[Acoustic] Und and Fun

Eli's ace pic of the "family" for Und - cast and crew, although the cast only consists of Annette (centre, kneeling down). 

Thanks to everyone involved for a lovely and very fun couple of weeks. Also: a huge thank you to Leila and James who let us stay with them for so long without ever having met us.

[Gear] Alice Preamp

My friend Seth lent me one of these the other day. I've used it for two recordings so far - one using it to record Anthony's (from Vultures Quartet) ambient sounds and another on some cymbals last night, both through an EV N/D 357 mic.

Really nice clear sound and no noise and a huge amount of gain - +35dB to +70dB - compared to the preamps in my MOTU soundcard  (+40dB max) this is a useful piece of kit for recording quiet sounds for me as I can capture them without having to slap really huge compression on them in the mix and even through a female XLR to unbalanced 1/4" jack I am not noticing any noise - although I need to get an XLR to TRS 1/4" to get the best out of it.

Nice piece of kit - thanks Seth!

[Gear] No Input Mixing

I bought a TEAC Model 2A mixer the other day from a local secondhand shop. It's a six channel mixer with four output busses, originally for use with a four track reel to reel tape machine, hence the four output busses - there is no stereo out - but each of the six channels can be assigned to any of the four outs so it is possible to get a six channel to stereo mix. Check out the weirdness of the ins and outs:

No XLR, no phantom power, no balanced ins or outs and all the outputs are RCA, which I am never a real fan of as I seem to be able to break RCA sockets just by looking at them - at least they are easy to replace. From what I have gleaned from various online rants they're cheap, noisy and nasty mixers but I kinda like it and haven't noticed anything really terrible about it.

What it works really well for is no input mixing which you can hear on my site: astrometria. For this I am connecting the line out from busses one and two to the mic inputs on channels 4 and 5 (the mic ins are set on attenuated - MIC ATT on this thing) to create a feedback loop and using the AUX out to send the result to my soundcard. It sounds like an oscillator from hell.

It's controlled by messing around with the master volume control, bass and treble controls and the channel volume controls, but what also works is using the output assign buttons which radically change the sound - fine, but why do the assign buttons for outputs three and four alter the sound too?! I don't really care as it means that I have the ability to change the sound without the sweep of using a pot.

Lots of fun!

BTW the pics on here are not of the mixer I have, but a rather better looked after one I found on the web - so all that gear you see beneath it isn't mine either. And I have the UK version which runs off 240V / 50Hz

[Acoustic] Und - The Space Bass

The space bass. 

The director of Und had specified in his script that he wanted a low drone at the beginning of the play. Seth and I had a bit of a problem with this as we really didn't have anything that we could use to make one. There is no PA in the space so all of the sounds have to be created acoustically.

In the end I came up with this. It's a triangular tube about 8 feet tall with a 3mm wire stretched from end to end with a couple of sound holes cut into the front. 

Not being a luthier (or anything near) this thing is a bit of a nightmare in many ways. The string is tied to a small bar of wood at each end and then runs between two tines of a fork. The other end of the fork is pushed against the bar of wood - this means when the string is tightened the tension actually holds the wood in place - that is as long as there are some other bits and pieces of wood and metal exerting pressure on the fork and the wood and the case of the bass itself.

It's great when it works, but the string attachments generally have to be rebuilt before every performance. All the pieces of wood on the floor are alternative bridges and nuts for it - this is because I never know how tight the string will be after I have fixed it up so I never know how big a bridge or nut I will need.

The sound is quite cool though - very low pitch and has a similar timbre to a cello, although it is not very loud. Having built this thing I am going to look into techniques involved in building real acoustic instruments.

The sound for Und seems to have been received really well by the audiences and as a team we all seem to be getting on and hitting our cues perfectly now. Tonight we have two performances and then one more tomorrow until it is time to pack up and put the space bass in the bin where I found the reinforced plastic to make it from in the first place.

[Pd] Karplus Strong

I am currently staying in Bristol whilst doing the sound for the play Und and it just so happens that one of the people I am staying with is also a Pd programmer. He showed me the Karplus Strong algorithm the other night - I didn't realise it was possible to get such weird sounds from it.

I downloaded an example patch from the Pd tutorial website and added a metronome and a [lores~] filter to the original and added a very simple drum machine (ie [lores~] filtered [noise~] for snare and a blend of [noise~] and [osc~] through another [lores~] filter for kick. There's also a reverb in there for fun. There's also a random, string-ish [phasor~] based sound in there too.

Sounds like very minimalist techno, albeit randomised.

[Acoustic] Und

Here's the space before we did anything to it. After a week of building various instruments, mainly constructed from stuff we found in the area and lots of bits and pieces from charity shops along with a lot of very long days rehearsing, we're finally performing the play.

Opening night was last night and was well attended and went well. We're using the whole space, the audience are guided around various parts of the set and stand where the action takes place. The performances take place and night only the place where the action is taking place is lit, mostly by torchlight - quite creepy.

Pics of our home made instruments to follow, when I get some.