I composed Pea Soup in 1974 while a student of Alvin Lucier at Wesleyan University. A self-stabilizing network of circuitry (originally three Countryman Phase Shifters) nudges the pitch of audio feedback to a different resonant frequency every time the feedback starts to build. The familiar shriek is replaced with unstable patterns of hollow tones, a site-specific raga reflecting the acoustical personality of the room as determined by the resonant frequencies and reverberation time. These architectural melodies can be influenced by moving in the space, making other sounds, or even by letting in a draft of cold air. The piece existed both as an installation, responding to visitors, and in a concert version, in which performers moved and made sounds intended to influence the feedback.

In the late 1990s I tried to replicate the now unavailable Countrymen, and eventually developed a fair emulation in software. Thirty years on I’m touring the piece again, and re-positioning what was originally a typical “task-oriented” piece of strict Minimalism with a freer occasion for “improvising with architecture.” Since every hall has a different set of resonant frequencies, and reverberation time, each performance or installation is in another “key” and tempo; I’m collecting live recordings with the goal of editing a composite CD whose tonality modulates through a number of keys, and constructing a continuously streaming internet radio site that randomly plays back the full archive as a sort of “audio screensaver.