Vintage Voice VINTAGE SPEAKERS
FIND NEW LIFE WITH IUPUI MUSICIANS ____
by Crystal Hammon
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Imagine the educational value of a pair of mid-century RCA speakers to music technology students in 2018. How relevant is 60-year-old technology to the way sound is projected today? Last summer, Classical Music Indy (CMI) invited Doug Bielmeier, Ed.D., an assistant professor of music technology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), to answer that question. After examining the vintage speakers, Bielmeier decided their unique acoustic qualities offered a chance to blend old and new in an innovative learning experience for students. Originally made as RCA prototypes, the speakers were donated to CMI by Christine Plews and John Halter. Their cousin Jerome Halter owned the speakers before his death in 2009. The retired RCA sound engineer’s Indianapolis home was a paradise of sound gear and recordings. As Halter’s only heirs, they were pressed to find a good home for all of it—including the speakers. “They are so unique, and we really wanted to get them in the hands of someone who would appreciate them for what they are,” says Plews. “I think our cousin would be absolutely thrilled to know that they are being used to teach young people and advance the profession he cared about so deeply.” The smooth, bagel-shaped speakers became the basis of an independent study course Bielmeier designed for four IUPUI music technology students. Together, they restored and later debuted one of the speakers at a live community concert of original electronic music. The May 7 concert at Square Cat Vinyl in Fountain Square included CMI’s Assistant Director of Community Engagement Eric Salazar, who is also a classical clarinetist.
“Restoring, repairing and creating new music to be performed on the vintage RCA speakers helped them make connections to our rich musical history while forging a path to the music of tomorrow,” Bielmeier says. “It became a way to relate what they do on computers with the music-production practices of the analog era.” IUPUI’s music technology students are musicians who learn how to record, compose, manipulate and perform all kinds of music. In today’s media-driven world, a computer isn’t just a computer— it’s also a musical instrument. To get into the program, many students audition using a laptop the way other musicians use a clarinet or a piano. Their mastery of software is akin to that of any virtuoso instrumentalist. Making electronic music is often compared to what a disc jockey does, but Christian Rangel, a student enrolled in the course, says the comparison misses the mark. “I don’t DJ,” he says. “I perform everything live. I trigger all my own audio. I play my own chords and melodies.” At the May concert, Rangel performed Grasp, an original composition that blends electronic music with manipulated sound clips drawn from open-source NASA archives. “The speakers are like a vintage voice talking to the crowd,” he says. “They’re a work of art in themselves, and it was so cool to play my music with something of such a unique caliber.” Rangel says the project inspired him and his classmates to keep pushing boundaries, giving audiences new ways to hear music. ■
Students enrolled in the Speakerless Independent Study Course were: Christian Rangel, Alex Hauptmann, Kathryn Holland and Keher Neote.
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