Design and construction of the New Music Co-op's intonarumori lasted for over two years. The project was entirely volunteer-based, and our brainstorming and building sessions occurred everywhere from living rooms to front porches to garages to, finally, a real woodworking shop. Materials were a mixture of store-bought hardware, recycled carpentry supplies, and cast-off musical gear. When friends changed drum heads or bass strings, the intonarumori got the hand-me-downs.

Our first prototype was based on a small wooden box salvaged from a deconstructed pipe organ. Though the affectionately named "little guy" became something of a mascot for our project, its size restricted it from becoming fully functional, and it revealed to us our minimum dimensional requirements. This set us on the path of ever-bigger instruments, often limited only by the cabinet materials we currently had at our disposal.
As we worked, we made a number of design modifications. Between the second and third instruments, we switched from using plywood to MDF (medium density fiberboard), a composite material. MDF's regular consistency enhances its resonant qualities. We also devised several methods for securing turning parts that inevitably unscrewed themselves in unintended directions. These methods included mounting stabilizing pegs and washers at key points inside the instruments. Further, as we perfected our abilities to create tone wheels of reliable dimensions, we experimented with our tone wheel options, eventually settling on thin wheels to avoid dampening the string's vibrations. Interesting wheel variants included the "dance party wheel" (with a protruding nail which created a novel beat) and the "shark wheel" (with fin-like protrusions around its edge.)

The basic design of the intonarumori is relatively simple. Each instrument is a wooden box with a drum head and a metal bell mounted on its front. A string is threaded through the center of the drum head and into the box, where it attaches to a pitch lever that the performer adjusts from the top of the instrument. A tone wheel turns against the string to produce the instrument's sound. The wheel's material and its surface determine the exact type of instrument (howler, roarer, etc.). The performer turns the tone wheel with a crank arm on the back of the cabinet. The combination of the tone wheel and pitch lever encompasses the two basic goals of Russolo's design: that the instrument produce raucous, environmental noises (the tone wheel) that are musically harnessed into variable, controllable pitch (the pitch lever).

Our intonarumori may be tuned at both the drum head and the string. Tone wheels are designed to be interchangeable between the instruments, and drum heads may be changed if necessary. Because the design process was an act of learning and discovery, the exact materials and design specifications vary from instrument to instrument. Thus, the succession of instruments documents the successive stages of our design process.
Russolo originally created 12 categories of intonarumori that grew progressively more complex. Instruments like the gurgler, hisser, burster, and croaker may have included vibrating springs, electric motors, telescoping pipes, and even a mechanical bellows. Though the basic box design of all the intonarumori was the same, the functional details of these later instruments are not clearly understood. For this reason, we chose to focus our work on the first four instruments of Russolo's series, the howler, roarer, scraper, and crackler.

Luigi Russolo (1885 - 1947) was the foremost creator of Futurist music. Though trained as a painter, Russolo began his musical explorations in his 1913 manifesto, "The Art of Noise." In it, he issued a call to young artists to join him in his exploration of noise as music, with special emphasis on the sounds of a new, urban world. Dissatisfied with traditional orchestral instruments (and with tradition in general), Russolo set out to create a series of "intonarumori," or "noise instruments," to musically alter the sounds around him by use of dynamics and controlled, sliding pitch. Intonarumori concerts amazed and confused audiences in Italy and throughout Europe in the 1910s and 1920s, and the instruments were admired by Stravinsky, Ravel, and Varese. However, despite the attention they initially received, none of the intonarumori or their designs survived past World War II, and the instruments were largely forgotten.

After creating the intonarumori, Russolo invented a number of other musical instruments, including the noise harmonium (a keyboard which connected to several different kinds of intonarumori mechanisms), the enharmonic bow (a rod wrapped in coiled wire used for playing traditional stringed instruments), and the enharmonic piano (a piano whose strings were continuously bowed by a belt-like device).

Russolo's life was inevitably a product of his times. Like many of the other Futurists, he volunteered for service in World War I, in which he was seriously wounded. He pursued his work with the intonarumori in Italy both before and after the war, but moved to Paris in 1927 due to his opposition to Fascism. In the 1930s, after a brief stay in Spain, Russolo returned to Italy and abandoned his musical interests. He spent his later years painting (in a realist rather than a Futurist style), and studying and writing about occult philosophy.

Futurism was primarily a movement of visual and performance art. It was founded in 1909 by F.T. Marinetti, who was inspired by the avant-garde theatrics of Alfred Jarry in Paris. In his "Founding Manifesto of Futurism," Marinetti introduced key Futurist concepts, like the love of modernity and the desire to jolt complacent arts audiences to an alertness of the new world around them. Futurist paintings had much in common with Cubist work, often featuring multiple vantage points and a stop-frame depiction of movement. Futurist performances became notorious for their absurd take on variety theater and their adversarial attitude toward audiences. For instance, Marinetti endorsed activities such as putting glue in theatergoers' seats and starting fistfights with the crowd (as happened at an early intonarumori concert). The Futurists were also a verbose group, and left behind a large collection of manifestos, in which they explain the philosophical underpinnings and practical applications of their work, usually in bombastic, exclamatory language. Foremost among Italian Futurists were the painters Carlo Carra, Umberto Boccioni, Gino Severini, and Giacomo Balla.

Marinetti also inspired another notable branch of Futurism which began in Russia in 1912. Russian Futurists included the painters and poets David Burlyuk, Vladimir Burlyuk, Alexei Kruchenykh, and perhaps the most famous, Kasimir Malevich and Vladimir Mayakovsky. Russian Futurists shared with the Italians a visual language of abruptly contrasting, brightly colored geometric forms. The Russians were intensely multidisciplinary and their activities ranged from outlandish street parades to high-concept opera. Like the Italians, Russian Futurists drew as much attention for their provocative, declamatory style as they did for the content of their works.

From "The Art of Noise," 1913:

We Futurists have deeply loved and enjoyed the harmonies of the great masters. For many years Beethoven and Wagner shook our nerves and hearts. Now we are satiated and we find far more enjoyment in the combination of the noises of trams, backfiring motors, carriages and bawling crowds than in rehearsing, for example, the "Eroica" or the "Pastoral."

Away! Let us break out, since we cannot much longer restrain our desire to create finally a new musical reality, with a generous distribution of resonant slaps in the face, discarding violins, pianos, double-basses, and plaintive organs. Let us break out!

We therefore invite young musicians of talent to conduct a sustained observation of all noises, in order to understand the various rhythms of which they are composed, their principal and secondary tones. By comparing the various tones of noises with those of sounds, they will be convinced of the extent to which the former exceed the latter. This will afford not only an understanding, but also a taste and passion for noises. After being conquered by Futurist eyes, our multiplied sensibilities will at last hear with Futurist ears. In this way, the motors and machines of our industrial cities will one day be consciously attuned, so that every factory will be transformed into an intoxicating orchestra of noises.