machine guts

in my universe this is a brown noise generator and weird noises machine, but they are also known as an old broken television and an old long-wave radio receiver 

my studio / cabinet of curiosities

Another go at some minimal techno, this time to practice using 4 tape recorder techniques,

looping, long delay (frippertronics), reversed delay and  tape saturation.

my favorite tape recorder for a long time, used to record this:

all that time I’ve been trying to record sad sounds, now I understand why it didn’t work… 

(Source: breakingcurses)

Since a year or so I’ve had this ambition of starting a minimal techno project, using only tape and sine-waves. After some experimenting and 1 show (which was pretty well received by all attendees (a handfull..heh..)) I’ve finally started recording the techno tracks..

It’ll be taking some time because all the sequences are going to be cut and paste tape-loops, instead of just using a sequencer.. Well, why do it the easy way when you can do it the insanely hard way?

All beats will be produced by filtering and cutting up sine waves and tape-feedback. Loads of work.. really.. getting a great deal of extra respect for the people at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop… But it is also a lot of fun.

For the people waiting for a follow up of “four simple songs for five dead bumblebees” and “ruststukken”, rest assured it wont be just techno from now on; my new lofi-tape-ambient-thingies-EP (called “The Faroe Islands EP”) will be released this year. And I’m working hard to get my new album “Sings of Safety” released as well. The beautiful cover, made by Jet van Zwieten, will definitely help ( http://jetvanzwieten.nl/detail/wouter-van-veldhoven/ )

no techno this time, just some lullabies I’ve made from tape loops. I recorded the sounds I make (toy box, violin and humming) for my little son on tape and cut them into loops, mixing them into sleep inducing music for babies.

(and preparing my son for a lot of William Basinski he’ll be hearing later) 

I always loved the sound of reversed sounds, the sssswwWWWOOOB instead of BOOOWWWwwssss and reversed guitar sounds so much better than the regular thing.. especially when you do reversing on wobbly tapes, it’s, well, magic.. to me at least…But there was always one big issue; you can’t really do it live on tape, you can’t record the stuff you’ll play in the future and play it back reversed now… 

In theory you can of course record a bit, reverse it and play it back, but that would traditionally mean; record, cut the recorded piece of tape out of the master tape, turn it around, reinsert it, rewind the tape and play it back again… in other words;

“TTTIiiiiinnnnnggggggg ….(wait)„„,(wait longer)….(shit I dropped the tape…it’s dark on stage)….(can’t find the tape…)…(frustration)…(public is still waiting….)…(waiting…)…(5 minutes later)….ggggggnnnniiiiiiITTT” 

not really optimal.. especially not when you want to make minimal techno that has to go on and on and on…

I’ve thought about adjusting a tape recorder so it could do this reversing on its own, but the recorders that run both ways always switch channels when they reverse (as any normal person would want them to do, to listen to side B instead of side A backwards..).. but the thing with adjusting tape recorders is that the electronics are almost always notoriously hard to reach.. there is always about 10 mechanical parts sitting in between your solder iron and the electronic component you want to adjust, and since all mechanical parts are mounted with springs you really don’t want to take them apart, the whole thing just explodes and you need about 100 hands and arms to put it back together again…

This week I found the solution!!! and it is really surprisingly easy: use two tape recorders, one on pause recording and playing back, the other one controlling the direction of the tape.. easy as that.. 

here is a little example that also gives an idea of some (rather different) new things I’ve been producing lately…