Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
suspended (pt 1) – Autumn 2000
Download the mp3 here. (21.8mb)
After the evening Sonic Arts performance (see “the dream before-1”) where I discovered the interesting sonic possibilities of bowing metal strips, I started work on building a performance rig that would expand on the idea.
I bought metal strips of differing lengths and materials from my local diy store, and bolted them to a largish piece of timber, which I supported on a couple of trestles.
I only had a couple of contact mics at the time, so I tried fixing them to the timber (thinking that it might act as a sound board), but the sound was too diffuse and quiet.
Next I tried fixing the mics directly to the bottom of each metal strip – this worked much better, giving a very close (intimate) and breathy sound with very little bowing. it also meant that I could create a breath-like sound by bowing very gently, and pick up the faint upper harmonics as they started to appear. Gentle tapping with fingernails, a soft percussion beater, or the back of the violin bow also produced interesting sounds.
One thing about these kinds of metal strips is that they aren’t manufactured for the purity of the sound they create (unlike, say, a musical saw), so although there are fundamental tones and harmonics (overtones) as you would expect, these tend to be somewhat gnarly, unpredictable in when they appear, and have a lot of other “noise” around them. Which for my purposes makes then much more interesting.
It also fits in with my “sandpit” approach – creating a situation containing many possible ways of developing, starting somewhere and seeing where that leads to. So both the sound source and the software used to process the sounds are open-ended, and somewhat unpredictable. The breath like sound is pretty consistent, but there is no absolute guarantee when bowing as to what the first full sound to appear will be, and with looping software you work with what you get – “mistakes” have to be incorporated.
I had the good fortune to be the only performer in Colourscape this day, so I had plenty of time to explore both the metal strips and the software. I played for roughly three hours – “suspended” (parts one and two) are edited sections from that day’s performance.
One of my favourite sounds in this performance first occurs around seven and a half minutes in, and then floats in and out of the background for most of the rest of part one.
It sounds like a couple of clarinets play little rippling figures – the pattern has an interesting sound to it, the feel of the rippling figures gives a nervous, slightly uneasy feel, and I no longer have any idea how the sound was created!
{ 0 comments }
