Sympathetic Resonance

I had recently been introduced to a composer in CU’s music department, Zachary Patten. He had developed a device that allowed him to play brass instruments using compressed air. I found his aesthetics and artistic motivations to be incredibly interesting and inspiring. I asked if he wanted to compose a piece for my production based on concepts of sympathetic resonance. I had been inspired by this form of resonance while talking with Michael Theodore, a professor in the music department at ATLAS. Sympathetic resonance is a phenomenon in which one vibratory body can cause another of similar harmonic likeness to vibrate. To explore how we might utilize this physical process we explored using blasts of different tones from the brass instruments to vibrate the strings of a guitar. We also used a speaker placed underneath a drumhead to vibrate the body of the drum. While you could hear and feel the affect of the vibrations on the guitar strings and drumhead the effect was subtle. We would need to find a way to amplify the effect in some way if we wanted an audience to connect with the idea.