The Impossible Address on Inisheer

Last weekend Martin Sharry, Timmy Creed and myself gave a special performance of The Impossible Address on Inisheer island, the place that inspired the work.

 

The weekend began on a fraught note, with me making the last ferry from Rossaveal with only 10 minutes to spare, thanks to several delaying incidences. 

To try and further develop the ideas in the show, we decided to  hold a sound walk on the island before the show. The intention behind it was primarily that it might 'activate' the listening of the participants before the show, and hopefully allow them to engage with the show more readily. 

Myself and Martin carried out a recce of the route on the misty Saturday morning. Even though there is a stillness to the island, we identified three particular acoustic atmospheres to the route. Looking across the Foul Sound between Inisheer and Inishmaan we could see Galway Hookers sailing in the mist. 

The weather, unpredictable by a factor of ten this far west, didn't work in our favour for the sound walk. After a beautiful afternoon, the curtains of mist descended again. The first half of the walk was an isolating experience. I had asked everyone to walk with some distance between them and the person in front, and to refrain from talking. This silent march was made more sombre by the rain, wind and almost total absence of bird song. 

We stopped at tobar Éanna, a well that in folklore has the power to heal. We made the decision to turn back due to the weather, which of course, once we had set on our way back, cleared and provided some glorious sounds and sights. The most interesting contrast was the bursting back into life of the sound of the island. Once the wind had died down and some shafts of sunlights had broken through the cloud, the birds began to sing loud and in multitudinously. I handed my recording gear around to allow people to listen through the microphones, and note the difference in perception.

We arrived back to carry out the performance of The Impossible Address which for various reasons had an intensity that wasn't present at the previous performances at the Collaborations festival. It was a good experience, though probably left some of the audience feeling uncomfortable. Not necessarily a bad thing either. 


Eclipse

A whole lot of newspaper column and webpage was filled in the last number of days hyping up the solar eclipse that occurred this morning. Some less reputable papers had 'experts claiming' that animals would be driven to 'unpredictable behaviours' by the eclipse - as vague a threat as you'll find.

There were also claims that the soundscape would fall silent as birds became confused about the time of day. I decided to record for a while to see if I could hear it myself.

While there wasn't a complete dead stop to the bird song, it definitely quietened down during the eclipse. I have a feeling that city birds may already suffer confusion thanks to artificial lighting, so that may account for the groups that continued singing even as it went dark.

The white rectangle highlights the birdsong. You can see it reducing as the eclipse reaches it's peak.

The white rectangle highlights the birdsong. You can see it reducing as the eclipse reaches it's peak.


Winter Chorus

One of the highlights of Spring is the return of the dawn chorus. It's something I miss most about living in the country, having taken the sound for granted when I was younger. But it isn't as singular a time of year to hear birdlife as might be thought.

In 2013, I finally had the means to attend the course run by Chris Watson and Jez Riley French as part of the Wildeye school in Norfolk. There, I recorded a morning chorus as rich as any I have heard before, but this was in early December. I've had it sitting on my hard drive, with the intention of doing something with it, but think it best now to make it available for listening.

Beeswax for Contact Mics

Contact mics perhaps take the greatest amount of patience of any audio transducer to work with. From identifying what to attach them to, to simply finding a method of attachment, they can frustrate a new user easily.

I own a pair of JRF C-Series mics, and have tried attachment methods from blutack, to a clamp, to electrical tape. The Tonebenders podcast featured a great analysis by Michał Fojcik of several techniques of contact mic attachment, one of the best (to my ears) being beeswax.

From Michał's blog post, it appears he used raw beeswax, and a beeswax putty available to children as a Play Doh alternative. I figured that raw beeswax would be pretty unworkable if you were trying to work outside, as it would take a lot of body heat to make it malleable enough. Some additional research brought up this video:

Further research brought up a mention of Ann Kroeber, also previously featured in Tonebenders, and her use of a FRAP contact mic. An old colleague of her's mentioned mixing the natural moisturiser, lanolin, often used in crafts and health products to keep the beeswax sticky. So, with my beeswax order having arrived, I set about making my own contact mic beeswax putty. 

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup of beeswax pellets
  • 2 tsps olive oil
  • 1 1/2 tsp lanolin

Method:

I followed the method from the video above, except for adding some lanolin while adding the oil. 

Also, I gently heated the oil and lanolin together into a mixture before adding, so the mixture wouldn't cool the melted wax around it.

I found the wax took a lot longer to melt than I thought, though I was using a large pyrex measuring jug in the pan, instead of a small cup like in the video tutorial.

The end result worked really well. It was sticky but malleable, and quickly warmed up in my hands for use. I would add an extra tsp of oil, as it did firm up to fairly hard wax again. The only other downside is that the wax will stick on the surfaces you attach it to, so beware. It will also leave wax on your mic surfaces.

I only had time for a quick test. I stuck the mics to the bottom of a porcelain type sink. This smooth glass like surface is usually troublesome for tape, but the wax had no problem attaching and staying there. Sonically, it does sound as though it captured a more even spread of frequencies than other methods I've used. The following excerpt has the raw recording, and an additional processed version to hear how well it could handle varispeeding.