Many decades ago, Liza Lim gifted me a custom electric guitar and subsequently composed that most marvellous ensemble work, Garden of Earthly Desire. The opening bars combine electric guitar with oboe and the glittering sounds of harp, mandolin and percussion. And, in those moments, I began my long journey towards this extended family of electric instruments. Nowadays I find the speed, the ease, and the gestural freedoms offered by the electric lap steel to be highly compelling and persuasive. Since 2012, almost all of my performance energy has been devoted to this wonderful instrument. With “hardware” that includes metal slides, benders and EBows, the instrument’s idiosyncratic potentials for string sounds, percussive and other techniques have driven my explorations in close collaboration with a small number of composers, Richard Barrett, Aaron Cassidy, and Timothy McCormack looming large among them.