It features Ostertag playing a homemade real-time sound sourcing system with Fred Frith on guitar and Charles K. Noyes on percussion.

In a review of Ostertag's 2009 book, Creative Life: Music, Politics, People, and Machines, Chris Gehman described Getting a Head as "wonderfully strange and inexplicable".

Ostertag referred to this invention as "One of the first ... times that tape manipulation techniques developed by electronic composers for use in the studio were adapted for live performances and improvisation.

"[7] In a review of Getting a Head at AllMusic, François Couture said Ostertag began experimenting with sound sampling a decade before it became a commercial viability.

[6] Couture wrote that Ostertag's manipulation of Frith's performance produced "a warped mirror image" of his guitar that was "strange and unsteady".

[6] Gregory Sandow wrote in The Village Voice that the sounds in Ostertag's duet with Frith on side A "move in short, almost breathless little impulses" and are "lively and alert".