially loud and/or more jazz-oriented contexts or an instrument provided by a venue) and in more conventional settings (jazz, pop, etc.) I use drum set, often with objects placed on the drums and cymbals. For most of my work in improvised music since 2002, even if I have chosen to use a drum set and conventional technique I still try to manipulate, deconstruct, and re-make the drum set sound. 
      To my ears the conventional drum set is too loud and resonant for many of the situations I play in. Also its sound refers too strongly to a tradition of drumming that I find distracting from the intent of this music. The sound has a lot of baggage—stylistic, historic... Music is very evocative and symbolic, and the conventional drum set sound conjures too many references to jazz, rock, and other aesthetics that put up barriers to perception both for the musician and the listener.
      A word needs to be said about my relationship to material consumption, consumerism, and mass culture in the U.S. These relationships permeate my involvement with music and everything else in my life. Basically I hate shopping.  It bores me.  I don’t like most music stores because I hate commercial hype and the bullshit that comprises most of the information one encounters there, and in mass culture in general. 
      Also, to be brief, in my formative years the U.S. war in Vietnam was active, the 1960s sense of revolution and the possibility of a better (more green, more democratic) world seemed present.  Material consumption is a central problem of U.S. society and I understood that intuitively from a young age.  I tapped into the counterculture then, and it remains essential to me, necessary for survival in a system that is so powerful and dangerous.
From an early age I was aware that it wasn’t the equipment that attracted me to music, it was the near divine skill and imagination of great musicians.  The equipment was often very humble, which emphasized the genius and skill of the musician.  The humility and creativity embodied by the instrument can be a desirable thing itself, its own field of play.
      Still, within a few years of beginning to play the drums I wanted to have my own drum set.  I bought one, from a music store, in 1979 when I was 14 after spending four hours a day all summer digging a room under my parents’ house with a pick, shovel, and wheelbarrow.  It’s basically the only drum set I’ve owned.  At the end of that summer when my mother and I walked into the music store in Seattle to buy a drum set, I picked the first one I saw inside the door without listening to it, knowing anything about it, or trying out other drum sets.  It just looked beautiful to me and I was overwhelmed by the spectacle of the music store and prospect of having to navigate all that and make a choice.  It was pure dumb luck that I picked a good one. 
       For a long time I was frustrated that my drums didn’t make the classic bebop drum sound, but I never was interested enough in shopping or equipment to try to get a different set.  I preferred to make do with what I had.  Lately, by putting objects on the drums and cymbals and by dealing with the drums in other ways, I’ve found a way with my drum set that feels great to me.  Also, I’ve just become so used to playing this particular instrument that I’m able to do a lot of things with it that I can’t necessarily do on others.

Axel Dörner:
      I use a holton firebird trumpet, it´s exactly the perfect instrument for what I´m doing on the trumpet because it allows microtonal playing, also for my electronics i use Max/MSP software which is very flexible and continiously developing in combination with a special desinged interface called gluion (www.glui.de). The equipment I did chose is helping me to express my musical thoughts.

Bechir Saade:
       I play mainly the bass clarinet and nay (a Middle Eastern flute). I just love their sound basically. I also like the necessity to produce sounds by blowing, breathing, etc.

Bertrand Denzler:
      I mainly play the tenor saxophone. I have been playing other instruments as well. And, in some projects, I use guitar, electric devices, objects, computer and so on. The tenor saxophone is something like my own sound generator and processor. But I also feel at home with other instruments when I play them, even if there is more distance, which is a feeling I sometimes like. I am more interested in the music then in the instrument. I try to find the right instrument for the music I play. But sometimes of course, it's also the opposite, the instrument leads to the music. It's a dynamic process.

Bhob Rainey:
      [not answered]

Bonnie Jones:
      In 2004 I went to Korea and met Joe Foster. We wanted to play music together but I hadn't brought any instruments with me. In Baltimore I was playing a kind of prepared clavinet (plucking /manipulating the strings). Joe gave me a slightly modified digital delay pedal that Bryan Eubanks had given to him and after a year of playing with Joe I realized that this was my instrument. The pedal created all the sounds I was interested in and had the benefit of being both electronic and tactile/gestural. I currently play about 3-5 different digital delay pedals by exposing the circuit board and touching the board with instrument cables, metal objects and my hands. There's several things that keep me interested in the pedals, I like the fact that I can play them with my hands, I like that they have a kind of built in chaotic tendency, and I like that the sounds are raw, untamed, and unrefined. I have a few plans to add more microphones and other things – but am still being gratified by the pedals.

Bruce Russell:
      I use an electric guitar and a valve amplifier. I also have analogue electronic devices, which again I use with my amplifier to create a particular kind of sound. I also play clavioline, a monophonic vintage synthesiser, and a range of analogue tape machines. I love older equipment, about 1960-65 was a great era in electronics, I feel. I want gear that imposes limits on my imagination, so the tools influence the work, and affect the sounds being made, quite separately from what I do. If my equipment makes spontaneous sounds that I can't explain, that is a great show!

Bryan Eubanks:
      I play the soprano saxophone and an open-circuit electronic/samplers/ ipods instrument. I don't combine the two in any way, they are completely seperate areas of interest. My relationship to the saxophone is of a cloudy nature; sometimes very satisfying, sometimes not. I think a lot of these feelings come from dealing with the intense history of the instrument and the shadow so many players have cast. Which leads to the idea of a desire for one's own voice, however, this concern is consistently outweighed by the joy of playing and an increasing detachment from these kinds of judgements. Also, I assume that through diligence and continued playing I will eventually be very good, in my own way, at what I arrive at. I guess this instrument chose me rather than my choosing it, it could have very easily been the trumpet or clarinet back in elementary school, but since it was the saxophone it was easy to pick up again. I continue to play it because there is a magnetism to the warmth and depth of acoustic sound.
      My relationship to the electronics is much more deliberate and personal than the saxophone and is compelling to me because I have been building it and changing it over the last 6 years to arrive at a pretty solid piece of equipment that provides multiple avenues for music making. Although I discovered open-circuit playing by accident and in a vacuum, I chose to pursue it (albiet intuitively, not technically) and have learned what I needed to when I needed to. Electronics provide a more non-referential and free aspect of sounds, plus with samplers there is an ability to work with time and the placement of like sounds that is different than acoustic instruments.

Burkhard Beins:
      Throughout the 1980´s I was working on sound collages, using a very simple multi-track technique and involving field recordings, radio, a reel-to-reel, all sorts of found objects, but also a piano stringboard on a table and a drum kit which I had for the occasional rock/punk-session. When I started playing live concerts with guitarist Michael Renkel in the late 1980´s, I was experimenting with different set-ups first, trying combinations of all these elements. But moving a fader or turning a knob needs a different kind of attention than plugging a string or bowing a cymbal. Although it´s possible to practise handling it at the same time , it never really worked out for me. And it didn´t take too long before I began focussing on an entirely acoustic set-up consisting mostly of drums and cymbals plus a variety of selected objects. So it was not like I was playing the drums and then started to try out something more experimental with my instrument, but „percussion and objects“ turned out to be the most satisfying option for what I was trying to achieve in a live music context. Also, unlike a saxophone or a guitar, a drum kit is a compound instrument from the start, asking for individual variation and covering a wide sonic area from pure noise to definitely pitched sounds.

Christian Weber:
      Acoustic bass. Love/friedship/dedication/passion. I like the physical aspect of the bass. I like string instruments anyway. They offer a good structure to get really deep into sound.

Christof Kurzmann:
      I play an selmer saxophone from the 40 from Paris. A very cheap green plastic clarinet and a macintosh G3. The software I use on the Mac is called lloopp. It's a patch that Klaus Filip built based on Max MSP. Without this software and without the help of Klaus all the music I play right now, would sound very different. The software is very important for the aestethics that I developed based on it.

Cor Fuhler:
      Today I focus on 3 things: -- piano, -- analogue electronics, --the keyolin.
      The piano I play as a string instrument. Lot's of inside stuff, it is something I have always done ever since I was a little kid. The piano is like a safe haven for me. I just spend so much time with it (you know, like 7 hours a day for some years). Like going for a walk in the forest.
      For electronics I mostly use the EMS Synthi AKS + various homebuild objects to control it. I tried some other Synths but this one works best for me. It's like skiing down a steep unknown hill.
      The keyolin is a bowed string instrument played with a mechanical keyboard (so an acoustic instrument). I mostly play it for myself, very melodic oriental stuff mainly, back to basics.
      I tried to play computer but I just couldn't build any relationship with it. I need something physical.

Dieter Kovacic (dieb13):
      My main instrument is turntables. And I use computers, partly with self-written audio software. The reason for this choice is my notion of how new music always developes out of existing music. Ideas are always based on previous ideas. The use of turntables as my main live-instrument was not a one-off choice, but rather came from the experience that turntables give the most interesting live-performance - at least for my works.

Doug Theriault:
      I have built a couple of hybrid guitar controllers that control external electronics. These can control lights, video, dsp (live sound manipulation) computers, synthesizers, etc... I built them because I wanted to be able to control things directly from my instrument instead from an external box. Building them on and into my instrument has enabled me to make instant choices much quicker in a live situation. I have to practice every day as there are so many issues that come up with these instruments on a daily basis. and it takes a while to be able to understand a setup naturally.
      I was strongly influenced by instrument builders michel waisaviz, hans reichel and hugh davies. I'm an avid listener of all music. i'm attracted to many sounds and ways of working and I wanted to be able to do this live. so, I had to build my own instrument to do that...

Dragos Tara :
      My double bass, with few preparations (as little as possible), and a computer (mostly with MAX/MSP). I try mostly to use few stuff, but that can be modulated in many different ways.
      I am still thinking about a way of controlling the electronics through gestures (directly through my bass).

eRikm:
      I use different equipment depending on the context. Mostly I use turntables and CDs, as well as an electronic device connected at the output of each turntable. I had been developing the system for ten years before I got the instrument that suited me best. I have been satisfied with it for more than four years, though of course, this can always change. As for vinyls, I have been using those for eight years now.
      My idea was to make the instrument and musical movement. With an electronic set or a set of turntables you can always change the source of sound, and so your music will seem to vary as well. However, using this method, you have a good chance of never going beyond the phase of mixing. I would like to develop such musical movement that could be combined with mixing/collage. Technique is central to my performing with turntables because it is almost always an improvisation.
      I work on compositions carefully, in the studio, under a label for a CD release or for the radio, music for dance, theater and film. In all of those periods of composing, I often start from a raw impulse which itself comes out of an improvised instrumental gesture.

Greg Kelley:
      I use a trumpet and my relationship with it is a love/hate relationship. The choice of trumpet was the choice of a 10 year old who knew nothing about music, thus almost arbitrary. 23 years later I've figured out a few things about it, its possibilities, limitations, moods, attitudes, reluctancies - it shapes how I think about music and I shape how it thinks about music. Sometimes we disagree. Art is compromise.

Günter Müller:
      I started playing drums with pick-ups, mics, headphones and electronics in the early 80's; in the late 90's two minidisc players and later two ipods were added to the setup. Since some time ago I mostly play just ipods and electronics. On the ipods there are processed sounds, mostly from drums/cymbals, as a huge soundbank to play and to transform live. During many years electronics had been for me an extension of the drums, later on I started focusing to create my sounds with less material. I was always searching for sounds I had never heard before, material I could improvise with in order to get into new territories for me.

Heddy Boubaker:
      My main instrument is an alto saxophone, but I started in the mid 70s by using an electric guitar. I started guitar as a kid for mainly sexual reasons and switched lately to the saxophone because a girl friend lent me one and - at that time I was trying hard to play bebop jazz - succeeded easily to do with it what was hard for me to do with the guitar... I now feel really comfortable with the sax and use it more often as a tool to manipulate organic sounds from my body (breath, saliva, mouth noises, voice and so on) and that's the most interesting aspect of the instrument for me at the moment: the (non)-electro-acoustic controller/amplifier of organic-acoustic material. Since mid 2006 I started again to play the electric guitar but in a totally different way than I had for a long time, now more in a kind of a "post-Keith Rowe-ish" manner, this is the same approach for me to the instrument as with the sax (except for organic sounds) but with much more rock'n'roll in it.

Howard Stelzer:
      I mostly use cassette tapes as my instruments, but also cassette players (walkmans and other hand-held and portable varieties), a standard vocal microphone, a few effect pedals (distortion, which I use to give some gain to the mic, and a delay pedal, which I use sparingly), sometimes a plastic horn that I bought on New Year's Eve last year, and now a small synthesizer or two (one made by Shawn Royal and one by Jessica Rylan). Tapes, however, are the focus of all of my music, generally with 3 to 5 tape players used at a time.
       My relationship with tapes is mixed; because I've been focusing on them for more than ten years, I sometimes feel very frustrated and limited by the narrow range of possible sounds that tapes can be goaded into producing. But it's usually just when I'm sick of banging my head against this particular wall and want to throw tapes away for good, that an idea appears and I find something new to say. Those moments are fantastic.
       As for what lies behind my choice of tapes as an instrument... well, there are a few things I could mention. One is that I like how cheap and disposable cassette tapes are. I can abuse them until they break, then throw them out and get new ones. I don't have to worry to much about how I store them, because they aren't precious. If they get eaten by a tape deck, I don't care. Tapes were easy for me to experiment with when I was young, so my initial excursions into abstract music were done by recording sounds onto tape and observing how the medium changed what I was trying to capture. Another thing that I quite like is that the cassette tape is a loaded object within experimental-type music... it has its historical place in mail art, cassette culture, the birth of home studios and independant music publication and distribution. I also just enjoy the sounds of warbling tape.

Ignaz Schick:
      The equipment I use has been changing constantly throughout the years, and I am quite sure it will continue to change. It also depends on whether we are talking about live or studio set-ups. In the moment I use rotating surfaces, that is simply a Technics MK II turntable which is modified with a microphone and an additional plate. I use objects to create sound by direct friction and vibration. I’ve felt quite happy with this set up for 3 years now but slowly I have to change it a bit or find something new, in older days I would just simply changed the equipment for something else when I wanted to find new sounds, but nowadays I try to stay with a certain set-up but change the way I touch it to achieve new material.
      In some collaborations, i.e. with Gunnar Geisse, Thomas Ankersmit or Doro Schuerch (singing saw) I use sine waves, feedback and bowed turntable drones, all that running through the pitch shifter and sometimes a loop delay.
      In Phosphor, after many years of searching I found the right set-up. I only use one record player and objects, no vinyls. In Perlonex there were also many changes, I started out with an old Akai Sampler and various Minidisc Players, then I used MDs & CDs + many pedals - for a short phase I was even using a laptop & always part of the set up was a Jam Man Loop delay. Nowadays the set up does not change so much anymore: I use an old analog sine wave generator, delay feedback loops, and turntables/objects/ percussion, I use a lot of microtonal detuned sinewave drones here, plus sharp feedback. Additionally I always try to request a fender twin tube amp for the backline, so that I have a dirty warm sound in combination with the clean sound from the PA.
      Also in Perlonex I sometimes add instruments which I find at a specific location, in a studio in Gothenborg recently there were many xylophones, a piano and various nice effect boxes & an old tape delay, so basically I used all these additional instruments. It was a nice enrichment of the usual sounds. Sometimes, if there is a very specific  soundscape close to the venue we also put microphones outside the space to incorporate the specific soundscape into our playing. The most remarkable thing like this happened in  Louisville, Kentucky. There were these amazingly long and slow freight trains passing just right behind the  venue, so it was logical to put a microphone and make the trains part of the music.
       For Blind snakes I use mainly very broken 7 inches for my speed core scratching technique, I take off the slipmate, stop the motor and just turn the record with fingers on the metal plate, it has the advantage that I can be extremely fast and rhythmically precise, mainly because I don't have to move the whole plate. The disadvantage is that the records are totally fucked after a few seconds on the b-side, but who cares. I put the turntables through some distortion pedals, the left channel is routed into a fender twin while the right channel is plugged into a big Ampeg bass amp. In Blind snakes I need to
physically feel the pressure of the sound waves, it becomes like a massage. So every attack has to be felt. Most of the time it takes less than a minute and all volume and amps are on max.
       And of course in Decollage I play the saxophone, a quite old Selmer Alto Saxophone which needs to be fixed urgently.

Jason Kahn:
      I use analogue synthesizer, percussion (drums, cymbals, found metal objects) and computer. Which instrument or combination of instruments I use really depends on who I am playing with, what kind of sound I am going for. This also applies to which software I decide to use. In the past I have worked with LISA, my own patches in MAX/MSP and Klaus Filip's lloopp.

Jeff Gburek:
      I play many instruments, but my primary tools are an electric guitar, mixing board, various analog pedals, piezo-electric units, laptop, various microphones from top line devices to junk from salvaged electronic devices, minidisc player/recorder, strange objects with nice resonance for preparing the guitar.

Jeph Jerman:
      I've played drums and percussion for over thirty years, and I also will play anything I can find, conventional instruments from different cultures as well as everyday objects, from kitchen utensils to shells and stones. My relationship with these things is always the same-they are tools to make sound with. I choose soundmakers by their sound.

Jesse Kudler:
      I play guitar, on a table, with objects and devices (metal junk, vibrators, clips, fans, etc.). I also often use a small analog synthesizer. There's also a contact mic, another oscillator, a mixing board, and several effects pedals. Lately, I have been using radio and cassette player a lot as well. I play in stereo.
      Not sure what my relationship towards this junk is. Highly ambivalent? The use of guitar of course refers to my childhood and adolescence as a guitar player, but I also have a conscious interest in really trying to get away from any ideas of instrumental competence or comfort. Even within the context of my current setup, I change things a lot, adding or subtracting specific pedals, losing or gaining guitar preparations. I'm never sure if what I use matters or not - if it's the relationship with the instrument I'm exploring, or whether the instrument is just in the way. Derek Bailey has a good discussion of this problem in his book "Improvisation." I am always temped to jettison the guitar, but something keeps me from losing that vestige of acoustic sound production and it's attendant associations.

Joe Foster:
      I play acoustic and electronic instruments, both together and separate.
      I play trumpet, often on a bass drum or floor tom. I also play non-instruments and occasionally bow metals or wood. An instrument I play a lot is a balloon stretched over a rice bowl, which I play with an upside-down trumpet mouthpiece so it acts as a sort of home-made membranophone (you can hear it on the first two tracks on my solo cdr, Ethics).
      I also play opened delay pedals, a mixer, and microphone feedback. I like to have a lot of options sometimes, and I'm not very interested in having a single "schtick" with which to identify myself; I don't want to be a brand like that.
      I met a dude one day and we went back to hang out at his place, a garage behind someone's house, and he had a bugle on the wall. I played it and was able to make sounds pretty easily. I loved it. I looked for a trumpet for a long time, and then I found a beat up old Conn student cornet at Fairly Honest Bill's for $40. I had a natural affinity for it, but I really came to appreciate the fact that it's simply a tube; all the sound is a product of my body, my lips. Brass instruments don't have reeds to generate sound. I also like that it's changed my face in noticeable ways. I developed my preparations and techniques on my own, and avoided hearing other trumpeters in this field for a long time, which, in my case, was beneficial.
      My delay pedal circuit ideas were directly inspired by Bryan Eubanks, but we went in quite different directions in how we use them: his use of circuits is far more sophisticated and developed than mine, which is completely primitive (but not naive). I developed my own approach to microphone use. I initially started using electronics after living in Seoul for a while, since most of our venues (at that time) had horrible acoustics. Since I was running my trumpet through the PA anyway, I started using a mixer to control volumes, panning, and EQ, and that led me to add other electronics.
       In nice-sounding rooms (like the new Yogiga in Seoul), I still love to play acoustic music. In fact, I don't like electronics in rooms with natural reverb.

Julien Ottavi:
      Computer & programming are my main tools, electronics by extension but I am not limited to this, for me the world in itself is a potential instrument, everything in itself is a potential of sound & silence... From space radio activities to biological activities.
      (second question) As everything is a possible instrument, to extend the notion of instrument which I think is limited to musical expression, you could find a possibility in everything.
      A choice to not be limited by anything, to open up to new approaches, open up to the stranger, to the possibilities of not being at the same place all the time and not living with the impression of repeating myself as if I was in front of multiple mirrors.

Kai Fagaschinski:
      I play only a b-flat clarinet. The instrument I own isn't very good, in fact it's quite junky, but the defectiveness of the instrument has a strong effect on my style of playing and my music in general.
      I started playing the clarinet when I was 22. At that time I liked many saxophone players, but I wanted a somehow weaker instrument. So I took the clarinet.Using my housewife knowledge of psychoanalysis I would say the choice of my instrument has to do with an oral fixation.

Lee Kwang Goh:
      I’ve played a stereo dj mixer, without any additional sound source, no effects and processing, and completely improvised. I chose the instrument because it is cheap and easy to work with.

Liz Tonne :
      I use only my voice. Singing keeps me healthy and aware of many subtle nuances affecting my overall physical body. Choice? It's not really a choice, more of a natural progression or karmic lesson.

Lucio Capece:
      I play the bass clarinet, the one until b-flat, and a curved soprano saxophone. I consider the instruments as objects that I’m discovering all the time, playing them as if I was the first sax player on earth. I prepare them with objects like ping pong balls, pieces of plastic bottles, stuff, water, I use coffee cans, a small violin bow and other objects in my playing. An special, simple technique that I’m using at the moment is allowing me to use the saxophone producing layers of simple ideas, a kind of a basic polyphonic soundscape. I’m very excited about it at the moment.
     I play also an electronic set based on a mixer in feedback connected to a soprano saxophone, amplified with an inside microphone, also in feedback. The combination of both produces a loud and raw texture of noises and pitched sounds that I can work fingering the sax and modifying the parameters in the mixing console.

Mattin:
      I think there is a big problem with  the attachment that an improviser  has with his/her instrument and the history of the instrument. In other experimental music scenes they laugh at the way that improvisers always put their names and their instruments in the recordings as if it was a brand or a trademark that later on can be used as a way of promoting a certain musician for his/her specific use of the instrument. Improvisation is often discussed as being a kind of music that is made together in a communal way. At the same time most of the players (including myself) are very conscious of putting their instruments next to their names as a way of making a name for themselves within the history of each instrument. We should get rid of this attachment.

Michael Renkel:
      Different kinds:
1. pure classical, acoustic guitar,
2. this instrument prepared with additional "little" instruments like e-bows, whistles, pebbles, glockenspiel, cymbals etc.
3. guitar connected to the computer,
4. (self built) amplified stringboard,
5. electric guitar connected to the computer and FX processors,
6. the FX short circuited and connectd to the computer, the computer connected back to the FX
      It's about timbre and exploring the possibillities of the guitar. I still see myself in the tradition of my instrument.

Michel Doneda:
      I have a normal soprano sax. I work within  its "limits". But the limits are not in the instrument. So I will have to work all my life, I’m afraid. :-)
      (second question) The breathing, and the sounds that open my body and my mind. I am more interested in this actual experience, and the ways of sharing it, than in musical forms.

Reuben Radding:
      My main bass is a 100 year-old no-name Hungarian. It's a dark reddish brown, and a dark sound as well. It's a little big for me, but I'm addicted to its tone. To be a bassist you have to really be in love with the whole thing of it, carrying it, the difficulties of it. Strangers on the street will see you lugging this monster around and say "I'll bet you wish you played the flute," but we really don't. There is a special feeling of power playing bass in an ensemble. You have a great affect on how everyone else sounds.

Róbert Rózsa:
      I have always been fascinated by the sound and music of cartoons, and then there's early electronic and freely improvised music. Since I don't play any "classical" instrument, I had to come up with my own, "non-classical", different instrument. Old analogue synths, various effects and processors, sounding toys, an unusual and different use of turntables or cassette players, those were the sounds which i sought out. In the beginning I was using my own hi-fi components, tapes, vynils, microphones, feedback effects. Soon after that I discovered no-input mixing and that is the instrument I'm using today, and besides that I also use amplified objects, a toy-synthesizer, mini discs, etc.

Robin Hayward:
      I play tuba, without any electronics though the way I play it often sounds very electronic. A love-hate relationship, as I actually have considerable problems with it when it's played normally. Maybe this was the reason I ended up playing it the way I do. At 10 years old I was too young to know better when I took it up - I wanted to play trumpet and they put me on tuba.
      I like the physicality of acoustic instruments. Maybe this is the reason I've mainly avoided electronics so far.

Ruth Barberan:
      -2 trumpets (one to play with water and saliva)
      -a metal tin to make it vibrate with the trumpet bell and to get many       other vibrations with objects.
      -Objects that vibrate.
      -Objects that swing by their own, that I amplify.
      -Contact microphones for the objects.
      -Mixing board.
      -Condenser microphone to amplify very litlle sounds of the trumpet.
      The choice is based on experience, in the searching, the influences of the other musicians and the necessity of creating music with the minimum intervention by myself (in case of the objects).
      My relationship with tecnology is bad. I am lazy with it.

Sharif Sehnaoui:
       The choice of the guitar as my main instrument is totally accidental. I was mainly interested in drums and piano before that but took up the guitar when I took pity on my sister's guitar teacher who used to come over and often not finding her there at the given time. I told him to teach me a few songs and this just went on.
      Later on moving out of my country to live in a small apartment it was much easier to have an acoustic guitar to practice than any other instrument. I never really liked the instrument and free improvisation was a clear way for me to move it out of its regular use. Most of my playing is done with objects and tools to generate unorthodox sounds through extended and prepared techniques.
      I play both electric and acoustic (folk guitars) but always diverting them from their primary function.
      There a few notable exceptions to this of course.

Thomas Ankersmit:
       I basically play two separate instruments: alto saxophone and analogue modular synthesizers, and I use a computer for editing and sampling etc. Although I frequently use all three during a concert, I don't really combine the acoustic and the electronic, or at least I don't use one to process the other. The electronics didn't come in as an extension of the saxophone. I was messing around with electronics before I'd ever held a saxophone.
      I prefer analogue equipment over computers, not out of nostalgia (there's actually very little 70's synthesizer music I care for, the era my instruments are from) but because of the hands-on, unstable character of it, as well as the nature of the sound itself. A lot of what I do on the synthesizers (an EMS Synthi A and a Serge modular) involves some careful abuse of the machines, jamming bits of metal in the connectors, feeding modules back on themselves etc. You can bend analogue equipment like that without it simply breaking down. There's very little conventional synthesis technique there, it's mostly the sound of modules being used differently than intended. I use electromagnetic pickups and contact microphones and little preparations to introduce a kind of tactile, metallic element to the synthesizer, a way of articulating sounds by hitting or scraping something. No keyboard.
      The physicality of acoustic instruments is also very dear to me, the fact that you can aim sound depending on your position in the room, rather than have sound pour out of two speakers in the corners, the pleasure of generating sound with your own breath and voice etc. I guess my relationship to the saxophone is a little unusual because I never wanted to play jazz, and I've never been able to. I suppose I came more from a noise/rock background, even with the saxophone. People like Tamio Shiraishi and the band Borbetomagus were important in demonstrating this really intense non-jazz side of the instrument before I took it up myself.

Tomas Korber:
      My equipment consists of a guitar, several effect-boxes and a mixing board (connected to each other in various feedback loops), sometimes contact microphones and a mini-disc player for playing samples, field recordings etc. The choice of the instrument happened naturally since I was playing guitar in a rock band already. The focus then moved to electronics and back to guitar recently. But I don't consider myself an "instrumentalist" in the first place, I just wanna play music with whatever tools I have at hand.

Valerio Tricoli:
      That's kind of a hard question, in fact I generally change my set-up every few weeks, and the set-up itself is always changing in relation to the room, the group and/or the situation in which I'm going to play. Anyway, I use analogue electronic instruments (KorgMs20, Revox and Teac tape machines, loudspeakers, microphones to catch sound to be "live processed" with the tape machines and effects, a mixer of course, which I consider and instrument as well). I play with this stuff because I wanted to play electronic music, a sort of live concrete music (if this makes any sense), and I am not a lot into playing live with a computer (I always found it lacking too much in the "physical/corporal" part of the process..). Then of course I definitely like a lot the dynamics/sound quality that can be achieved with analogue stuff. The only real problem is that all these instruments are kind of heavy to carry around...

Will Guthrie:
      I use different sound sources for different musics, what I use depends on the music or the sound I want. I still play drums in some groups. In my solo music I often use a setup of objects and percussion, microphones and cheap electronics, and for composed things I use whatever will give me the sound I am looking for at that given time, whatever is at my disposal.