Instruments
In his earlier albums, he often used the Serge Modular synthesizer, giving his music a twinkling and "cosmic" sound. In 1982, he built "The Beam", a 12-foot-long (3.7 m) acoustic instrument strung with 24 piano strings, designed by Jonathan W. Lazell and built with the help of Paul Abell. He has since used it in many albums (solo or collaboration) as well as in concert and film scores. At the end of the eighties, his sound became deeper and closer to Steve Roach's style. Michael Stearns' music is always very ambient and woven with sounds of nature or human voices. But it can also be more melodic with great themes evoking wide spaces or great landscapes.
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Famous quotes containing the word instruments:
“We are all instruments endowed with feeling and memory. Our senses are so many strings that are struck by surrounding objects and that also frequently strike themselves.”
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“I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people, so dead to all the feelings of liberty, as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest.”
—William Pitt, The Elder, Lord Chatham (1708–1778)