New Disconcert Posters

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Been working up at Hotbed Press in Salford today on a new Disconcert Poster design. Amazing considering I used to work with the Risograph machine daily it was real slow going with lots of help and consultation from the various excellent people around at Hotbed; I’m pretty pleased with the colour and way designs sit together; only problem is density of ink and the glitchiness of the machine itself; which is pretty much also the nicest feature of it. Going back up next week for another play…

Light Theremin

I was working the start of the week trying to find my way around the first few basic Arduino projects… been really fun! Finally got to a point where I’d built up enough knowledge to have a go at this light theremin, great because this kind of interaction with sources in the world and sound is really where I want to go with it.  There’s millions of videos of people playing around with this light theremin but I just couldn’t help myself in my excitment!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd_Cxvv4V_c

More drones

I’ve been working today again on developing my self playing drone machines. Had an interesting afternoon of research starting out trying to work with some completely different materials to usual. I’ve usually defaulted to using guitar strings playing against the edges of my two turntables. This creates a workable amount of friction to generate a sound but the metal on metal feel can lead to crazy spiraling harmonic partials in frequency ranges which can be pretty uncomfortable!20130917_121816

So today I was looking at using felt on the surfaces of the turntables themselves to create a different feel to the friction and sound it generated. An idea found in Ignaz Schick’s essay in the Echtzeitmusik book where he talks about some of the different materials he uses on his prepared turntables and kind of a nice echo back to Joseph Beuys. Arriving at the studio I realised the 78 player actually already has felt on the turntable but not all the way to the edge; there’s a metal rim still. Didn’t get it to work quite as i wanted; the edge of the felt needs to be super flush to the edge of the turntable and fixed down pretty well. Will bring right tools next time.

20130917_121848Leaving the felt for another time I moved on to work with other materials; firstly stones. When agitated at the turntable edge this created rather nondescript friction and scrapes sound. Could be made by anything. Maybe different stones would produce different possiblities of sound. Mass, weight etc… Also with stones you can make a nice repeato rhythms arranging them on and around the turntable.

 

With a little bit of testing, stretching, tensioning in different spots I found quickly that the third material; rubber worked to make some great sounds. I used the original slipmat on the turntable as the point of contact and a stretched balloon attached to the piano frame as you can see in pictures above. The rubber on rubber feel gave a much lower starting frequency (this was also to do with the balloon not having much tension on it all) which you can hear in the recording below. This meant that the harmonic partials that grew as the piece developed stayed in a more comfortable hearing range.

https://soundcloud.com/davidmbirchall/balloon-drone-1

20130917_122051Made several recordings using the rubber as singing object. Interesting as the rubber vibrated you got a completely different pattern to the way a guitar string vibrates. See note below. Then moved onto test out the some latex sculpted pieces I’ve been constructing last few months; casting objects I play guitar with and other musical detritus with liquid latex.  Was really tricky to get these tensioned right and held in place for any length of time. Got some occasional great sounds, with the kind of thickness and tonal quality of the saxophone. More to come…

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Any Day Now Project

Was working on a really fun project in Bury during end of August; made some really fun work with a group of young people. We were working on listening skills, field recording in the Burrs Country Park, exploring/jamming with instruments and objects and finally mixing together all the stuff that had been recorded.  See and hear somethings on the project: http://anydaynowproject.co.uk/

Stringless Guitars

Something I developed so I could do the on top of pick up work on tour recently without having to cart an instrument round with me (though admittedly I did also pack a travel guitar) Really fun and compact. Can finally tour with a holdall!

The single coil version was first one i developed for my own use. Made a humbucker one last week with a friend for a tour he’s about to do. Fascinating bits of kit; I developed mine with  really specific idea in place related to my playing but of course the 5/6 people who have tried playing them have found pretty varied and radically different ways to use them!

More developments on these to come…

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