How to build a stethoscope microphone

by Ed Cooper

Kathryn Williams and I have recently completed our co-composed piece Fourfold, commissioned through Cyborg Soloists’ Call for Collaborative Music Projects. Fourfold uses technology from Cyborg Soloists’ industry partner SoundBrenner and also stethoscope microphones that I have been using in my practice for the past year or so.

Here, the stethoscope microphones are used to amplify the performers’ heartbeats, placing these in dialogue with the automated pulses from the SoundBrenner Core devices. These are attached to the performer’s chests with a chest mount harness (designed for attaching a GoPro camera or similar to the body), whilst the Soundbrenner devices are slowly moved around the torso with their tempi occasionally changing. The chest, then, perhaps both literally and metaphorically, acts as a resonance chamber for both this autonomous biological pulse, and the mechanical, rigid ticking.

Making these microphones is quite easy, as you’ll see in the following video of me demonstrating how I make them. It requires only a commercially available stethoscope and lavalier microphone, a sharp knife for cutting and a pair of scissors to widen the opening to insert the mic. Watch the video here: