PIEZOS AND PENNIES: MORE RECORDING AT OLYMPIA LEISURE, SCARBOROUGH

Another recording session at Olympia Leisure in Scarborough..this time I stuck some contact mics onto various games and machines to hear their inner workings and hopefully cut out the rest of the sound from the Arcade. I recruited a couple of accomplices to feed the machines while I listened, and got some great results. The Teddy Picker is a cracker, and so are the BasketBall and the 2p machines.

https://soundcloud.com/user-628037322/coin-actions

 Bill is going in on thursday with his Artificial Head, and I reckon we'll pretty soon  have a clear idea of our options and of the shape this piece can settle into.
Thanks once again to the staff at Olympia, they are making this easy and enjoyable too.

RESEARCH: CECIL SHARP HOUSE

I'm working towards a piece drawing on the methods and motives of 20th Century traditional song collectors, and this week I visited The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library at Cecil Sharp House in Camden with Cumbrian musician Mike Willoughby.

Mike performs in Cumbrian electric Ceilidh band Striding Edge, and also runs the Furness Tradition Festival Community Dance band, he's involved in this project and I suggested he might come along to source some  material. 

We asked Librarian Nick Wall if the Library could find some relevant material  in advance and  they provided a wealth of journals, recordings, notes, sheet music and correspondence which kept us busy all day. One of the highlights for me was reading Percy Grainger's notes on cylinder recording in a bound edition of the Folk Song Society journal for 1908. As well as making the case for recording as a means of preservation Grainger describes the value if  vari-speed playback when transcribing. Given that each cylinder could record just a couple of minutes, he became conscious if the importance of the silent pauses his singers made between verses, and was careful to make these aspects of the  performance as evident as the song. Grainger is an engaging writer, and his  eye and ear for detail  come out in his notes on the differing approaches of the singers  and their pleasure in harmonising with their own recordings. 

Mike worked through a couple of boxes of material from the early 20c Westmorland Song Competition and the collection of Dalton's JS Lawrence, and it was nice to see Furness Morris's Les Ord represented in there too.

It was a very enjoyable and valuable day, we are both  grateful to Nick and the staff
for all their help and for creating such a nice atmosphere to work in. 

You can explore the Library's online archive here, but there's no substitute  for a visit.

https://www.vwml.org/



 

AUDIO COLLAGING AT THE DOCK MUSEUM, BARROW, WITH JOHN HALL STE TYSON AND DAMO ROSE

A SEASONING event at the Dock Museum in Barrow..here's the press release., the poster and a couple of images from a rehearsal, one of which shows the score being put together. 

John Hall, Ste Tyson and Damo Rose.

A Live Sound Collage at the Dock Museum April 20 2017.

A unique Sound event comes to the Dock Museum on April 20, when artist John Hall teams up with

Musician / DJ Ste Tyson and Musician / Sound Designer Damo Rose for an evening of vintage BBC Sound Effects, Field Recordings made in and around Barrow, and unusual items from John's vinyl collection.

John and Ste will man the turntables to mix and overlay the vinyl, making a (largely) maritime themed sound collage in which you'll hear tugboat sirens and fog horns, machinery, music , outboard motors, seabirds, comic voices, coughs and sneezes and many other sounds combined with a collection of new recordings made around town by Damo in recent weeks.

The Sound Effects records have been provided by BBC Radio Cumbria. John went through their record collection a couple of years ago while working on an archives project, and played his odder finds on Gordon Swindlehurst's afternoon show. John and Ste, who regularly DJ's at Ulverston's Hope And Anchor and sings with local band The Prophets, have played several shows using these fascinating bits of vinyl. Damo, a familiar figure on the local music scene and Sound Technician with the Ashton Group Theatre Factory, joins them for the first time for the Dock Museum show.

The show is part of John's 2017 " Seasoning" project, and takes place a couple of days before National Record Shop day. 

Says John,

"We'll be including some recent purchases

from Pepperland Collect in Barrow. Support your local Record Shop, your local Radio Station and your local Museum."

Admission to the show is free, and the doors open at 7.30.

RESEARCH: ARCADES AND ORGANS.

SEASONING is the 2017-18 BIFOCALS project.  including installations, performances and workshops embedded within Cumbria's cultural calendar which will involve design and construction, instrument building, music, a/v installation and performance. Where possible we will work with colleagues in other regions and build some links and opportunities for further work.
Our focus is on vernacular, tradition and seasonal celebration. We will explore the roots and persistence of archetypal images and figures in song and story and look for their current manifestations through research and interaction with shared histories, archive material, traditional music and contemporary practice. The project will promote exploratory aspects of audio/visual arts and performance, through partnerships between artists and community groups (including our local schools) producing new work and facilitating new work from young people.


  A couple of things are underway.. Alex Black more is at work on the Human Organs...I was given ( I think)  a set of Church Organ pipes by Octopus Collective associate and Cinema Organist Mark Latimer, and set about trying to play them with various bellows and footpumps. The idea is a simple and easily mastered walkabout instrument. Not surprisingly there are a few people with form in this field, including this chap and his Borgen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hyAH6iYwzQ
Dan Fox pointed us at Dog Troupes(?) work, and Alex has arrived at this backpack model..seen here upside down..
we now have 4 of them, and the resulting noise is a kind of Camberwick Green Techno. We'll be (a) recording under a railway bridge and (b) going public throughout the year with Organists Jamie McPhie,  Neil Wade and hopefully Rob Cooney. 

Bill Bartlett (below) is a Sound Recordist who specialises in factual and actuality recording.










https://billbartlettsound.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/cv.pdf

 We planned to meet up in Scarborough in February to  make some exploratory Artificial Head recordings in the magnificent Olympia Leisure building on the Foreshore (right) as the first step towards a Binaural piece for installation or broadcast.  But Bill's car broke down in rural Yorkshire. So, I made a few stereo recordings to give us some idea of how sound can be used to evoke  the space without visuals, and we are returning next week.  
  Our thanks to Lesley Agar at Olympia for her help in setting this up, to the Arcade staff, (really helpful people) and, to our supporters and project partners: