This is a submission for Midland Modular’s micro-commission to soundtrack The Herbert’s permanent gallery spaces.

Hypnotic machine-like loops entrance the listener as the piece ebbs and flows, grows and fades celebrating the industries that have come and gone throughout the city’s past.

‘A Symphony For The Weavers’ has been inspired by several items on display in the museum’s ‘History’ gallery. These include a Jacquard loom design pattern, a violin made by ribbon weaver Joseph Gutteridge, and a Coventry Machinists sewing machine.

A ticking clock scored by a heavily reverbed pizzicato violin signals throughout - a nod to Chapelfields’ former watchmakers. Its tempo remains a steady 60bpm. 

A soundscape of the River Sherbourne, in Coundon continues to ripple from start to finish. The field recording was captured by Clare as part of her ‘Our Cov’ podcast series created for Coventry’s UK City of Culture 2021/22 celebrations. 

Ableton’s Simpler tool has manipulated the river samples into sci-fi like pads - we’ve included them as a sign of respect to another former Coundon resident who lived just a stones throw from where the original soundscape was recorded (and where Clare grew up): Delia Derbyshire.

The slow and undulated rhythm of a looping antique sewing machine swells constantly throughout. 

The names, ages, occupations and addresses of the city’s former occupants sway from left to right in your headphones. These very names and details are found on footprint stickers on the gallery’s floor…

But perhaps most interesting aspect is the repurposing of a tiny scrap of paper revealing a short and simple Jacquard loom pattern found in the gallery. (See image)
Clare has transposed and scored out this pattern into a drum sequencer and later a G minor scale. The samba-like percussion, the high pitched Dr Who loops and cathedral organ melodies have all be created from this very pattern. 
(By chance the repurposed score revealed itself as a rather handy cycle of 4 loops of 16 notes!)
As the piece beings to build these loops are layered over each other, you hear the melodies and percussion occasionally fall in sync with each other, and then - only seconds later, clash. 

And then the end…which falls in precisely the same way as it began, except…in reverse.
Time continues to tick by and the river will always flow, but the city’s people and its industry have come and gone…

A personal note from Clare:
“What a joy to spend my evenings researching and building this piece. It’s actually my first ever piece created using Ableton! It’s been a vertical learning curve pushing me right out of my comfort zone, but was just the kick up the bum I needed to get started.
As part of my research I actually ended up reading Joseph Gutteridge’s autobiography ‘Light and shadows in the life of an artisan.’ 
I learnt how he was “spell-bound”, “entranced” and “riveted” by music; that his favourite walks as a school boy in the 1820s were the very fields I played in as a child; and was horrified by the shocking poverty that the weavers faced living in Coventry in the late 1800s. 
But the craziest chapter was how he came to make four violins in his spare time. We know that one of those four is on display in the Herbert museum - but by falling down a Google rabbit hole I ended up speaking with the manager of a music shop in Wellington, New Zealand who by complete chance had just sold one of Gutteridge’s other violins!
Perhaps somehow - just like the repetitive cycles of this piece - our city’s past, present and future are all threading back together - by a violin, a river and the people who’ve worked and walked along its path over the last 200 years…”

A Symphony For The Weavers (The Herbert Gallery/Midland Modular)

Aha! After creating this track over the weekend, every time I tried to open the project in Reaper, it crashed. I eventually tracked it down to Scanned Synth Pro - it crashes Reaper whenever you open a project with it in. Fortunateoly, if you "quarantine" it in Reaper (and run it in its own thread ) it then works OK. Turns out (according to Humanoid Systems) this is a known problem with Reaper and they are working with Cockos on a solution.

Twolight

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