Electronic musical instruments offer huge opportunities for experimentation, both because they can create such a wide variety of sounds and because it is relatively easy to modify those sounds. Just a bit of programming can turn a trumpet-like sound into a clarinet, and a little more programming can modify the sound into something never heard before. It is not just that electronic instruments can create new and distinctively electronic sounds, but that electronic instruments make it so easy to modify sound. Our electronic instruments are a music laboratory that invite experimentation. On this album we wanted to develop pieces that are both electronic and experimental in nature.

The creation of any musical instrument is the result of an experiment. One can picture, for example, Adolphe Sax (1814-1894), an instrument maker who improved the design of the bass clarinet, imagining what it would sound like to combine a reed mouthpiece like that on a clarinet with a brass body, resulting in his invention of the saxophone in 1841. But, it takes a long time to design and build a musical instrument like that, and once created, the types of sounds the instrument can make are limited by its physical properties. If one imagines creating something different, it may take months or years to realize that different design in a new physical instrument, whereas new sounds can be created in minutes - or even seconds - on an electronic instrument.

Our experimentation on this album is partly with the sounds we use, but even more with our composition. Our past two albums - 13 Months, from 2006, and Up and Down, from 2007 - used more traditional compositional techniques. While we did have some untraditional-sounding tracks on some earlier albums, our idea this time was to make each track an experiment. A part of this is that we use no traditional drum or percussion on this album. A larger part is that each track started with our thinking, "I wonder what it would sound like if?" We found out, and you can listen to the results of our experiments and find out too.

From wedding processionals to funeral dirges, music has always been written to accompany specific activities in life. Music has been composed to accompany specific types of movement, from marches to ballets to waltzes. Drinking songs have been written to accompany drinking, and religious music has been written to accompany worship. Music has been written to accompany and enhance the viewer's experience of film and plays. A huge amount of music has been written specifically to entice its listeners to dance. So, this album, intended to accompany two of life's regular events - waking up, and going to sleep - stands firmly in a long tradition of music designed to accompany specific life events.

This CD works best with a particular type of technology: a bedside CD player that starts playing the CD at the time one sets to wake up. We have a bedside CD player like this and wrote this music for our use, but now you can use it too!

The first track of the CD is Up... which is written to get you up! When one's CD alarm goes off in the morning, Up starts playing, gently at first, and ending much more energetically nearly 11 minutes later. It's much better than a snooze alarm. Up nudges you at first, eventually rousing you out of bed to start the day. Just set your CD alarm for the appointed time, and Up you go! Prior to putting out the CD, we tried out the concept, and it really worked! It's not just a theory, then. Up got us up.

Down, the CD's third track and running about 35 minutes, is designed to lull you to sleep. It starts gently at first, just like Up, but then gets more and more gentle as it closes your eyes and relaxes you. It's almost like a choir of angels is accompanying you to dreamland. We found it interesting to start Up and Down at about the same place musically, but then have them lead to very different destinations. So, when you go to bed, start listening to track three of the CD, and soon you'll be off to sleep. We're not really sure what the end of this track sounds like, as every time we tried to listen back to it we fell asleep before it ended.

and, well, and...

Choose a month... and let the music take you there. That is the idea behind our creation of "13 Months." It is intended as a concept album, for sure, but the concept is slightly different from the story line that connects individual tracks in most concept albums. Each track is intended to remind the listener of the month for which it is named. That's probably obvious. What may not be obvious after the fact is that each track was released on our web site in the month for which it is named. As the tracks came out one month at a time (in 2006), someone who listened to them when they first were released would have heard each track for the first time on its month, further reinforcing the connection between the song and its name. That's the concept, anyway, and to the extent that it works, going back and listening to a track should also take the listener's imagination to that month. Listening to the whole album in one sitting would be like experiencing a year in less than an hour. If it works, let us know! (If it doesn't, we'll listen to that too.)

The 13th track on the album was intended to represent an entire year. Does it sound like a year? And, notice how much more quickly that year passes than the year before. Time is like that, and that too is part of the concept. Perhaps it's a bit abstract, but then, so is the art form of instrumental music.

Reign of Illusion was formed to explore the possibilities of electronic music, and in one sense this album is less experimental than our earlier ones. The album begins with the ring of tympani in "January" (or, at least, the illusion of tympani!), providing a signal that it will have more of the structure of traditional music, and references to accoustic instruments frequently find their way into the mix. But the electronic foundation remains, and the more traditional structure of the album does not signify a change in our direction, but rather is designed to serve the concept. So, choose a month... and let the music take you there!

Wow, that was fun! We're talking about our first self-titled album we put out last year. We were happy with the enthusiastic response it received (even as we acknowledge the small musical niche occupied by electronic instrumental music), and "Illusion Theatre" picks up where our first album left off, exploring the range of music that can be produced with electronic musical instruments.

Synthesizers produce a remarkably wide range of sounds, ranging from imitations of other instruments to electronic sounds and textures that cannot be produced any other way. Our interest lies primarily with the more electronic-sounding products of synthesis. Rather than imitating other instruments, we want to explore the musical possibilities of uniquely electronic sounds. Most of our songs also contain several electric guitar parts, but even there, we use guitars mostly to produce electronic-sounding lines, so the guitar plays the role of another instrument to synthesize electronic sounds.

Some of our songs have a well-established beat and melody, showing the ability of electronic music to parallel pop music, while others take a more experimental approach to combining electronic sounds and textures. It's all part of our experiment to explore the possibilities of electronic music.

In half a century electronic musical instruments have moved from being expensive and temperamental novelty items to being a part of the musical mainstream. While "electronic music" has its own identity, electronic instruments have found their way into all types of popular music. Reign of Illusion is a Tallahassee, Florida, musical group that was formed to explore a wide range of music that can be performed using electronic instruments. This is the first of what we hope will be a series of albums probing the potential of electronic music.

The music on this album ranges from pop-sounding electronic instrumental songs to the more experimental use of electronic sounds to create textures and soundscapes to evoke the feelings and emotions of the listener. We set out to explore the boundaries of electronic music as an art form. The whole thing is a bit of an experiment for us, but we also hope that listeners will find it to be interesting, evocative, and a rewarding musical experience.

For listeners interested in the technology behind the music, the tools to make electronic music have been becoming more powerful, less temperamental, and more affordable over the years. While Reign of Illusion has decades of cumulative experience on electronic musical instruments, we recorded this album using two new synthesizers almost entirely. The music was performed on Yamaha Motif ES6 and Alesis Ion synthesizers, along with various electric guitars and electronic effects. Sometimes a traditional-sounding guitar part can be heard, but more frequently the guitars are used to produce electronic-sounding noises and textures. The guitar parts may be difficult to identify, but most songs have several guitar parts in them. Recording technology has advanced at least as fast as electronic instruments, and the album was recorded, mixed, and mastered using a Korg D16XD 16-track digital recording studio.