Prepared Instruments
Preparations that change how strings and pianos resonate and respond (2016–current).
About
Much of my work since 2016 uses preparations: rings and other objects placed on and between strings, coupling strings together and altering their mass and length, so that the bow's energy flows through more than one string at once. The preparations change how the instrument resists the bow and how it resonates, and they make the strings largely inharmonic. Even an expert player meets an instrument that is partly, but not completely, unpredictable.
Marco Fusi and I call this defamiliarisation, after Shklovsky's idea of 'making strange'. The player's technique is not thrown away but recalibrated: it becomes a way of finding out what the instrument will do, rather than a way of carrying out a fixed result. The scores set up the material conditions and a path through them, and the music comes from the negotiation between player, preparation and instrument. As we put it in the ECHO article, it is like a door handle that still turns but now produces an unfamiliar consequence.
The most recent work with Marco extends this with electromagnetic actuation. Magnets on the fingerboard and under the bridge of a prepared viola d'amore, with an electrical current passed through its brass strings, set the strings vibrating by Lorentz force. Marco plays while I shape the feedback, so the instrument becomes 'a double-instrument played by two people', where neither of us can control what it does on our own.
YouTube playlist: prepared strings YouTube playlist: piano resonator YouTube playlist: electromagnetic actuation (LTDM) experiments for ECHO
Pieces
- There is no gap between bird and song (2025), prepared viola / viola d'amore, for Marco Fusi
- a world in itself (2024), prepared electric guitar, prepared cello, prepared bass, clarinet and trombone, for Quiet Music Ensemble
- Natura Naturans (2021), solo clarinet and prepared string orchestra
- The whole is encountered by going further into the parts (2020), prepared double bass, for Christopher Williams; its first version was TBC (2019)
- Contingent Harmony (2019), flute, clarinet, piano, violin, viola and cello with preparations and resonator, for Explore Ensemble
- In the unknown there is already a script for transcendence (2018), prepared piano and magnetic resonators, for Zubin Kanga
- The Careful Plaiting of Weak Ties (2017), prepared string quartet, for the Manon Quartet
- Intra (2007), violin and prepared classical guitar (an early piece)
Related adapted instruments: Seeking/Revealing (2025, 'open-frets' guitar with a moveable capo for each string) and Individuation Study #1 (2023, magnetic resonator piano).
Improvisations
- Improvisation with Phill Harding: prepared piano and resonators (Bandcamp)
- Eight improvisations on one idea, for prepared cello (SoundCloud)
- Dai Hall, prepared guitar improvisation 2
Videos
Strings
- Bowed ring preparations: introduction
- String preparations demo
- Prepared cello: left-hand experiments, Leeds
- More cello preparation examples
- Prepared cello (no sound)
- The whole is encountered by going further into the parts, Christopher Williams
- Natura Naturans, Tectonics Glasgow 2021, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Heather Roche
- Lecture recital, 21st Century Guitar Conference 2022 (prepared guitar, feedback and electromagnetic resonators)
- Video series: Marco Fusi performing there is no gap between bird and song (InstrAct project, HEMU / HES-SO)
Electromagnetic actuation of a prepared viola d'amore, with Marco Fusi
Piano
- In the unknown there is already a script for transcendence, Zubin Kanga
- Prepared-piano resonator
- Prepared-piano resonator 2
- Testing the resonator on prepared piano states
- Prepared piano and EBow
Writings
- McLaughlin, Scott, & Marco Fusi (2026), 'Defamiliarisation of a string instrument through Lorentz force actuation', ECHO.
- McLaughlin, Scott, Mira Benjamin, & Zubin Kanga (2025), 'Entangled Technique: Material indeterminacy and embodied knowledge in experimental music performance', Performance Research.
- McLaughlin, Scott, Zubin Kanga, & Mira Benjamin (2021), 'Composing Technique, Performing Technique', Journal of Artistic Research, 23.