Last night we had an impromptu workshop ’cause this guy, Chris from Wellington, is leaving for Toronto in Canada, and I didn’t, yesterday morning, have a new instrument to play. Why would I need a new instrument you ask when I can just get out an old one? Keeping it fresh is my answer, keeping myself guessing is another way of putting it, and this was brought home by my recent viewing of a couple of DVD’s I bought years ago but have never gotten around to watching. ” The Year of the Horse” about Neil Young and Crazy Horse by the Jim guy who did “Coffee and Cigarettes” (and what am I doing right now?) was watched last the night before and Neil spoke at length of the need to throw stuff away as soon as it became easy. As soon as a song reached it’s beautiful best… drop it from the set and add another one that needs work. I remebered that I do that myself. As soon as I get good enough at something to start paying some bills, or have the intricacies of something worked out where I can do it without wondering what else is possible, I drop it and start in on something new. I love challenges and being on unseen or touched horizons. I explore simply for the buzz of finding the new and not for the rewards it may bring. The life of Zen, Baby!
So anyways a month or two ago I was wandering through Windworld’s and Odd musics link pages and I found the waterphone. Couldn’t really see what it was but it was interesting none the less. Then the other day I gave myself a few hours, well half an hour before closing, at the library in town and , low and beholden, was a really nice bunch of pictures of the waterphone in a really nice book about percussion instruments. Oh yes, I understood it and I could make it!
The next day I took a trip to see my Dad to borrow some cash but also to check out the two great and two middling Sally shops (opportunity, church etc) in Glen Innes for steel baking pans so I could build a waterphone. Nothing very good but I did get two that might work at a pinch but not really enough to get me motivated. I could go into the construction details of steel baking pans and dishes but suffice to say some of them do the job for baking but for what I want to do with them they may prove unworkable… after I’ve started to braze them into what I want.
That night out comes another DVD. Bjork doing unplugged and what turns up? A waterphone in all it’s glory and now I have all I need, bar the right baking dishes, to do the job. Then yesterday morning I decide to drop in at a second hand shop in Papatoetoe, where I can droll over the beautiful but overpriced aluminium kitchen stuff they have, and what do I find but the absolutely right stuff in steel bakeware to build a waterphone.
Yesterday morning I awoken thinking I needed to work like a bastard all day to do this other thing which might have occured but it would have been a real stretch and not very enjoyable when I run out of milk and coffee so fuck it, I’ll go buy some and maybe on the off chance the second hand shop might have something that’ll motivate me… and it did. Got home and worked for about an hour to make this weird thing.
Just two baking tins, or plates ( without rolled seams, thats important), a bit of tubing and some 4mm bright steel rod.
Because it was called a waterphone I was under the impression it had water in it, I think that was because I had some fun last week playing a pot while I was doing the dishes, scratching the bottom with a fork, but I’m not absolutely sure what the book at the library had written about it but suffice to say the original makers name was Water…. Waterphone. Anyways I wasn’t going to put water in mine so I used Turps. Very interesting piece so if you’re any good which bronze and very thin steel… have a go!
Mums gone, in Canada, so I’ve moved my dusty old recording stuff into the Lounge and hopefully will be into adding mp3’s before too long.
Drum Machines.
The old one did kinda work but the sequencer needs work and that taught me something about how to manipulate 555’s to do what I want, and possibly how to throw 4017’s into oscillation… if thats even possible.
The thing with using a 555 as an oscillator to drive a counter to drive drums is that the on times need to stay the same while the off times get shorter as the rate increases. I read up on the 555’s and I reckon I can get it going as previously hoped.
But then I’m now into ringing oscillators and I design up a new one, well steal schematics and adjust them slightly, so heres a new one with most of the beats from a “Soundmaster Rhythm machine” and the rimshot from a Boss DR55 and just to be tricky I’m not sequencing them up to fire as according to how they where in the original equipment but taking my usual big leap of faith and deciding they are going to be fired by sending a pulse into them from piezos mounted on acoustic thingies.
So I’ll mount all these aluminium “ringers” so I can play them acoustically then, at the flick of six switches, bring in the piezos attached to fire the electronics…
But thats not all! Golly, as if I haven’t enough on my plate. From an old seventies electronics mag that my good friend Valerie found in a pile on the side of the round on our way out to Steve and Cindy’s and their six kids out in Orere point… The simple synth… with added ribbon controller and relay switched attack and decay. Thanks to the good chaps at experimentalists anonymous for their invaluable help. I deal in lots of invaluable actually!
In hindsight there should only be serendipity defining the reason.