FM Sound Diffusion Workshop

This is a workshop in which I share with the participants how to use FM transmitters and FM receivers to generate a site-specific FM sound diffusion that allows playing music in any available setting. This ultra-flexible and playful diffusion facilitates the development of any kind of musical practice in a highly sustainable and participatory way.

This workshop works best as a complement to my current FM performance. Given the intensity of both activities and the lengthy time it takes to set up and rearrange the devices and spaces for each one, the workshop should ideally take place on a different day than the performance. In very exceptional cases, and if the available budget allows it, the workshop could be programmed as an extra activity right after the performance.

Participative diffusion

Using multiple FM transmitters, we occupy specific FM radio frequencies on a given radius to amplify our instruments with whatever FM receiver is nearby, be it a handheld transistor, a boombox, or car sound system.

Encouraging participants to pick some radios and move freely around the space with them, finding their own amplification strategies, and playing with reflections, delays, feedbacks and interferences, creates a unique, empathic and unpredictable context for the musical practice.

Listening = Music

Participants with a radio in their hands are essentially creating a site-specific sound diffusion -a sound installation, if you will-, with the potential to be sonically much richer than classic stereo or even the most advanced multichannel systems. It can also result in total chaos, but accepting creative accidents is part of the fun, and more often than not, of the music.

When participants become mobile speakers, their awareness increases dramatically. Not only do they engage more easily with each other and the music, but listening clearly becomes the music, and not just figuratively. This, in turn, helps to blur the demarcation between emitter and receiver, overturning the hierarchy of powers that underlies classical performance.

Autonomous and sustainable practice

Amplifying music via battery-powered FM transmitters and radios makes it possible to perform anywhere, be it indoors or outdoors, creating more abundant and playful performing opportunities. This autonomy of the stage (and all its intrinsic infrastructure) considerably reduces the cost of performing, contributing to making it a more sustainable musical or sound practice.

Legal compliance

For this performance I am using radio equipment from the brand Reketess of the type FT11, which is in compliance with the RED Directive 2014/53/EU, the ROHS Directive 2011/65/EU, the WEEE Directive 2022/19/EU, as well as the IEEE (FCC) and ICNIRP exposure limits for occupational/controlled RF exposure environments.

FM transmission has a lower latency (5 ms to 10 ms) than Bluetooth 5.3 (about 40 ms), which makes it way more suitable for real-time playback amplification and monitoring during recording.

Below you can watch examples of how I use FM sound diffusion in my performances.