Richard Lerman is another artist who contributed significantly to the research on the musical use of contact microphones. He began experimenting with different kinds of contact microphones in the mid '60s, using them to record “sounds and vibration in bicycles, wind harps, plants, boat anchor ropes, rocks, cactus thorns, heat expansion in metal, spider webs (with limited success), attached them to many kinds of self-built and traditional musical instruments, and even used them as loudspeaker drivers to induce sound into metal and glass sculpture”.1 Lerman was studying at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, while Alvin Lucier was running the electronic studio (with Anthony Gnazzo). When Lucier left Brandeis, around 1965, Lerman became by default the technical director of the studio, “vastly unprepared but really curious”.2 During that period, John Cage and David Tudor were often around, as well as Gordon Mumma, from whom Lerman learned to solder. Lerman remembers Tudor telling him something like: "Richard, if you want to do electronic music, you have to learn some electronics." Lerman took these words seriously, he experimented thoroughly and, “early in the game”, was using piezo disks both as microphones and loudspeakers (or – as he puts it – “soft speakers”). The first versions of his piece Travelon Gamelon (1977) used “phono cartridges between fender washers, housed in the plastic box [the cartridges] were packaged in”. Suggesting the percussive and metallic sound of a gamelan orchestra, the sound in Travelon Gamelon is produced by rhythmic movements of bicycles, captured by contact mics. But even protected in plastic housings, the cartridges were fragile and often broke. So Lerman started experimenting with piezo materials:
I was researching a lot of different sources about phono cartridges and discovered that ceramic cartridges (EV 81T's) were piezo devices and were usually made from something like barium titanate. Seeing the word “piezo” with “disks”, maybe from a company in Mass called Meshna Electronics, I started buying up different kinds of disks. These were much easier to work with than with the phono carts. So I began using the piezos probably in '78 / '79 or so. They were much more rugged once I figured out the best way to solder them. I began in earnest to work with the disks and to construct preamps for them using various op-amps that were around.
Travelon Gamelon was performed also in Europe in 1979 for the Muzicki Biennale Zagreb, in Lerman's first trip to Europe. In 1981, encouraged by his friend John Driscoll, he applied to the “Spiel und Klangstrasse” festival in Essen (Germany), run by the percussionist Michael Jüllich. There he met Godfried Willem Raes – a Belgian artist who has worked extensively with piezoelectricity–, who was participating in the same Festival. And in September of the same year Lerman performed for the first time at Raes's venue called Logos – a space in Ghent, active for experimental music since 1968.3
>> go to 1.6 Godfried Willem-Raes
Online Guide for working with Piezo Electric Disks:
http://www.public.asu.edu/~rlerman/PDF%20Files/Children%20&%20Piezo%20disks.pdf