THIS IS A POST WHICH WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN DECEMBER BUT APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN LOST IN THE CHANGE-OVER.
Friday 7th December
I spent most of today helping the students to put up an exhibition, discussing presentation issues and how to turn an object into an installation.
I then recorded some lovely sine tones with a view to composing them next week…
Tuesday 11th December
I have been arranging the sine tones into a longer-playing piece today. Each tone is 30seconds long, but I am not sure how best to present them. I have done one version where a number of the tones play simultaneously, with each note only playing once in the track. It has a musical quality to it because the layers are producing familiar chords.
However, I am wondering whether the piece should be less fanciful and more scientific, given that the purpose of the piece is exploring the interaction of pure sound waves in the space, not in the arrangement. The ideal installation would be 12 speakers playing single tones, all arranged throughout the stairwell. However, the portable speakers I am currently using are having difficulty playing the lower frequencies, and only really kick in at around 132Hz. Given that I can only play the higher range of my notes then, I might edit the number of tones used for the piece, and perhaps have two stereo pairs of speakers. This would allow four different tones to play simultaneously, and I can choose the range to suit the speakers, and place the speakers a certain distance apart.
Hopefully I will be able to finish this part on Thursday or Friday, because after that the college shuts for Christmas. Next term I complete my residency, but I will be working on a large scale performance with thirty students, so there will be less time for amateur physics.
Thursday 13th December
I made a 2-minute piece which consists of four sets of left and right sine tones, so it means eight tones can play without interference within the track. I took it up to the stairwell to listen to the tones back in the location. The whole piece sounded very pure, as if it was some distant machine whirring, and some people passed on the lower steps and didn’t really notice anything. I like the fact that you only know it’s happening if you stay in the stairwell for long enough to hear a marked change in the tones. As I walked back through the building afterwards I could hear all kinds of tones from computer rooms and cleaners and air-conditioning.
