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Mike Adcock - Batu talempong

from Stones (1968) ~ Christian Wolff by E42.A8

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about

April 2017

These four relatively short interpretations
of Christian Wolff’s Stones were recorded
as solos while I was staying in a very
basic hotel in Padangpanjang in Sumatra on
Monday 24th April 2017. Both the bedroom
and attached shower room had tiled floors and
there was very little in the way of furnishing,
giving the recording a natural resonance which
I have not altered in any way. The only editing
I have done to the recordings is ‘topping and
tailing’: tidying up the beginning and end of
each version. The recording was made with
a Zoom H4 digital recorder, using its own built
in stereo mic. Initially the recorder was positioned
in the bedroom, I then moved it into the
shower room for the second two recordings.

The stones I used are two pebbles found on
a beach in the British Isles several years ago,
though I can’t remember exactly where. They
have become two special pebbles for me and I
have used them many times in improvised performance
and I approached the piece as an opportunity
to produce a short series of improvisations.
Although I have become acquainted
with a range of possibilities using my pebbles,
each time I play them I usually discover a new
possibility or variation. On this occasion I did
pay particular attention to Christian Wolff’s
instruction to find different ways of making a
sound and consider the way the stones interact
with their surroundings: I chose to explore
the way the acoustic changed radically when
I walked from one room to the other, and in
making a recording whether I was close to the
mic or away from it.

The first time I played two pebbles was in a
performance of part of Cornelius Cardew’s
Great Learning directed by Michael Parsons
at the Union Chapel, probably about eighteen
years ago. Michael showed me how it’s possible
to change the pitch of the stone by holding
one pebble in the palm of the hand, which can
then be opened or closed, enabling different
notes to be played when struck with the other
pebble held in the other hand. This was a key
early contributor to my ongoing interest in musical
stone. A few years ago I built a website on
the whole subject, www.lithophones.com, and
am in the process of writing a related book.
I also make small lithophones using tuned
pieces of Welsh roof slate and sometimes play
them with others in my Roof Slate Ensemble.

My reason for going to Indonesia was principally
related to musical stone. Firstly I visited
an ancient archeological site called Gunung Padang
in West Java, where there are two slabs
of stone which some think may have been
used ritually as a form of early gamelan. I then
travelled to Sumatra to see, hear and play the
batu talempong, a set of six large stones, each
with a different note, which are still thought
by local people to have spiritual powers and
have in the past had ritual significance. It felt
appropriate to take with me my small tin containing
the two pebbles, and as the provisional
deadline for the Stones project coincided with
my time in Indonesia it seemed nicely fitting
to record my interpretations of Wolff’s work
while I was there.

Mike Adcock

mikeadcock.com

credits

from Stones (1968) ~ Christian Wolff, released October 16, 2018

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