A DeKalb sound company will give concertgoers an interactive experience during its upcoming music festival.
J. Byron Wise is the CEO of Burning Cicada, LTD. This organization provides sound restoration services, mobile recordings, and sound workshops. It also produces music festivals. Wise said the upcoming festival will offer workshops that incorporate different sound technologies. He describes one of the instruments.
“It's essentially a circuit board with magnets that have piano wires going through them very finely tuned,” Wise explained. “And what you see here is a mesh neoprene, so it's very soft, it's very spongy. But it's just very beautiful to play.”
He said participants can play with software that converts images into sound. Workshop participants will also be able to make music using a tool created by Monica Lim. Wise said this depends on weather conditions.
“It essentially uses a web camera, and it will track like an x, y coordinate,” he said. “You can apply those to different systems such that like, you can just move your hands and you’ll create music with that.
The Burning Cicada Arts and Music Picnic Festival will take place from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday Sept. 23 at the Hopkins Park Bandshell in DeKalb. Renee Nanzer, Chaos A Chord, Alex Degroovia and Zoe and Nolan will perform.