- [Narrator] WQED sessions.

(tin whistle playing) (water flowing) How Things Are Made.

(birds chirping) (water flowing) (gong echoing) (trumpet playing) (water flowing) (trumpet playing) (gong echoing) (trumpet playing) (water rippling) (bell ringing) (intense music) (shakers rattling) (intense music) (trumpet playing) (metallic echoing) (metallic echoing) (metallic echoing) (water rippling) (metallic clanging) (metallic echoing) (intense music) (shakers rattling) (water rippling) (bell ringing) (water rippling) (bell ringing) (lighthearted music) - The name of our band is How Things Are Made and we've been together about six years now.

We do a lot of free improvised music that is largely based on Brian's computing software that he uses to process our live signals.

We never thought anybody would actually listen to the music and so we recorded nearly everything we ever did.

- We have 80 records out on Bandcamp.

- Why do we do this?

(chuckling) - As long as it's fun, it ends up being great for us.

We're going to play a bucket.

How do you play a bucket?

You've got a bucket with a microphone in it.

How much water do you put in it?

Do you put the microphone a little bit closer to the top?

Oh, we found some rocks.

Do you throw the rocks in very close?

Do you throw them very far away?

There's a lot of variation.

- It's a very chaotic time in the US when we started and this was like an hour, two hours where we only thought about sound.

It was kind of a revelation, falling in love with music again.

You really get the sense of what each other wants to do musically.

- I think anything sounds good once you put it through the right computer program.

The way that I constructed the software is that I can't generate any sound myself.

I can only take in sounds from other people, so I like this idea that I can't be the initial creator of sound, that I can only respond to them.

It has to start from the two of them.

- If someone's coming to see us for the first time, one of the interesting things is to see how the actions on stage influence what's coming out of the speakers.

- [Matt] This band is about pure experimentation.