For Andriessen, that meant what amounted to a decades-long aversion to the sustaining line of string instruments, and an almost genetic attraction to the rhythmic power and potential of brass, winds, percussion and electric instruments – a sort of souped-up version of the kind of ensemble Stravinsky loved the best.
The helpful programme note called the assemblage of instruments "a sort of global hybrid percussion orchestra", with metal crotales making "the occasional oriental ting".
I would bring in a drummer at the beginning of the summer, because that's the only thing I didn't do, I would teach him the songs, I'd record that, and I'd spend the rest of my summer throwing on thirty instruments and sort of doing it the way The Beatles had to do it.
With a 42-millimeter lens, the instrument is "sort of like the little telescope that could," Mr. Beatty said.
But she is also remarkably musical, being classically trained in piano, cello and clarinet and self-taught on guitar and drums and also on the array mbira, a new take on an old African instrument – a sort of thumb-piano with a bell-like sound.
"Modern civil society, modern technology has made possible alternative instruments, other sorts of teeth," he said.
Instrumentation, therefore, is the art of combining instruments in any sort of musical composition, including such diverse elements as the numerous combinations used in chamber groups, jazz bands, rock ensembles, ensembles employing chorus, symphonic bands, and, of course, the symphony orchestra.
It's brought out the cold-blooded, dead-eyed killer within: I can spot an enemy life form at 50 paces, and it tends to be powerless against my instruments of destruction (sort of hooked scissor things).
Not to be overlooked are leaf blowers as the instruments in a sort of beach-ball ballet and a comic musical sequence that brings onstage the Idiots and their band.
