RhythmiCone Rhythmicon was an early electronic instrument conceived by Henry Cowell and built by Léon Theremin in the early 1930s. It put together the pitches of the harmonic overtone series and rhythms that followed the same proportions, i.e. an octave having a twice as fast rhythm as the fundament. Some music was composed for the instrument, but fairly soon it sank into oblivion. Inspired by this java applet at the fabulous Musical Mavericks website I programmed a virtual RhythmiCone in Max/MSP to be used in connection with a microtonal synthesizer and asked four Finnish composers to write new chamber works for it. These pieces will be performed at Kallio New Music Days in January 2012 alongside music by Charles Ives and Conlon Nancarrow, after which I'm hoping to present some of the music here as well as share some of the composers' thoughts about this project. Click here for a sample.