During November 2026, at SOUND festival Aberdeen, I was thrilled to be invited to spend 2 days with two brilliant musicians – Accordionist Andreas Borregaard and Pianist Zubin Kanga. Andreas and Zubin are starting a duo project, so this was an opportunity for me to bring some ideas and experiments to workshop together to explore the possibilities of composing a piece for them.

Here is a short video of extracts from our time spent together, followed by a more in depth description of some of the experiments and ideas we explored. In this video, Zubin and Andreas are improvising with and alongside the devices I created.

Back in 2017, I collaborated with Andreas and Norwegian composer Maja Ratkje on ‘Aeolian‘ for Red Note Ensemble with Andreas as soloist. For this piece, my role was to design and build a range of air-based instruments for Andreas and the ensemble to play – many of which made creative use of used accordion parts. I realised that there were aspects of some of these idiosyncratic instruments that could be explored in more depth and developed further.

Alongside those starting points – I wanted to continue to explore my fascination with Magnetic Sensing (some R&D on this here), so decided to further investigate ways to employ the invisible forces of magnetic fields to generate sound, in relation to the piano and accordion.

I built some prototypes before the residency in order to make the most of the time with Andreas and Zubin. I created a new version of the ‘floor reed’ (first designed as multiples for Aeolian, each playing a single bass note once at the end of the piece). The new version is designed to play up to 8 reeds at a time, that are interchangeable. Here is a short video demonstrating the multi-reed floor reed.

I like the idea of using gravity as potential energy, to clamp the bellows up to then simply ‘release’ to fall. There is also something interesting about observing Andreas ‘loading’ the floor reed, in anticipation for the ‘fall’. The new version is more versatile than the previous version which feels like it could be better suited for a touring duo show. While we were experimenting with it, I decided to also amplify the ‘box’ so it could be another instrument and resonator for amplifying objects – such as tuning forks and more percussive and textural interactions with the bellows.

Some interesting aspects of the pairing between piano and accordion are the differences between them. I have an ongoing interest in finding ways to circumnavigate the percussive nature of the piano – the impossibility of crescendo through a note (when played conventionally). As part of my magnetic sensing research, I discovered a method (based on the principles of the e-bow) that uses 2 electromagnets as a feedback circuit (one as a ‘pickup’ (microphone) and one as a ‘driver’ (loudspeaker). By doing this, I managed to set a bass string in motion purely via the push-pull energy of magnetic fields. The advantage of this ‘open-circuit’ method over an e-bow is that it opens up more possibilities to position it without resting on adjacent strings, and it is also possible to adjust the strength of it and make it quite a lot more powerful than a standard e-bow. Below is a photo of the experiment I made with a single bass string.

Following this, I discovered a DIY guitar resonator by Metal Marshmallow which I ordered just before they discontinued them. It works well on piano strings. Here is a short demo of it mounted onto a temporary rig I constructed inside Zubin’s piano, so it could slide between the notes along the mid section of the piano strings.

In order to make more, I followed Metal Marshmallow’s open source instructions and started to fabricate my own. Having made my first ever order for circuit boards with the MM design, (thanks for the help navigating this Thawney), I managed to make one that worked – hurray! – but after a bit of time it stopped working and I didn’t manage to fix it before the residency, so we did end up with only one to play with on this occasion. This process stretched me in new directions and I learnt new skills such as soldering surface mount components and winding my own electromagnetic coils from scratch – I clearly need a bit more practice, but am getting there. Below are a couple of pictures from this process. Coil winding with 42 awg enamelled copper wire is incredibly fiddly, especially when it needs to be 7000 winds, because it is almost hair-thin and has a tendency to snap… which is why I was not able to make more in the time available…

After working on the induction coil experiments, I was curious to find out if it would be possible to vibrate a single accordion reed using them (prompted by Andreas suggesting this might be possible, as reeds are also metal). I only got so far with this experiment on this occasion, but there is definitely potential to explore further. I think it might be necessary to stimulate the reed with an induction coil resonating at the same pitch or an overtone of the reed in order to set the reed ‘singing’ more effectively. A bit more complex to set up, but I plan to work on this more. Here is a video of the early stages of this experiment.

I was also interested in trying to generate a more ‘grainy’ sound from the piano that was closer in timbre to bass accordion reeds vibrating, and so I tried out some fishing line rubbed with rosin to generate a ‘tremolo’ when rubbed and tensioned between two fingers. This also led me to prepare some small vibrating motors with speed controllers so Zubin could rattle and vibrate the strings of the piano with varying degrees of intensity. This extended my search for continuous ‘drone’ textures from the piano – to make it resonate and draw out overtones through continuous agitation with the pedal down. Here is a video of these experiments

Over the 2 days, I set up these various devices, and also adapted them, added new parts and responded to how the experiments and ideas developed and Andreas and Zubin continued to improvise with the set up, which was incredibly valuable to hear how the sounds from these augmented instruments blended, overlapped and contrasted. I introduced tuning forks for both Andreas and Zubin to use to sonically blend with the piano resonator and high accordion reeds. I was also fascinated to learn much more about the accordion, especially how Andreas can bend notes, to create varying beat interferences between unison notes on each side of the instrument – one slightly bending into microtones and back again. This technique fits in very well with the kinds of sounds I’m searching for.

With conventional playing of accordion and piano working mainly with ‘tuned’ notes, I’m searching for ways to entice microtonal ‘cloud-like’ drone states and to blend the sounds of both instruments so it is difficult to tell which one is playing a particular sound. My fascination with magnetic fields and sensing has developed further and the magnetic resonator on piano and accordion reeds is something I will focus on as this piece develops. I am keen to introduce microcontrollers to develop a system that opens up the possibilities of interactions between Zubin and Andreas – with the intention to introduce ‘entanglements’ between them, so actions by Andreas may effect Zubin’s instruments/devices and vice versa. This idea is drawn from a scientific theories that speculates that magnetic sensing could relate to quantum entangled particles in the eyes of birds. It also turns out that Andreas’ brother is a quantum physicist – so I hope to have a conversation with him in the future to learn more about this fascinating research.

All in all, I’m very excited about about the soundworlds that emerged from this relatively short amount of experimentation time, and I hope to develop these starting points into a fully fledged piece.

Huge thanks for Zubin and Andreas for bearing with me while I glued things together, and for their incredible musicality in responding to these various experiments. Extremely grateful to everyone at SOUND festival and Newton Dee Camp Hill centre for making this possible…. watch this space for more!