In the early 1960s, Karlheinz Stockhausen began to explore the idea of using the microphone as a musical instrument by altering its position in order to manipulate amplified sounds. This idea, combined with many experiments on the tam-tam hung in the composer’s garden, culminated in the 1964 composition Mikrophonie I for six players, tam-tam and electronics. The work organizes players into two groups of three, wherein each of the three players shares a role in shaping the resulting sounds. Two players produce various sounds on the surface of each side of the tam-tam; two additional players use microphones to pick up sounds while manipulating the microphones; and two players located in the center of the hall control the volume and frequency of the sounds as they are distributed to four loudspeakers. This process was described by Stockhausen as “three mutually dependent, mutually interacting and simultaneously autonomous processes of sound-structuring”.