I'm an award-winning composer, engineer and historian of technology. I present talks, make radio shows and perform live with Spacedog - my band of humans, theremins and uncanny robots.
In December 2006, Spacedog assembled a group of musicians in the reverb chamber of the UK National Physical Laboratory. This room has one of the longest reverberation times in Europe.
These videos show you what happened – you can read more about the project on these page. NB In these videos, the people you see on camera are the only musicians playing – no sounds have been added after the event (except during the purple intro sequence). The extra sound you’re hearing is the long tail of reverb that follows each note, as sound bounces for up to 30 seconds around this highly reflective room. You hear this tail, before you hear notes, on videos that are playing backwards.
A primer on reverbation
Reverberation or ‘reverb’ is what you hear when sound bounces off the walls, floor and other surfaces of a room, creating a mush of echoes that slowly die away. Acousticians judge how long sound bounces around the room by measuring the ‘reverberation time of the space’. Technically, this is how long it takes for the sound to decay by 60dB. The easiest way to make a rough judgement of the reverb in the room is to pop a balloon in there, or clap your hands. If the sudden impulse of noise – the pop or clap – dies away almost instantly, your room has a very short reverb. If it rings for some time afterwards, you have a long reverb.
If you’re sitting in a small, carpeted room right now, it’s likely that your reverb time will only be around 0.5 secs. That’s scarcely enough for you to notice the sound that continues after you stop speaking. A hall that has been tailor-made for orchestral concerts might have a reverb time of around 2 to 3 seconds. A large, tiled bathroom might have a reverb of 5 secs or so. St Paul’s Cathedral has a reverb time of up to 13 seconds for bass notes.
The reverberation chamber of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) outstrips all of these. Low bass notes (around 100Hz – roughly the pitch you get on the bass string of a ‘cello) reverberate for over 30 seconds. This long reverb is no surprise when you see how the room is constructed: The room is an empty chamber with concrete floors, ceiling and walls to keep the sound bouncing around. Extra plastic panels are hung from the ceiling to add more reflective surfaces. And the walls are non-parallel so echoes bounce in all directions (this prevents the build-up of standing waves).
National Physical Laboratory
On a visit to NPL in early 2006, I met acoustic scientist Dr Richard Lord who showed me the company’s new reverb chamber. He popped a balloon in there to show off its amazing reverb. As soon as I heard this, I knew I wanted to take some of musical instruments in there. I play various musical oddities, including a waterphone and musical saw, and I thought my sounds might find a home in this strange acoustic. NPL agreed I could come along, with some other musicians, on a day when the chamber was empty.
Recording a take in the reverb chamber of the National Physical Laboratory. The longest notes on Stephen's 'cello reverberate for over 30 seconds when the room is almost empty.
An arrangement of sounds from Croydon’s wonderful fruit and veg market. There has been a market in Surrey Street since the 13th century.
Hear the sounds
Surrey Street Market, Croydon
Background
I first discovered Surrey Street Market when I was taken there by Mary Webb and Jenny Gunston from Croydon Clocktower Museum. We were investigating the sounds of Croydon as part of a community arts project. I was so struck by the cries of the market sellers, I decided to make a return visit and collect some sounds for my own archive. In Christmas 2006, I put these sounds together to make a short soundpiece, celebrating the sounds of that market.
I visited the market with my good friend Rachel Attmere and the stall holders were very friendly, once they realised I was holding a microphone and not a bugging device from the council! When the trader calls ‘Two scrubbers for a pound’, he was looking at us and smiling.
We’re very fortunate in Britain to be able to find such a wealth of beautiful sounds on our doorstep – sounds that are deeply rooted in the history of this island and the various cultures who settled here over centuries. We can be too ready to jump on an aeroplane in search of the exotic, forgetting there are many sublime and curious sounds on our own doorstep. Er, I suppose that’s my contribution to the debate, against the building of the Third Runway at Heathrow (a project which is pure folly, given the scientific consensus on the contribution of air travel to global warming).
The theremin AV controller enables me to scrub audio and video samples live, using the pitch and volume aerials of the theremin. I created this simple but highly unusual controller using Max/MSP + Jitter.
I perform with vocalist Jenny Angliss (and sometimes with guitarists Mike Blow and Ben Kypreos too), under the band name Spacedog. If you’ve been to a recent Spacedog gig, you’ve probably seen the theremin controller in action. Here’s a video of me using the device in a rehearsal. As you can see, I’m controlling the speed of audio and video clips with the pitch antenna. I can also control volume of the samples using the volume antenna.
The music in the video is Willow’s Song (Paul Giovanni), as featured in the British classic horror film The Wicker Man (1973). Here, it’s being mixed with a sample from Hammer classic The Devil Rides Out (1968), plus a 1950s parakeet training record. I’m controlling the hypnotic voice of actor Charles Gray. Jenny is on vocals and Ben on guitar. Mike, in the green teeshirt, is cueing up the various samples I’ve prepared, as the song progresses.
Apologies for the lame sound of the ‘straight’ theremin this video -- you’re hearing the sound through the desk. We were monitoring live and the gallery was so reverberant, we had to ditch every hint of vibrato to avoid complete chaos.
using the theremin AV scrubber
This version of the Willow’s Song was first performed at Atters’ Other World, the Brighton Festival Fringe, June 2008, then our sell-out show at the Sanctuary. Here, you’re watching an excerpt from a live playthough of our set in the Blank Gallery, Brighton. Lighting conditions in the gallery prevented us from filming the projected video live, so keen-eyed observers might notice that we’ve added that after filming.
Named in honour of the original theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore, Clara 2.0 is a robot doll who can play the theremin live. I call her the ‘polite robot thereminist’ as she listens to a line from another player and moves her dolly arm to bring her own theremin in perfect tune. Well, that’s the theory… In this jamming session, Clara 2.0 is copying a line from an old Roland SH-2 synth (which I play silently), then the line from my own theremin. When the two theremins play together, things seem quite chaotic as Clara tries to follow me while I try to lock into Clara’s line. I created Clara 2.0 as a more theatrical alternative to the loop pedal. Clara can harmonise in thirds or other intervals, as well as play in unison. She does put in the occasional appearance at live gigs although she can be temperamental, unless there’s plenty of set-up time. I’m currently experimenting with ways to make her work more reliably out-of-the-box, so I can take her on the road more often.
Duetting with robot thereminist Clara 2.0
The uncanny valley
Paul Attmere and Clara 2.0
Although I haven’t offered her up for academic scrutiny, I do feel Clara 2.0 supports Mori’s ‘uncanny valley’ hypothesis (1970). I appreciate the uncanny valley is a contentious theory that needs further research. However, when I present Clara 2.0 in live performances, I find she is sufficiently human-like to unsettle the audience, in line with Mori’s theory. The exposed mechanical and electronic parts, on her convincingly baby-like frame, seem to augment viewers’ feelings of unease. People are particularly uneasy when they see Clara 2.0 in purposeful motion (as Mori’s theory predicts). Clara 2.0 has helped me to explore these issues of uncanniness and to experiment with an audience’s empathy towards inanimate objects.
No mouse -- no midi
As a theremin-player, I have an affinity for fluid tuning and a natural antipathy towards midi, the musical interfacing protocol that describes pitch using discretely varying numbers. I’m also disinclined to watch live musical performances that use only a laptop, keyboard and mouse. Compared to a theremin, the keyboard and mouse create an impoverished interface, one that can’t offer the fine gestural, expressive control that is so valuable to a live performer. Clara 2.0 offers me a more theatrical, expressive alternative to the mouse -- especially when I ask her to play back copies of my own theremin playing.
Whisker
You’ll notice that Clara 2.0 has a whisker of metal on the end of her whisk. This tends to vibrate when she’s playing, giving her sound a pleasing Rockmoresque vibrato.
Thanks!
Thanks to everyone at Dorkbot London and the Hands off Festival, 2007, for their encouragement and useful tips after viewing some early outings of Clara 2.0. In particular, I’d like to thank theremin maker Jake Rothman for his extremely useful electrical advice (Clara’s insides are now lined with silver foil) and Gordon Charlton, whose virtuosic egg whisk numbers inspired Clara’s current look. Thanks also to Emmet Spier for screwing her arms on better and taking the photos on this page, Mike Blow for suggesting I try out this classic tune and Colin Uttley for playing the bass riff. With apologies to the great Roy Budd, composer of the jaw-droppingly gorgeous Get Carter theme.
This mini, automatic puppet show was created on a shoestring for the South Bank Centre, summer 2007. The brief was to come up with something novel inside a garden shed that would celebrate the area and appeal to families. It features dancing puppets and a carillon (robotic bell player).
The puppet show, Swinging London, features London luminaries, past and present, dressed in go-go style. I wanted the puppets to look like a dance group on TV, in the early days of colour television. Reflecting the throw-away nature of celebrity culture, the faces are velcroed on so they can easily be swapped for new ones, according to public demand. Some of the faces are personal favourites (e.g. Kenneth Williams) and a few were chosen by the public (e.g. Lady Penelope and Charlie Drake). Jarvis Cocker also makes an appearance -- he was curating the Meltdown Festival that was taking place at the time.
Swinging London was one of seven sheds that made up this outdoor exhibition, curated by Clare Patey. The shed was put together over just a few weeks on a tight budget. I was grateful to Vivien Angliss, Helen Burtt, Jenny Cotterill, Amanda Hellberg, Emmet Spier and Colin Uttley for their invaluable help in getting it together. Thanks also to Paul and Rachel Attmere for dressing up like the puppets and animating the sheds throughout the opening weekend. The puppets were adapted from 1960s Pelham puppets, scooped up from eBay.
Ragged puppets
I was inspired to make Swinging London after seeing the very dilapidated 1960s puppet show playing on Teignmouth Pier, Devon. I was really struck by how mesmerising the Teignmouth puppets were -- and how convincingly they moved to the music -- even though they were doing nothing more than jiggling up and down. The puppets also had a slightly unsettling look, because of their worn-out clothes and expressionless faces -- this also appealed to me. So this dolly waggling (bad puppetry) is inspired by the 1960s end-of-the-pier classic. The video footage was taken at the end of a busy eight-week run and you can see that the strings have gone saggy and paint has rubbed off the puppets’ shoes, onto the stage, helping them to look suitably ragged.
Slide show images by Emmet Spier
Carillon
The carillon played two and a half octaves of handbells polyphonically, striking them with servo-driven, sprung beaters.
This was my first attempt at building a polyphonic bell playing machine. In 2009, I attempted to build a version of the instrument that put each bell in a separate box, so the instrument could be distributed widely around a space. This Mk II carillon was given its first outing at the Sonic Arts Expo 2009. When this proved too troublesome to take out on the road, I built the Mk III, which clusters all the bells on a single metal frame. The frame , an old shop fitting, is on wheels and is compact enough to fit in the boot of a large car.
Laughlab was a scientific search for the ‘world’s funniest joke’. In 2003, psychologist Richard Wiseman asked me to created soundtrack to announce the results of this worldwide, online experiment. This was blasted through the streets on London from a Routemaster bus, on the day the top-rated jokes were unveilled.
Hear the soundtrack
The soundtrack includes the ‘world’s funniest joke’ and some of the best runners-up. My favourite jokes on the recording are the one about the cannibals and the one about the lady on the bus. Apparently, the bus joke was voted top joke in the UK. According to the Laughlab website, the winning joke was submitted by Gurpal Gosall, a 31-year-old psychiatrist from Manchester, UK.
Voice-over
Richard Hodder, voice-over artist, provided a slightly seedy comic reading, in Max Miller style. I mixed this with other sounds to create the feeling of an early, live BBC radio show (a ‘light programme’ special). Richard also announced the World’s Funniest Joke in an appropriately stiff, Leslie Mitchel voice.
Laughlab was sponsored by Science Year (now Planet Science) and the British Association.
Sarah Angliss plays the saw at the Tusk & Garter Club, Brighton (photo Peter Kalen)
Fancy learning the saw? Then you’ve come to the right page – just get yourself a saw, a bow and some rosin and read my potted tutorial.
I have been playing the saw for thirty years – as a teenager I was taught to play by folk musician Bunny Nun in Watford. I’ve taught many other people to play the saw – include the members of the mighty sawchestra in The Lost and Found Orchestra (Yes/No productions). I now regularly use the saw, alongside the theremin, in my award-winning live act Spacedog. And I’m an occassional guest at Foz Foster’s Sawchestra, most recently at The Sci Fi Festival, London, 2011, where we accompanied Der Golem live on theremin and saw.
Looking for a saw player? Send me an email at sarah[dot] spacedog [at] gmail [dot] com
Early test with Hugo the vent doll, before his head was roboticised, featuring my short saw solo.
Here’s a brief tutorial on the musical saw, a European skiffle instrument with a haunting, almost voice-like sound:
The sound of the saw is so unexpectedly beautiful, some listeners find it hard to believe where it’s coming from. Played well, the saw really does sing. Its brilliant, ethereal sound is rather like the sound of a human voice. Saw players stroke the edge of the saw with a cello or bass bow (sometimes home-made) to make it vibrate. Occasionally they percuss it with a soft beater. They bend the instrument to swoop from one pitch to another, giving the instrument its characteristic portamento sound.
The musical saw is a wonderful ‘skiffle instrument’ – a cheap, everyday object that has been appropriated by musicians who have no money to buy classical instruments. I’ve encountered players of this traditional European instrument in Britain, Holland and the USA.
playing the saw
Examples of saw playing
You can see some examples of my saw playing in the video on this page, which also features an early test with my robotic vent doll Hugo (before his head was moving). I can also be seen playing saw here and there in the Reverb Jam.
An example of saw playing that’s easy to come by is in the film ‘Delicatessen’. One of the central characters plays the saw beautifully on his roof. Occasionally, I’ve heard what I think is percussive saw playing on recordings by the chanteuse Edith Piaf.
I’ve heard that saw playing is still quite common in Holland, for instance in bars in Amsterdam. My grandfather Emlyn was a saw player – sadly he died many years before I was born.
These notes have been online since the mid-1990s and much copied and circulated – feel free to circulate them further but do please credit this source. I’ll add a tutorial video when I get a little time.
Thanks! Sarah
I'm performing live at the Lovebytes Festival, Sheffield, QEDCon, Manchester, and the Catalyst Club, Brighton, and composing music for CE3K-inspired Electronic Encounters and some other forthcoming collaborations (stay tuned for news). I'm also hard at work, re-engineering some Spacedog robots, and selecting films for Rocket Lolly, Spacedog's two-hander with Project Moonbase at the Edinburgh Science Festival in April.
News: January 2012
Juice for the Baby, Spacedog's debut album, is here! I'm ducking out of the Kinetica Art Faire this year but am huddled indoors, writing, sleuthing (investigating a recording in the archives) and devising a new biologically-inspired musical instrument - all will be revealed soon.
News: December 2011
Juice for the Baby, Spacedog's debut album, launches in mid-December. Join us for the launch gigs at the Marlborough, Brighton, on 9 December and the Horse Hospital, London, on 14 December.
News: November 2011
A busy month writing and editing the forthcoming Spacedog album - stay tuned for news.
News: October 2011
I'm focusing on my writing this month (so am quite the hermit) but I'm squeezing in the occasional live performance here and there.
I'm looking forward to working with Helen Keen in her Spacetacular on 20th. I'm writing a code-based work for the new label Chordpunch and some owlish music for that fine wordsmith Professor Elemental.
Spacedog are booked into the studio at the end of the month to complete work on our album.
News: September 2011
A busy month writing, preparing a get-together of maker musicians for the Brighton Maker Faire After-show party. I've also been electrifying a teapot for the Chi-Tek - an exhibition by MzTek of female tech artists at the V&A. And with my fellow Spacedog Stephen Hisock, I made an appearance on the 10th Anniversary edition of BBC Click.
News: August 2011
The Spacedog song For Laika is now available on iTunes (and the album is on its way). Meanwhile, we've been busy preparing our set for Green Man, including the first outing of our torch song for Tommy Cooper.
I'm procrastinating over a teapot which I'm going to electrify for a MzTek event at the Victoria and Albert Museum in September.
I took a short trip to a very rainy Edinburgh Fringe where I played at an event for Edinburgh Skeptics in the Royal Observatory and made some plans for a Spacedog show next summer.
Apart from that, I've been busy writing. More news on that shortly, I hope...
News: July 2011
I'm interviewed by Leila Johnston in this month's Wired UK magazine and will be appearing with my fellow Spacedogs at a Wired: The Future of Music on 20 July.
I've rounded up a bumper crop of links and soundclips for my BBC Radio 4 doc The Bird Fancyer's Delight, which is broadcast on 5 and 9 July and is also available on Listen Again. Thanks for all your cheery emails about the doc, to ProjectMoonbase for mentioning it in their podcast PMB038 and for the many national papers who gave the documentary such lovely reviews - I'm glad people enjoyed it! On Sunday 10 July, the doc was featured on Graham Seed's Pick of the Week (Radio 4). A good week!
My latest collaboration with Richard Wiseman is a free and fun magic trick for your iPhone. It's called Paranormality and it's been put together for the launch of his book by the same name in the US. Thanks to Phillis on Derrren Brown's blog for giving the app a mention - thousands of people have now downloaded it and are busy bamboozling their friends.
News: June 2011
Playing theremin for Louise Colborne's homage to Loie Fuller (pioneering cybernetic dancer c1900) and composing sounds for Sonus, an homage to the analogue age with Spacedog, ArtHertz, Rushes Soho Shorts Festival and Ridley Scott Associates. Discovering how easy (or difficult) it is to publicise events in 2011 without Twitter - will report back!
Getting ready for BEAM - a brand new festival of electronics and music at Brunel University (24-26 June). I'll be speaking, running a workshop on optical flow and performing live with my fellow Spacedogs. I'll also be playing a short theremin set at the Speaky Spokey, a new arts salon in Brighton (Wed 22 June).
Putting the finishing touches to a sonic-themed BBC Radio 4 documentary, with producer Neil McCarthy, due for transmission on 5 July 2011.
Presenting a workshop for Hack Circus at Interesting, in the Conway Hall, London, 18 June, and performing theremin at a family day at the Science Museum, 19 June.
Did you hear the one about the lady on the bus?
