You may remember the lost sound which Christina wrote about a few days ago?
Here are some recordings and notes from other participants on the workshop.
The Holywell is a very particular acoustic space with its wooden floors, curved walls and special creakiness; it has an acoustic affinity with Harp & Things, which is all about exploring the resonant sonic possibilities of the harp (also specially creaky). There is a section in my piece where I rub the sounding board of the harp to produce a shuddering, groaning sound. I mix this with a field-recording made on Amroth Beach in Wales. The result is meant to have a slightly maritime quality. To attempt to capture this quality, I recorded the concert with a hydrophone placed in a bottle of water on the floor. The soundwaves travel along the wooden floorboards and are picked up by the hydrophone underwater. I’ve made a small mix to give you an idea of what I mean; in this audio-clip, we begin with a standard acoustic recording of that point in the score which I made with a shotgun microphone. This is so that you can hear the creaks as they sounded in the space. I then fade that recording into some of the sounds captured by the hydrophone so that you can hear what the sound was like travelling along the floor, and heard from a submerged position. – Felicity Ford
[mejsaudio src=”http://www.sound-diaries.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/maritime-harp-creaks.mp3″]
In both my recordings I was interested in capturing the acoustics of the Holywell Music Room.
In the first recording, Tim Parkinson & James Saunders were setting up their set before the start of the concert. Two big boxes full of objects were taken behind the table and some tools were being organised. The sound of the space reacts to their movements getting ready to perform.
In the second recording, The Albion Players were smoothly moving in Holywell and playing with the resonance of the space. – Valeria Merlini
[mejsaudio src=”http://www.sound-diaries.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/ParkinsonSaunders_STE-018-CUT_mixdownLR_zazie.mp3″]
[mejsaudio src=”http://www.sound-diaries.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Holywell-Concert_STE-020-CUTvol_mixdownLR_zazie.mp3″]
This recording was made by placing a pair of binaural microphones inside a glass jar, which has a particular effect on the acoustics. It was made by Charlotte Heffernan.
[mejsaudio src=”http://www.sound-diaries.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Charlotte-recordings-Holywell.mp3″]