Em × Bronze Ensemble

Em × Bronze Ensemble is a project for one to many simultaneously playing electromagnetically prepared cymbals and gongs. Cymbals and gongs are excited at their resonant frequencies using non-contact electromagnetic actuators. Each metal percussion instrument's spectrum is captured. Filtered portions of the instrument's spectrum drive the electromagnet. Sometimes Matthew uses microphone–instrument feedback and lets the instrument play itself. Em x Bronze is written and composed in SuperCollider code.

Matthew has been vibrating cymbals, gongs and sheets of metal since the early 2000s. He first used modified loudspeakers to excite cymbals by removing the paper cone and epoxying a threaded rod directly to the voice coil and bolting the other end to a cymbal. Over many years, Matthew has developed a way to excite percussion instruments without contact using electromagnets. He is still perfecting the technique.

Em × Bronze Ensemble operates in the realm before and up to the familiar splash that results from either striking the instrument with a stick or crashing them together. Metal percussion instruments exhibit very rich dynamics that can't be explored using conventional playing techniques. A cymbal or gong has on the order of a hundred resonant modes that are not harmonically related as they are in a stringed instrument or a column of air in a wind instrument.