Ptera – Fabrizio Di Salvo

Six snare drums. Twelve electromagnets.

Everything you hear is generated by the snare drums themselves. No synthesisers. No samples. No hidden sound sources. By controlling the snare drum wires with electromagnets at audio frequencies, the drums shed their usual role and become acoustic oscillators.

Working with such an instrument also requires a different approach to composition. The bespoke software developed for ptera draws on the principles of modular systems. Rather than dictating fixed outcomes, it creates the conditions for serendipitous discoveries to arise. Composing becomes a dialogue with the instrument, in which intuition, chance and the behaviour of the material continuously shape the music.

This relationship extends beyond the software. The subwoofers do not add a further sound source; they complete the instrument, forming a symbiosis with the snares and allowing their lowest frequencies to come into their own as a tangible physical presence.