Pendulum Music - a location recording case study

Posted by Gavin Brockis on Tuesday 17 February 2009 at 12:41pm
Tags: composition | digitisation | microphones | sound recordings |

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I've decided to use a recording of pendulum clocks, and found a pair of beautiful antique grandfather clocks - with a combined age of well over 400 years - today at Blaise Castle House Museum. They have kindly given me permission to record outside of opening hours, to avoid the clamour of the half-term hordes, and tomorrow I'm setting up a pair of Neumann KM84s, a Mackie Satellite interface (24bit/96kHz , low noise and phantom power), and Logic on a Macbook Pro to capture the two clocks slowly drifting in and out of phase with each other. I'm hoping to reproduce the hypnotic sound of the two clocks in the large marble entrance hall by amplifying each through a separate speaker, and placing them a distance apart within the Long Corridor at shunt, to take advantage of its great acoustic.

For me this is a nice combination of sound art, the documentation of an unusual ambient sound environment, and audio Cultural Heritage. I'm hoping to gather some additional information about the clocks themselves, and get some high quality photographs too, then copy it all into a little metadata package to accompany the audio. Apparently they have another pair upstairs, which I'll try to capture if I have time, and will certainly do at a later date.

It was interesting to talk to the stewards at Blaise, both of whom commented on the relationship between the rhythms and sounds of the two mechanisms, and the meditative effect of the slow shift. Hopefully Steve Reich would approve.

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