We live in a time of remarkable innovation: computers are getting more powerful, DNA sequencing costs are plummeting, and robotic cars are driving around Mars. Why is it then, that our music is being made just as it has been for decades? Sure, new styles ebb and flow, but turn on the radio and you’re pretty likely to hear a guitar, a voice, and some drums, powering through the same four chords.

If William Close had his way, things would be different. As a student at the Art Institute of Chicago in the early ‘90s, Close had engaged in an unorthodox tripartite study of sculpture, music, and architecture. It was multidisciplinary before the word became de rigueur, and it led Close to question the fundamentals of music and the objects that produce it. “I often wonder, Why do these instruments have to have all these rules?” says Close. “I was really fascinated with making instruments where you didn’t have to follow the standard rules.”

Today, the artist/musician has over 100 novel instruments to his name, a catalog of which reads like an anthropological study of another planet. The drumbrella, the aquatar, the wing harp, the drum orb: by the looks of it, Close’s studio is a year-round Burning Man festival. Some of these musical inventions were driven by aesthetics: of a 6-necked guitar-like creation, “I was doing all kinds of drawings, just to get the coolest-looking thing,” Close says. But others were created with a sense of sonic experimentalism: a recent exhaust pipe derivation “sounds a little like a grungy sitar,” he explains.

Close’s calling card, however, is the Earth Harp, “the longest stringed instrument in the world.” From a wooden base on stage, the thick brass strings extend – up to 1,000 feet – to any other anchoring point. There are acoustic laws that can’t be circumvented, however: a 40-foot resonating string produces a middle C; 80 feet generates a C one octive lower; and 320 feet is the lowest C that would be audible to the human ear. Close uses a capo-like tool to harness the physics and tailor the instrument to each performance’s particular specifications.

The enormous scale but minimal infrastructure of the instrument facilitates a multiplicity of forms, allowing the Harp to integrate into a range of environments. Close has “strung” such diverse sites as the Space Needle in Seattle, the Roman Coliseum, the Kennedy Center, and Shanghai’s Grand Theater. The Harp has become, in many ways, as much performance art installation and architectural flourish as musical instrument.

But it’s the unique sounds that keep Close fascinated by the instrument. “The brass wire is the secret ingredient,” he confesses. “Brass just has a warm quality in the sound." With dramatically illuminated strings extending over the audience, “you’re literally in the instrument,” and distinct harmonics emerge. These factors that make the Earth Harp a novel performance instrument – the scale and immersive geometry – also present significant recording challenges. Marcel James mastered the tracks that became Close's most recent album, taking a wide array of dispersive sound waves and turning them into electronic pulses that can be piped through headphones. “You have to convert the audio to analog to process it,” James explains; he used the Antelope Audio Rubicon to do so. “It is the world’s first recording converter with an integrated atomic clock inside,” he says, and the result is a high-fidelity re-creation of Close’s immersive performances.

And as the Earth Harp reaches ever larger audiences, Close is preparing to launch a 6 year-long run of a live show. Most of the performances will be in theaters, but his artistic, architectural predilections are never far beneath the surface. “I’d love to string the Eiffel Tower someday,” he says, “or maybe the Grand Canyon.”