Tandem Access
Tandem Access is a robotic phonographic instrument that builds on the turntable’s history as a medium for manipulation, composition, and performance. Multiple motorized tone arms navigate vinyl records, each routed to its own speaker, creating spatialized compositions through independent analog playback signals. The instrument explores the physical mechanisms of recorded sound, where grooves, playback hardware, and programmed mechanical movement become compositional elements.
Initial experiments incorporate my process of lathe-cutting custom polycarbonate records (a process that physically inscribes sound grooves onto blank discs) to create custom playback surfaces that shape how Tandem Access interacts with recorded material I compose.
Early documentation in version 1 stages collisions between fragments of recorded music across genres, histories, and contexts—sifting, layering, and recombining them into hybrid sonic forms. Part plunderphonics, part sculptural automaton, Tandem Access aims to transform the archive of recorded media into a site of unpredictable interaction and exploration.
Fiddle Henge
Fiddle Henge, is an electroacoustic instrument created to investigate themes related to performance practice, virtuosity, timbre and resonance. Fiddle Henge is a robotically controlled array of four violins mounted on a 26” bass drum that is played by a motorized acrylic disk. Fiddle Henge was inspired by a collection of mechanical musical instruments and automata from the turn of the 20th century before phonographs and recorded music forced them into obsolescence, namely the Mills Violano-Virtuoso. Similar to the Violano-Virtuoso, the circular bow of Fiddle Henge allows tones to sustain indefinitely. Where Fiddle Henge differs is being able to operate the position of the violins in relation to the speed control of the circular bow, opening up new possibilities for timbral and resonant discoveries.
Fiddle Henge has multiple physical recorded releases available on Bandcamp and won second prize as a Finalist for the 2026 Guthman Musical Instrument Competition.
Water Feature
In his solo project, Water Feature, Ross improvises with feedback and noise sound sources on his self-made electroacoustic instrument of the same name. Widely ranging from harsh noise to scintillatingly present ASMR textures, this instrument has an extensive sonic palette that can readily shift character. By experimenting with different tunings of the membrane of the drum and the of the strings, Ross is able to exploit dense microtonal beating patterns from feedback that arises in the instrument’s electroacoustic mixing configuration. Ross has had the pleasure of touring throughout the Midwest and East coast of the continental US on this instrument in various DIY and experimental music venues and has released the first in a series of self produced tapes on the instrument titled Banjo Music Volume 1.
