Mutantrumpet Creator Ben Neill Proposes an Age of Music Democratization: Echoes Podcast

If you’ve listened to Echoes over the last 30 years, you’ve heard the music of Ben Neill a lot. He plays an instrument called the mutantrumpet which has 3 trumpet bells, a trombone slide, two sets of valves and a lot of electronics. He’s been making music on the edges of electronica since his 1995 album, Green Machine. In the main part of the Echoes Podcast, I’m not going to talk to Ben about the trumpet, but about his new book, Diffusing Music – Trajectories of Sonic Democratization, Ben Neill talks about a history of opening up music to everyone, from the Futurists to Fluxus to AI. You don’t need traditional skill to make music anymore.

Ben Neill: Yeah, de-skilling and re-skilling, so that technology takes over and makes it so that a lot of the skills that were required are just not valid anymore or they’re not needed anymore.

I’ll be talking to Ben Neill about his book and as a bonus, after the regular interview, we’ll have Ben demonstrating his mutantrumpet.

Hear the Ben Neill and his mutantrumpet in a live Echoes performance here.