Fire Door

Here is another recording from Filey. It’s August 2020 and there is a very creaky self-closing fire door in the apartment where we are staying.

I had noticed the door was unusually musical and decided to see how far I could extend the performance with a very slow opening and closing—manual time stretching :)

I recorded it too quietly and had to boost the recording quite a bit so it’s somewhat noisy and there were all sorts of people and traffic sounds outside that I wasn’t aware of at the time. It’s amazing how often that happens, how strong our ability to unconsciously focus hearing is, and why I now try to be as mindful as I can when I record! But within these two minutes of creaky fire door there is a surprisingly interesting and complex sonic world.

I’ve generally stayed away from more performative field recordings like this in preference to recording sounds that are already occurring without my intervention. But occasionally when there is no one around, I manage a moment of “in the field” sound exploration, like my recent recording of a fibreglass boat.

All recording involves curation of some kind—the gear you use, mic placement and even when you choose to start and stop recording, and of course your presence will alter the environment in many ways, but directly interacting with found objects and materials to make sounds is much more dramatic and moves the needle from field recording towards music and performance. I’m okay with that, it’s just another way of working.

I do seem to struggle with how to combine music and field recordings though which I have tried to do a number of times. Maybe because I feel a good field recording deserves its own space rather than being lost within a more layered piece. Finding effective ways to combine these practices is still very much a work in progress for me.

I have also collected a couple of large boxes of objects over the last few years that I want to work with to produce sounds. Driftwood, shells, sea glass, fishing ropes and nets from the coast and tins and jars, plastic and paper packaging from the recycling bin.

Initially my “sound object” collecting was a desire to try my hand at sample pack creation—diversifying the income streams! But after thirty solid years of coding and designing in front of a computer I don’t seem to have found the digital editing energy to do that!

I’m now more interested in using these objects in a performative way, as instruments, more akin to the excellent work of artists like Cheryl E. Leonard or Kate Carr. I’ve tried this a number of times before without much success but still keep returning to the idea.

My recent music has also been focused on using guitars as sound sources in a similar way. I’m honestly a terrible guitar player in the traditional sense but I love the simplicity of experimenting and finding sounds with just a guitar, not only melodies and chord progressions, but also the dissonances, string buzzes and noisy pots. The slow capturing and layering up of textures with a looper and effects is such an intuitive and immediate way to make music. I am still a beginner when it comes to live performance and my work generally involves a lot of post production in Ableton but I’m slowly moving closer to being able to make live music that I am happy with.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take a photo of the creaky fire door but this sea-rusted old tractor captured in the same visit to Filey somehow seems to be a fitting visual analogy and would probably also make a good sound source when no-one was looking!

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• Visit my Bandcamp and buy some music or field recordings or a set of cards.

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Thanks for tuning in!