The Tromboscillator is not a specific instrument, it is an idea of the sound which happens when a trombone mutates and melts into another virtual world (other than the one the player is in). The trombonist, who always has to grapple with metal tubes, is on a threshold between the body / breath and the instrument / machine. With the Tromboscillator the player can breathe life into machine worlds. My experience of playing with electronics has always been that I am extending myself and my sounds into another world. This world is a vast landscape of possibilities, a hall of mirrors, a labyrinth of ever changing pathways. As in our experiences in cyberspace and dream worlds, this world offers limitless possibilities for experimenting with the self, our ideas, our projections, our underwater and outer space wishes! The Tromboscillator makes music but implies, as does all music, much more than just a collection of sounds in space and time. The player is using the means to change the means and to break out of its limitations. The means are: an instrument, analogue and digital hardware, time and space, music and sound, identity and body. This not a process of denial or escape but one of experimental and joyful transformation, unfixed, always changing and ideally ever present, outside of the time grid... Another ideal is that the music made with the tromboscillator will also go some way to changing those who hear it - altering consciousness and reprogamming. They (those who hear it) are not only human, machines and computers also hear the Tromboscillator and start to oscillate in sync - computers start dreaming and machines start breathing... Hopefully animals, plants, spirits, aliens and other entities will also get something out of my Tromboscillator music. This new instrument is an attempt at what I think is played in outer space and in other worlds, or perhaps its even a memory I have of certain future gigs on Jupiter!

The tromboscillator was originally conceived during an interactive electronic music course run by Bert Bongers and Jonathon Impett at Dartington International Summer School in 1999.

The extended and electrified trombone was inspired by the music of James Fulkerson, Miles Davis, Sun Ra and dub reggae. Much of the music I play features some form of electronic transformation of the trombone, for example in the groups Kreepa, The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble and Lysn. The experience of playing the composition "Wind Shadows" by Alvin Lucier was also very infuential on the Tromboscillator design. This piece asks the trombonist to play against two slowly oscillating sine waves, shifting in very small microtonal glissandos to create beats against the sine waves.

The idea was to go further into this oscillating trombone soundscape, combining trombone signals with those of electronic devices such as oscillators, ring modulators, filters and delay lines.

This was originally done using computers running Max/Msp and various midi-controllers, including a midi controller wa wa mute. The work was carried out in meetings of the Meta Orchestra, at the Institute of Sonology (The Hague) and during a residency at STEIM (Amsterdam) with Kreepa.

The Tromboscillator has now entered a new phase after the construction of a completely analogue Tromboscillator box by Tom Bugs. This was built by Tom after discussions where the essential features of the Max/Msp patches were described and during rehearsals where I played trombone and Tom played his modular analogue instruments. This work was presented during the Foldback Festival in London (August 2006).