Browse Items (18 total)

Iron, wood, steel, ivory, ebony, nails.

Keen to explore the possibilities of Free Music, but lacking instruments that would readily play the ‘noteless’ gliding tones it required, Grainger and Cross modified existing instruments to make…

The box of Free Music components that this object is part of contains scraps of wood, metal, paper and rubber.
- Wood and felt frame (musical instrument?)
- Small piece of cardboard with electronic components attached - transformer, potentiometer,…

This photograph shows the Grainger and Cross's Kangaroo Pouch Tone Tool Free Music machine installed in the Grainger Museum, probably in the late 1950s. The machine was not fully complete when it was installed, and Cross visited the Grainger Museum…

Steel, PVC pipe, plastic sheet, globes, ink, electronics, speakers.

One of Grainger and Cross’s last experiments before
Grainger’s death in 1961 was an attempt to create a more
immediate and accurate form of Free Music through the
use of…

Steel, brass, wood, accordion reeds, blower fans, linear bearings.

In their original Reed box experiments, Grainger and
Cross approximated the effect of gliding musical
pitches by using closely-spaced microtones. They
detuned harmonium reeds to…

Steel, brass, PVC pipe, paper roll, sewing machine belt, electronics.

This machine demonstrates the method used by Grainger and Cross to control oscillators through the use of connected ‘tone arms’ and cut paper ‘scores’. Whereas Grainger and…

Large, upright wooden frame with cross beams at side. Two vertical poles / tubes at each side divided into four sections with acetate discs. Paper reels (cut to represent pitch) are fed through a series of metal poles - a roller runs along top (cut)…

Wood, cardboard tubes, paper, string, tape, nails

Wood, plastic, string, tape, metal, masonite

This ‘reed box’ is designed somewhat like a giant
mechanically-operated mouth organ. A large strip of
paper (not present), like a pianola roll with holes cut at
calculated points, was to be rolled…

Masonite, wire, string, tape

This invention was Grainger's first attempt at constructing an instrument which could glide smoothly from one tone to the next and which was controlled by a 'musical score' rather than a player. The sound was produced…