Sacrifice to Isis is taken from my cassette release called Suite for Radio and Turntable. Application limitations turn these two reproducers of instruments into instruments themselves.

My use of the turntable is limited to hand-spinning LPs on its platter. Further, these LPs must be spun in reverse.

My use of the radio is limited to only brief bursts of transmissions of chance radio shows, usually less than 1-second long.

Together, these two devices, modified either in design (belt removed from turntable) or usage (radio bursts), compliment each other, the turntable providing extended legato passages while the radio becomes a percussion-substitute, its explosions of sound more accent than anything.

Of the ten songs on Suite, Sacrifice to Isis is quite short (2:20 as opposed to Illumination of Rome, 18:50). But it demo's the transformed instruments pretty well.

Sacrifice To Isis

The Rain Cage Experiment: 13 Moments

This is the first of a series of songs to be recorded exclusively in the rain. The Rain Cage, an old Amish-built screen house in the middle of a small Indiana woods, provides the setting for these recordings. Alone and with guests I'll invite the shifting sounds of storms and downpours, the Rain Cage ambiance, into the songs. Composing for stormy weather is the Rain Cage Experiment.

Xzhandalu Wood, a small forest space of tall trees, diverts wind gusts downward and around, constantly changing their stereo image within the Rain Cage. Critical to these sessions is to play along with the rain and its shifting sounds, not over it, giving the rain its space. 13 Moments was composed with this in mind.   

13 Moments was simply to be a test of recording levels. My intention was to try various recording techniques to allow thunder as well as low-volume sounds to register without distortion. 

I had with me my little pocket digital recorder, a sequence of samples of John Cage's prepared piano I'd already composed and recorded (plus rough graphic notation thereof), and my electric bass ravanastron (seen in the picture –– this is a monocord built from an old violin, fretless Japanese lute neck and bass guitar electronics). Ravanastron and the prepared piano recording signals were fed together, live, into a tiny bass amp inside the Rain Cage.

The thirteen moments are constructed of cues and events. Watching my chart I followed cues with my ravanastron, playing the instrument according to the structure of the subsequent event.  

Unfortunately, no storm developed. But before the rain ended I'd played the sequence through several times. Recording levels were OK (wide dynamic range too –– for listening please use headphones or a powerful stereo, it will seem too sparse otherwise). And because this was the first actual session in the Rain Cage, I thought I'd go ahead and release one of the takes. I hope you'll enjoy this initial recording from the Rain Cage Experiment, 13 Moments. 

Instruments and Musicians

Just me this time, composing/playing the official John Cage prepared piano samples (full version app on an iPad), plus home-made electric bass ravanastron monocord. Small Behringer bass amp. ZOOM recorder. Recorded May 2015. 

The Rain Cage Experiment, 13 Moments

Sound Theater Archives: The Dreams That Insects Dream, 1980s

Bugs think. Anything that thinks, dreams. And I have no reason to believe that insects' metamorphosis halts such dreaming. While this soundtrack never met its movie (abstract macro bug shots, 35mm film), it might still be apparent the movements were arranged around this theme.

This was not an official Sound Theater release. Part of a "Sound Theater Radio Special" and very-weird tape called "Bring Your Room" (J-card was a 3-D punched yellow cardboard printing template of a couch), copies were sent to WFMU and other college/underground radio stations everywhere, all over the world. 

This included the Soviet Union where, before it was returned to me, the mail-art package was opened, detained, inspected, detained, inspected, detained and so-on –– long enough that when the KGB finally sealed it with a rejection sticker, tied it with twine and crimped a metal seal over the knot, the USSR had dissolved. I never re-opened it, kept it just like that.

The master tape sounded pretty good. This used copy, unfortunately, is a few generations old. Tibetan temple bells, AKAI S900 samples of orchestra and operatic voices, and my voice (the tenor, not the basso :-) 1980s.


Sound Theater Archives: The Dreams That Insects Dream, 1980s

Sound Theater Archives: No Control Numbers

Here's the stand-alone sound-file from my iPad music deck soundtrack on YouTube.

It's a multi-track session on electric bass, de-tuned autoharp (struck with chopsticks), erhu (Chinese 2-string fretless chordophone with captive bow), girl berating, police radio, canoeing on a glacial lake, geese taking flight, antique halloween noise-maker ratchet, voice, 1969 Chevrolet Impala (trying to start), and a whole bunch of piezo-music Christmas cards I set-off at a local Wal-Mart (I had an assistant, it was a show-stopper).

I learned to play the erhu in England while driving the Cotswolds. With an old map as reference, I was hiking local woodlands searching for tumuli –– ancient Roman tombs. I'd hang a stereo recorder in a tree above the tomb, often a simple mound of earth in the forest, and attempt to record sonic anomalous propagation.

It was Ray Man, in London, who sold me my first erhu (I have four, the one heard here is from Ray Man's shop). I asked him how best to learn this difficult instrument. Smiling gently he said, "practice." 

The recording is light-hearted but factual: there are no artist control numbers.

Sound Theater Archives: No Control Numbers

Sound Theater Archives: Silence the Tongues of Prophecy

If you have the Gravikords, Whirlies and Pyrophones CD/book set, introduced by Tom Waits and nicely produced by Ellipsis Arts, you've already heard the shortened version of this song. This  post is of the original, longer version of Silence the Tongues of Prophecy.

Always fascinated by synthetic speech, as soon as the tech became available (early 1980's) I began building human voice synthesizers. In this recording I use an instrument built around the vintage SP0256-AL2 IC. 

The instrument, in fact, uses two SP0256-AL2s to create a stereo human voice synthesizer. Originally named the "R.A.P." (pre-dates popular rap music and stood for Readily Available Phonemes), I've since re-named it after discovering its circuit-bent personality: the Subliminal Chant Generator.

In the text sheet accompanying the IC I noticed a statement something like, "The SP0256-AL2 needs the control of an external microprocessor to concatenate allophones into words." Immediately I thought, "nah." 

After all, address lines are only voltage levels. I wanted to build a machine with which I could activate allophones manually, by pressing keys on a keyboard, a modern version of the classic 1940's Bell Labs Voder talking machine. 

I did that, and with the addition of the final bending of the circuit (allowing bits to float) the vast realm of subliminal chant appeared.

Here, however, the Subliminal Chant Generator operates in its more overt personality, delivering allophones with clear certainty. The subliminal aspect of the voice synthesis is not presented in this recording but will be in an upcoming post of songs from "Voice of America," a cassette album from my old Sound Theater catalog.

Joining the  Subliminal Chant Generator in this post is one of my first incantors (I'd not yet written about the design, at the time of the recording they couldn't be heard elsewhere). 

That's all you need to know to understand what you'll hear. If you'd like to know more about the instrument, check-out my Facebook post of Dec. 2, 2015 for an up-dated excerpt from my EMI article, "The Subliminal Chant Generator."

Reed Ghazala

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