Assignment:
Create sounds that play from a single (mono) output
Idea summary:
I created a “prepared violin” by attaching various resonant objects to the strings of my violin. The resulting sounds added new dimensions to the texture and harmonic quality of the traditional classical violin output. The violin itself is the mono output source.
Background:
This semester, we will be gradually building towards performing on a 40 channel setup. As we progress through increasingly more complex output arrangements, I will undoubtedly build up my understanding of technical tools like Max/MSP and get deeper into the weeds of DAWs like Ableton/Logic. For this first assignment, instead of jumping into those tools or arranging a piece of music, I wanted to start analog.
A mono output source can be anything from a single speaker to a single human voice. As a violinist for most of my waking life, albeit an infrequent one these days, I decided to use this assignment to dust off the strings and treat my violin as my mono output. Before diving into the details — one question to ponder: is the violin itself the mono output or is each string the mono output? The strings need some chamber in order to have their vibrations amplified enough to hear, so in this sense, I suppose the whole violin with its hollowed out body is the output source… But I’d love to hear the argument in favor of each-string-as-mono too!
Anyways. I wanted to try to experiment with the sounds my violin could produce. I used John Cage’s experiments with prepared pianos as inspiration. In his pieces, Cage placed different in/on the strings of his piano, completely altering their sonic properties. Sometimes strings were muted, instead lending a kind of percussive quality. Other times, the piano sounded like a distorted electronic instrument whose formats had been shifted. Could I get something similar from my violin?
Process:
Pianos are big, with enough space (and flatness) to stick a ping pong ball between strings. Violins are not big and are not flat between strings. Still, some objects would definitely still alter the properties of strings. I landed on 4 different experiments:
a single safety pin,
two safety pins (one small enough to clip around string, one large enough to cross two strings),
a metal nail
and a stripped electrical wire
Each of these objects did a couple of things — they changed the way the violin string vibrated and they also vibrated themselves. As a result, in each of the following videos, the violin produced novel sounds. The safety pins bounced and shifted as they vibrated; plucking strings to optimize for bouncing the safety pins led to the most interesting sounds. All of the objects produced interesting harmonics when they lightly touched the violin strings, however my favorite example is the wire. After wrapping the wire around the G-string, there was a bit of a handle that I could use to slide the wire up and down the string. You can hear the harmonics change as I slide the wire around.
I’ve included clips from each of the experiments below
Single safety pin:
Plucking Safety Pin
Two clothespins
Nail
Plucked nail
Wire
Next Steps:
While not every sound produced here is immediately appealing, all of them do have some unusual property that I could work into compositions. I’d like to record these into a sample bank and then apply audio effects to create some wholly new textures for use in a future piece of music, perhaps in the stereo assignment. Many of the electronic artists I enjoy listening to, from Aphex Twin to Flying Lotus, record their own analog sounds before manipulating them into the samples that sound so foreign; with my prepared violin experiments, I think I’ve found the beginnings of some interesting audio samples to use later.
Another interesting challenge that would keep me in the realm of mono performance: I could try to compose a piece using just my prepared violin. In this assignment, I looked for new sounds and textures without constraining myself around fitting these sounds into a composition. Getting these sounds to work in their raw form without digital manipulation would be a fun, albeit difficult, next experiment!