I wrote a sound poem in morse code
FinsburyParkCarrots
Seattle, WA Posts: 12,223
And I'll be putting it up on myspace, soon.
Does everyone know about the East German Stasi spy station that used to broadcast in the small hours, on shortwave, during the cold war? Bloody terrifying, it was. What you'd get would be these gong chimes that were scarily dissonant and sinister, followed by a computer generated female voice, reading out numbers that an agent in the field would decipher using a one-time crypto pad.
Here's a clip of the original gong chimes, as recorded in 1978 and featured on
http://www.simonmason.karoo.net/page73.html:
http://www.swldxer.co.uk/gongsnew.mp3
Well, I'm not into sampling, so I thought, hmmmm: could I use an old style oscillator/synth to recreate those menacing chimes, and orchestrate them layer by layer into a piece of contemporary electronic music? Well, I had a go, and wrote a morse code message, too. Finally, I found a plugin that simulates radio static, and I threw that in, with phasing/flanging/Leslie speaker effects, to make it sound like a beaten up old radio signal going in and out.
Since the Stasi never admitted to owning the station, and the recording of the gongs became more distorted and weird over the years it was played, I presume there's no author of the chimes, and thus no copyright. So I played the motif as the theme of this piece.
It's very long and deliberately repetitive, but I've put in loads of textures. It's one for listening to when you're in a freaky mood.
So, you'll hear my gongs piece in a few minutes, when I make an mp3 from the WAV file.
Does everyone know about the East German Stasi spy station that used to broadcast in the small hours, on shortwave, during the cold war? Bloody terrifying, it was. What you'd get would be these gong chimes that were scarily dissonant and sinister, followed by a computer generated female voice, reading out numbers that an agent in the field would decipher using a one-time crypto pad.
Here's a clip of the original gong chimes, as recorded in 1978 and featured on
http://www.simonmason.karoo.net/page73.html:
http://www.swldxer.co.uk/gongsnew.mp3
Well, I'm not into sampling, so I thought, hmmmm: could I use an old style oscillator/synth to recreate those menacing chimes, and orchestrate them layer by layer into a piece of contemporary electronic music? Well, I had a go, and wrote a morse code message, too. Finally, I found a plugin that simulates radio static, and I threw that in, with phasing/flanging/Leslie speaker effects, to make it sound like a beaten up old radio signal going in and out.
Since the Stasi never admitted to owning the station, and the recording of the gongs became more distorted and weird over the years it was played, I presume there's no author of the chimes, and thus no copyright. So I played the motif as the theme of this piece.
It's very long and deliberately repetitive, but I've put in loads of textures. It's one for listening to when you're in a freaky mood.
So, you'll hear my gongs piece in a few minutes, when I make an mp3 from the WAV file.
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
http://www.myspace.com/finsburydemos
Now, can anyone tell me what I've said in morse?
The first link was broken. Try it now.
:eek:
insert a little eric dolphy or paul desmond, i.e. jazz it up for your fans fins.
As she slams the door in his drunken face
And now he stands outside
And all the neighbours start to gossip and drool
He cries oh, girl you must be mad,
What happened to the sweet love you and me had?
Against the door he leans and starts a scene,
And his tears fall and burn the garden green
Cheers, olderman!
i daresay, you'd have earth destroyed in no time
By the way, the composition is now cited on Simon Mason's shortwave espionage page:
http://www.simonmason.karoo.net/page30.html#rmg
we're biased, lol
It was "fook wid yo head" week last week. This week, it's about fooking wid smpn else. ;D
http://www.simonmason.karoo.net/page73.html
and there's a .wma link following:
http://www.swldxer.co.uk/lnotg.wma
As she slams the door in his drunken face
And now he stands outside
And all the neighbours start to gossip and drool
He cries oh, girl you must be mad,
What happened to the sweet love you and me had?
Against the door he leans and starts a scene,
And his tears fall and burn the garden green
I thought of just doing it for three minutes, but the morse message takes forever! And you have to repeat it! Ya know, for the sake of verisimilitude. And, for, er, being arty. And all dat shite. :cool: Plus, the original gongs were about ten minutes in length, back in the day. Er, yes.
As she slams the door in his drunken face
And now he stands outside
And all the neighbours start to gossip and drool
He cries oh, girl you must be mad,
What happened to the sweet love you and me had?
Against the door he leans and starts a scene,
And his tears fall and burn the garden green
In-A-Gadda-Da-Morse??
I like it. Does it sound like something Brian Eno would have done with U2? I'm thinking Unforgettable Fire. Very trippy.
Oh, I ain't changin' this one. It's Assembly of Birds that keeps getting the duster and polish.
Oh.