Stay out of trouble

RoboCop was one of my obsessions in high school 

While I can appreciate the sentiment here, his original advice to "Stay out of trouble" should cover such simple activities as those stated here.

Anyway, now I should go wash the dishes so that I can cook lunch!

Vibrating String

This pic of my partner Jo and I was one we took ahead of our time working with Alan Lamb for the 2006 Unsound Festival. (The lamb here was named Dewkiss by my son and is the subject of this earlier video Battering Ram.)

We were aiming for Australian gothic.

Alan Lamb is a Western Australian artist known for recording telephone wires and making sculptures which respond to the environment. One of these is 'the wires' he built at the property where we were living.

From 2004 to 2009 I recorded over 70 gigabytes of the sound of this large-scale aeolian harp and in 2010 I edited together highlights to create a three-hour recording Vibrating String.

The opening track has about ten minutes of bowing and then the wind plays the rest. Intermingled are the sounds of the environment, including birdsong, cicadas, insects, bats and a lonely frog who sounds like they find a mate near the end.

Car harp

During a weekend remembering my love of aeolian harps I was reminded of this awesome work by Lily Gottlieb-Mchale. Her website says the strings are miked and the sound is transmitted through the car radio.

Wind-powered music

This is one of my favourite recordings of 'the wires' at Pindari, a large-scale aeolian harp. (Click here to learn more.)

It was a summer evening and the gentle pulsing was created by a light breeze and the temperature slowly dropping. Warm nights are glorious with the light of the stars and the sound of 'the wires' joining the cicadas and occasional rumble of a train or truck.

041207PM by bassling

Gently borrowed

Gentle Borrower by ShowcaseJase

This is Gentle Borrower from the 2008 RPM Challenge. It's the first recording of the track I wrote about copyright and musical inspiration. It was inspired by one of the most potent essays I've read about music -- Bettered by the Borrower by John Oswald. As I read it I jotted down ideas and later thought they would make good lyrics.

We share in ears
vibrations in air
it's more primal than blues
this form we share

I am a sound
a song that is true
this music that flows through me
can flow through you too

Gentle borrower
transform me
gentle borrower
transform me

Brainstorm elation
marks transformation
save condemnation for
straight imitation

There are more than these notes
there are more than these keys
an infinite soundscape
needs your diversity

Gentle borrower
transform me
gentle borrower
transform me

Here is a version of the song we recorded live using the wires as a reverb on the vocals by singing into a can, like one of the telephones you'd make with two cans and a string.



Below is my bassling remix of Gentle Borrower. If you click on the downward arrow you can download it.

Gentle Borrower (basslingspulsingwiresmix) by bassling

vibrating

Here's the three-hour ambient drone soundscape I've edited together from over 70gb of field recordings for the 2010 RPM Challenge.

You can hear a variety of birdsong along with 'the wires' -- a large-scale aeolian harp built by Alan Lamb and Scott Baker for the Unsound Festival. See http://hghlght.blogspot.com/2009/06/wired-for-sound.html for more on this amazing instrument.

Dust storm dedication for parts of Sydney, NSW and QLD

Dust Storm by bassling

Here's a tune of mine called Dust Storm that features me jamming along with the aeolian harp.


Pic of a dust storm outside Wagga from a few years ago.

Click here for more about the wires, a large-scale aeolian harp.

Come see me at Federation Square this month

A few of my videos are on the BIG SCREEN at Federation Square each day from 2.30pm during May as part of the Notes From The Underground Program.

Thought crimes

http://aeolianharp.wordpress.com/ is a fascinating blog because it presents a somewhat paranoid and challenging view of the issues facing the world. It's great for a bit of balance considering that most of the media we encounter is rarely more than a beat-up to sell advertising.

The giant corporations that are stripping the earth bare and dispossessing local subsistence economies the world over can’t function without two things: computers and electricity. Those two things are like the central nervous system and the blood flow of corporate power. And that’s where they’re vulnerable. These networks could be disrupted manually or through computer hacking. But anyone who wanted to attempt this would have to approach it like a war, like a serious resistance movement.

The post on there today could probably be argued to be an incitement to terrorism but the underlying theme that a food shortage could happen is the real message and it's one worth considering. I was surprised when I was at the park with the kids that an old Italian lady we talked to said we should ensure our kids learn to grow their own food because she had lived through shortages in her life.

I like this

Silence? Sound?
Better an aeolian harp
Than fool who has
The king's ear.
There are no kings here,
Only torchlights seen
Across dark fields
By beings on business
Of their own.
All illusion is alone.
Could that include this question?

Makes a change to all the Christian devotional poetry about aeolian harps that's appearing online at present.

I mean, seriously, nothing illustrates the superstition versus science argument better than the idea that the sound produced by an aeolian harp is something other than vibrations. Ye olde Victorians thought it was spirits talking from the aether, which is kinda cool in a romantic way but apparently some people thought something similar about the static you can still hear on the radio between stations.

Maybe I'll want to believe there's something beyond the veil of death as it seems closer too?

Simple aeolian harp recording

Hadn't tried this before, ain't too bad. Next I'm going to record the aeolian harp (or 'The Wires') with pick-ups and also through a polystyrene box and compare the results. I've always been a fan of the latter for its character but, after jamming along with drums to Josie bowing on the harp, I'm looking for ways to isolate the sound.

PS: Here's a recording of the wires vibrating and a bit of bowing, through both the guitar pick-ups (left channel) and a SM57 in the polystyrene box (right channel). The two sources complement each other and the polystyrene adds some frequencies between 1-3kHz, which I guess is the warm distorted character I like.

PPS: Here's a tune I made with the recording in the link above. It's a dubby sorta thing that gets a bit dynamic in places.

Remix challenge

Let the music flow through your computer and share your interpretation of this track about copyright and music.

All the parts are available for download here or you can hear the version sent in for the RPM Challenge. Give it a go - share your style!

Hear Dazzleships' gentle remix
Hear The Oxygen Tent's garage-style remix
Hear our acapella live over aeolian harp
Or hear bassling's electro-style pulsing wires remix

And click the picture above to watch our video of an acoustic live interpretation and a bit about the aeolian harp that's something of a motif.

Still harping on

Recorded Dec '07


Recorded Feb '08

Aeolian harp

"In Zen they say, 'If something is boring after two minutes, try it after four. If still boring, try it for eight, 16, 32 and so on. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all, but very interesting."

After reading this quote (attributed to John Cage) in Craig Schuftan's book The Culture Club, I had a whole new appreciation for the aeolian harp Alan Lamb and Scott Baker built in the backyard. So I set about recording it more often and have put the results online at soundclick.com/aeolianharp. Hear free mp3s here.

And after sleeping with it for a couple of nights, I'm feeling what the romantic poets talk about. Like Eduard Mörike in one of the most famous, 'To an Aeolian Harp'

Leaning against the ivy-covered wall
Of this old terrace,
You, an air-borne muse's
String-melody full of mystery,
Begin,
Begin again
Your melodious lament!


You come here, winds, from far away,
Alas! from the boy's,
I loved so much,
Freshly green turning hill.
And touching spring blossoms while passing,
Oversaturated with sweet fragrances,
How sweet you're tempting this heart!
And whispering here into the strings,
Attracted by harmonious melancholy,
Increasing with the draught of my desire,
And dying down again.


But suddenly,
As the wind swoops here harder,
A charming scream of the harp,
Echoes, me to sweet fright,
my soul's sudden excitement;


And here - the full rose strews, shaken,
All its petals in front of my feet!

Another thing in Schuftan's book that's given me a fresh perspective on the wires was introducing me to some of the philosophy behind the Theatre of Eternal Music. This group believed modern music was unsatisfying at a very fundamental level:

The problem lay in the Western system of tuning itself. The intervals between the notes on a piano keyboard are not mathematically correct, but represent a compromise, a fudge designed to help keyboard musicians jump from one key to another without having to re-tune their instruments. So technically, all Western classical music since Bach (who consolidated the new tuning system with his The Well Tempered Klavier) has been out of tune. Of course, we've got so used to it now that we don't even notice it, but for Young's group with its endless dronefests there was no getting around it. As Terry Riley, a later member of the group, explained it years afterwards in an interview: "If you threw up a bunch of slides on a wall that were out of focus, you'd tend to through them quickly."

The Culture Club ends with a really pointed question that is the logical conclusion of this idea that popular music is melodic novelty disguising repetition; but, the main thing I got from here was the Theatre of Eternal Music's idea of droning on one sustained note. The following chapter on John Cage, Stockhausen and the aleatoric technique, which puts an element of chance into a composition, reminded me of the idea of the wires as divine inspiration.

I really enjoy hearing the low pulse build into a furious drone before a new pulse builds again or occasionally another will collide into it. Or the wind will still.

The wires of the aeolian harp seem to be a bit sharper than G, which is usually a nice melancholy sort of key. At least, that's where I end up when I play along with them on my fretless bass. From a sharp G they go sublime, as explained elsewhere:

The aeolian harp's very special tones/ tone combinations, resembling to the flageolet-tones of other string-instruments, cannot be created by man by any "conventional" action on the strings whatever (like bowing, plucking rubbing etc.).

(And, to digress, it's something that reminds me of Percy Grainger's idea that the future of music lies in droning, shifting tones - although he had much more complicated - and, for the time, freakingly awesome - methods of generating tones through transistors and photo-voltaic cells.)

I'm still grappling with identifying the harmonics on the wires but this description covers it nicely:

The harmonics always appear in a pattern. The first harmonic is an octave above the fundamental; the second is an octave and a fifth above; the third harmonic is two octaves above. Then two octaves and a third, a fifth, a seventh. Then three octaves and a second, third and on and on. If the string is tuned to c, the harmonics are c,c,g,c,e,g,bflat,c,d,e, etc.


When wind blows across strings it is not the fundamental that is heard, but one of the harmonics.

Here's another description of how an aeolian harp works from an academic who has spent time researching the effect on power lines. I particularly like these lines he quotes from Coleridge, in his poem The Aeolian Harp:

Methinks, it should have been impossible
Not to love all things in a World like this,
Where e'en the Breezes of the simple Air
Possess the power and Spirit of Melody

Reminds me of another quote from John Cage, “Beauty is now underfoot wherever we take the trouble to look.”

The other night I slept in a tent next to the wires and as they pulsed pre-dawn I heard their harmonics oscillating with the Doppler effect on a passing car in the distance and then a plane. It'd be good to be able to record that, maybe an omni-directional mic could do it. It's a shame that the deep rumble of a passing train would be too deep to reproduce though I'm starting to recognise how they effect the wires and shape the sound.

Anyway, I'm beginning to see how Alan Lamb has spent years sitting under humming wires. And I'm grateful I live in an age where superstition doesn't see the sounds of the harp as ethereal voices or sorcery, like poor Dunstan in the following:

The principle of the natural vibration of strings by the pressure of the wind was recognized in ancient times; King David, we hear from the Rabbinic records, used to hang his kinnor (kithara) over his bed at night, when it sounded in the midnight breeze. The same is related of St Dunstan of Canterbury, who was in consequence charged with sorcery. The Chinese at the present day fly kites of various sizes, having strings stretched across apertures in the paper, which produces the effect of an aerial chorus.

That last bit reminds me of this French bloke, who demonstrates an amazing number of ideas for things that can be powered by the wind.

Post script: there's a video with a bit about the aeolian harp here