Another step into the realm of non-linear feedback systems, performed live on a vintage MACKIE 1604 mixer. A work-in-progress where I explore different kinds of interaction on an analog mixer that produces sounds only by feeding the output back into the input, changing levels and EQ settings in an instrumental way.
Have a look at the YouTube video of this performance: https://essl.at/works/studies-NIM.html

Studies for No-Input Mixer

Study for No-Input Mixer #1

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Study for No-Input Mixer #1 (2023) - four voices

This piece was recorded on July 4, 2023 at Studio kHz on a vintage MACKIE 1604 mixing desk. I used 7 channels without input, with internal audio feedback, controlled by faders and knobs with amazing resolution. A fantastic playing experience, where the slightest movement of your finger can drastically change the sound.
https://essl.at/works/studies-NIM.html

Study for No-Input Mixer #2

Study for No-Input Mixer #2 (2023) - seven voices

Composer Karlheinz Essl on his recent experiences and experiments with analog modular synthesizers and no-input mixer after decades of digital music making. Published in January 2024 on the platform SoundingFuture.
https://www.soundingfuture.com/en/article/digital-analog

Sounding Future

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From Digital to Analog (2024) - Podcast

A new addition to my no-input mixer project that I started in 2023. Performed live with a MACKIE 802 mixing desk on Feb 8th, 2024 at Studio kHz. No edits, no overdubs.
https://www.essl.at/works/studies-NIM.html

Study for No-Input Mixer #8

Study for No-Input Mixer #8 (2024) - Blacksmith

untitled 110724

experimental/free improvisation with no-input mixer.

(no)-Input/1

(No-input) Mackie 1202-VLZ mixer plus (multiple effect) 2004 Les Paul Epiphone

The Adventure, or, The Journey

Inspired by the sounds of sonar and the psychological effects of prolonged submersion.

A1. Challenger Deep
A2. Strait of Hormuz
B1. Rankin SSG-78

Bandcamp exclusive

Bandcamp

A1. Challenger Deep

Silent Unit - Strait of Hormuz EP

Limited Bob - Artura MicroFreak
Necrogurgitron - No-input Mixer (feedback)
Mesmo - POTAR Deluxe Sound Urchin

Performed and recorded on August 27, 2025 at “The Woody” in Tennessee.
Recorded, engineered and produced by Limited Bob.
Post-production and mix by Mesmo.

Image: “Ancestor's Skull” by Geliy Korzhev

Sleeping House (Performance Trio) "Confusion Rays"

Will - (born 04.27.1998)
real human musician [self-taught]
~rock and roll music genre~
Earth, North America, Colorado, 970.
feedback appreciated
on other platforms [and in real life] as William Arthur Hayden.
Ecclesiastes 5.18 (NASB, 1995)
🛟

Finnish composer, producer, writer and visual artist, focused mainly to algorithmic processes, computer-assisted composition, and various other methods based on cybernetics, chaotic dynamics and stochastic systems, among others. Most programs written by author, various languages. 

Studied musicology at University of Helsinki, computing at OU, Milton Keynes, private studies in composition. Musical genres, from avant-garde/postminimal chamber music to minimal techno, wonky/noskool, IDM, electronica, ambient, experimental. 

Born 1960 in Vienna. Austrian composer, improviser and performer. He studied composition with Friedrich Cerha and musicology in Vienna. Besides writing experimental instrumental music, he performs on his own electronic instrument m@ze°2, develops software environments for computer-aided composition and creates generative sound and video environments. Since 2007 professor of composition for electro-acoustic and experimental music at the University of Music in Vienna.

Karlheinz Essl performs on a laptop computer that he has transformed into a live electronic musical instrument. The result is exciting and musical. You just won't hear these sounds anywhere else. He performs solo and in duets and trios, responding with sensitivity to fellow musicians, producing fascinating sound transformations, creating spontaneous surprises, and moving quickly from loops to cacophony to tiny clips of vocal sounds to all kinds of textures and ideas. He does all this with his m@ze°2(Modular Algorithmic Zound Environment) performance software. (Joel Chadabe, CDeMusic, Januar 2002)


Caveat: I explicitly prohibit the use of any material I post for purposes of torture, brainwashing, hypnosis, bedazzlement or any other nefarious activity. This prohibition applies to all governments, corporations, institutions, agencies and individuals. 

“The avant garde is dead. That is its triumph. Let it lie.” - Chris Cutler in “Not As We Choose: Music, Memory and Technology”. (Highly recommended!)

“… there is increasingly less call to exercise an already too rare generosity of aesthetic hospitality.” - Chris Cutler

" Music is one of the great Mysteries. It gives life. It is not a career, nor a business, nor a craft. It is a gift... and a great responsibility. Because one can never know where the creative spark comes from or why it exists, it must be treasured as a Mystery. For the most part I believe creativity chooses you, not the other way around." - John Zorn (excerpt from the liner notes to 'Magick')

“Listen as if you were being told a secret” - Federico Fellini

“Experimental and electronic music was once not-so-benignly tolerated at the margins of western art music, but it has over the last decade or so moved toward a central position as something of the soundtrack of our digital culture. Where it once was merely tolerated it is now more engaged and doesn’t have to apologize to anyone”.  - Douglas Kahn 

"Through technology, voices are amplified and silence is broken. Spaces are shared." – Laurie Anderson

"I frequently hear music in the heart of noise." - George Gershwin

"'Tis an ill wind that blows no minds." - 
Malaclypse the Younger in 'Principia Discordia'

“Let us cross a great modern capital with our ears more alert than our eyes and we will get enjoyment from distinguishing the eddying of water, air and gas in metal pipes, the grumbling noises that breathe and pulse with indisputable animility, the palpitation of waves, the coming and going of pistons, the howl of mechanical saws, the jolting of the tram on its rails, the cracking of whips, the flapping of curtains and flags. We enjoy creating mental orchestrations of crashing down of metal shop blinds, slamming doors, the hubbub and shuffle of crowds, the variety of din from the stations, railways, iron foundries, spinning mills, printing works, electric power stations and underground railways.” — Luigi Russolo in 'The Art of Noises' (L'arte dei Rumori)

Urban Dictionary (https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Mesmo)
(New Norberian English)

1. lit. in a state of mesmerism, hypnotism; in a trance
2. in a state of bewilderment or confusion, daydreaming; 'out of it'
3. mind bogglingly awesome, spellbinding, captivating

(1) "He swung that watch in front of her face and she got all mesmo"
(2) "When the teacher called me to the board I had just woken up and was still pretty mesmo"
(3) "The new N64 cartridge is totally mesmo, bro”

Banner: The Hearing Trumpet_Leonora Carrington (detail)

New tracks tagged #No-input mixer