(Rolling) Stones was recorded in the front
room of a 300yr old cottage located in rural
South Norfolk, East Anglia.
I used stones of various sizes selected from
the garden, along with others collected over
the years from different locations along the
Norfolk and Suffolk coastline.
To record, I set up a single cardioid condenser
microphone on a very low stand and faced it
upwards.
The mic was patched to a pre-amp and then
into a portable digital recorder.
I placed the stones inside a large frame
drum and standing over the mic, proceeded
to make circular motions with it of different
speed, diameter, angle and height, to explore
the range of possible sounds. I attempted to
create a flow of varying events within a single
unedited movement/performance whilst trying
hard not to spill any of the stones onto my
best microphone.
I transferred the recording to a CD-r in my basic
studio upstairs and then patched the CD
player into a small mixer.
I derived a second stereo output of the recording
by patching a line from the CD player’s
headphone output socket into a second stereo
channel on the mixer.
I then made a live mix/version back to CD-r
using the two stereo outputs, each processed
through different chains of compression, delay
and filtering, using outboard hardware
processors via the pre-fade send/returns on
the mixer.
The final piece was executed in a single pass as
a parallel unedited movement/performance
in response to the source recording. No computer
was used at any stage and happily nothing
was broken.
Pioneering electronic artist Leafcutter John and gyil player Bex Burch come together for an exuberant, largely improvised jazz-fusion set. Bandcamp New & Notable Nov 10, 2021