Firebase Orchestra

Source: Chelsea Mandello

This idea came to me on the bus while I was listening to the way Sigur Rós turns into music the sounds of ballerinas' slippers squeaking across wooden floorboards, which like most instances of Avantgarde composing is quite interesting to listen to.

So Sigur Rós' approach is to record such random noises and wreak acoustic manipulation thereupon.
To their sister band Amiina, anything at all can be an instrument. For example, they adopted the musical saw, which is amazingly a real instrument in itself; and also a set of desk bells tuned at different sizes, which isn't.
The bandsters of Uakti from Brazil double up as carpenter-craftsmen and make most their own instruments. Just watching them perform alone is a stretch on the imagination.
It won't seem too weird, therefore, to create some music with PYROTECHNICS!

The idea is simple. The Firebase Orchestra is a group consisting of an array of arms, which may be composed of anything from GPMGs to Matadors (anti-tank weapons) to artillery to assault rifles and so on. Every performance is staged and the setting would be a live firing area. And be assured that the audience is ushered to a safe place to witness the event.

The performers will be arranged in a row, firing towards targets of variable range, while the conductor (commander) coordinates the performance through free comms.

Needlessly speaking, the weaponry would require some adjustment, and here are some suggestions from my part.
1. GPMGs (General-Purpose Machine Gun): can come attatched with a calibrated barrel of adjustable length, with which the gunner's assistant can change the tone of the MG drone as the rounds are continuously fired.
2. Matadors: function as percussion arms. On trigger it produces one boom when the rocket is ejected from the tube, a split-second of flight time, and a second boom as the target is engulfed in a fireball. The rhythm i.e. the delay time between booms can be controlled using multiple target boards for the Matador, each placed at pre-determined distances.
3. Assault rifles: will be used for the melody. For this, it may be preferable to use blanks and change the tone using different supressors (which I assume affects the way gunpowder explodes inside the chamber). The downside is that a lot of them will be required to drown out the GPMGs.
4. For added effect. Illuminating and tracer rounds can be used at night.