Music for Barrow AFC (pt.2)
2) During the residency so far, we have been experimenting with using contact microphones to record otherwise undetectable sounds.
“By attaching it to a flat surface, the mic transforms vibrations in materials into audio signals and, just as the positioning of an acoustic mic will affect the sound picked up, so the sound from the contact mic can be changed with different positioning.” (We got these from: www.Bugbrand.co.uk – a great site for anybody interested in analogue effects units and circuit bending).
As well as applying these to instruments, we have been using them to record the sound of everyday objects and recently led a series of school workshops in which we created an entire orchestra with items from Wilkinsons’ gardening section. Over the next month we intend to apply these to a game of football, including feet stamping on the terraces, the ball hitting various surfaces and the monitoring and sound experimentation of players’ heartbeats/respiratory systems as well as the possibility of placing a device inside the ball itself during a match or training session. The resulting sounds may then be manipulated and/or looped in real time before being relayed back to the tannoy for live playback.
3) A third idea would see us recruiting an amateur orchestra (i.e. anyone who owns an instrument – they don’t necessarily have to be able to play it) by handing out leaflets at a match. We would then line up two sets of musicians along opposite sides of the pitch (East and West, not goal ends). They would be asked to play a certain note or a specified key corresponding to the movements of their team. The emphasis would not be on melody, but on the back and forth motion of the music and the instruments would be tuned or chosen to avoid ‘virtuosoism’.
4) Miscellaneous ideas:
a) Sound experiments with crowd recordings – Chants and songs.
b) Make a list of every player ever to play for the club. Ask fans to recite them.
c) Old adverts for defunct local businesses – sing/recite these.
d) Scarves with texts woven in to be chanted by the wearer.
e) Pitched rattles / pint glasse.
f) Use specially designed ground markings to paint a graphic score directly onto the pitch.
g) Find early silent films of football and perform live soundtracks. E.G. Die elf Teufel / The Eleven Devils (1927)
Music for Barrow AFC (pt.1)
“Music is something one takes before or after the meal, but never the meal itself.” Giorgio De Chirico, No Music (1913).
Below are some ideas so far for creating a piece of music for the ground, with the aim of exploring an overall concept of football as a performance involving players and spectators. Utilising a mixture of field recordings, music and spoken word to look at ways of using the ground as a place to experiment and ultimately as a stage in itself.
1) One idea is to develop a piece of music based around the team’s history and current fortunes. This would involve creating a series of simple musical motifs derived from past and present league tables, resulting in a compressed musical history with each group of notes following league positions for each month of every year of the team’s existence. Breaking each season down into a series of mathematically generated musical modules with major and minor keys representing success or defeat. An alternative (and perhaps more manageable approach to this would involve creating a smaller set of musical narratives based around famous players, events and goals in the club’s history. This draws upon the idea of the ‘Oracular lyre’ featured in the story Ka by Russian futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov, using a pythagorean correlation between musical tones and historical chronology. Taking this one step further, it may be possible to generate a short piece of music that changes every week with the team’s fortunes throughout the year, and is performed at each match by a volunteer instrumentalist/soloist drawn from the supporters, reporting musically on the previous match.
A Song for Barrow AFC (pt.2)
Trevor Wishart “began working with recorded sounds in 1969. In reaction to death of father, a factory worker, abandoned conventional composing, bought small portable tape-recorder and collected sounds of machinery in workshops, foundries and power stations. Set up directed improvisation route-map for small chorus to imitate, then transform, these sounds. Recordings of the improvisations, plus machine sources and contemporary news items (Apollo 11 moon shot) formed basis of Machine, an electronically preserved dream (1970).”
French composer Eliane Radigue's graphic scores for Trilogie de la Mort are a set of logarithmic curves printed onto transparent paper then overlaid onto manuscript paper to create a series of sustained rising tones.
Alan Tomlinson is a trombonist who performed from a mobile chip van in Yorkshire. "In November 2003, artist and promoter Simon Thackray created a new duet. He put London based Improvising trombonist Alan Tomlinson together with a Fish and Chip van. Alan was booked to blow the horn to herald the arrival of the van and perform a short concert to the Fish and Chip van queues in each village."
We have also been looking at other pieces that use the human voice in innovative ways, such as Karlheinz Stockhausen's Stimmung and Gesang der Junglinge and Einstein on the Beach by Phillip Glass.
A Song for Barrow AFC
Though it is intended that the residency will have several outcomes, its main aspect will be the creation of a piece of experimental music based around the idea of a football as a performance.
Below is some background information on a few of the artists and composers that have influenced my thinking on the project so far:
Dick Raaijmakers – Ping Pong: a piece of music made by attaching two contact microphones to a table tennis table. Each side of the table is pitched a semi-tone apart and the piece is performed through the act of playing a game of table tennis.
Graphic Scores – examples of many of the most pioneering graphic scores can be found at the Pictures of Music site: www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu/picturesofmusic/
One score I've been particularly interested in is Treatise by the english composer Cornelius Cardew. “There are few more impressive-looking conceptions than Cornelius Cardew's Treatise (1963-7), a 236-page graphic score of exquisite intricacy. Questions of what to play and how to play it are left to the performer(s)' discretion; though, as here, a degree of pre-performance planning helps reinforce the very definite continuity in texture and dynamics that the individual pages suggest. ”
"Robert Rauschenberg's Open Score was performed on October 14th, 1966. It began with a tennis game between Frank Stella and his tennis partner, Mimi Kanarek, on a full-scale court laid out on the Armory floor. Rauschenberg had adopted one of the oldest forms of performance that everyone recognizes, a tennis match, and made it into dance. He also used the game 'to control the lights and to perform as an orchestra.' Each time Frank or Mimi hit the ball a loud BONG vibrated around the Armory and the sound of each BONG switched off one of the lights illuminating the court…"
Sightlines Digital Arts Commission
at Barrow AFC
After considering applications from over 40 artists, the Sightlines selection committee comprising John Hall, David Ingham, Supporter and Unison rep Alec Proffit and photographer Stuart Clarke from The Homes Of Football Gallery in Ambleside, have chosen Glenn Boulter to work in around the club over the next few months and to deliver a piece of work for installation at the start of the 2008-9 season. The project is being led by artist and Barrow supporter John Hall with the support of Arts Council England, Cumbria Arts In Education, Aim Higher , Barrow Borough Council and parner schools from accross Cumbria.
Says John "We were impressed by the quality and scope of Glenn's work which includes Printmaking, Sound Design and editions of Artists books and CDs, and with the imagination and wit with which he approaches his subjects. I'm really looking forward to working with him and watching things develop."
Sightlines' theme is Football, Art and Community, and the project so far has seen John exhibit his own work at Barrow's Artgene gallery, present a series of experimental music pieces drawing on the sounds of match day at Barrow, Kendal, Carlisle, and Workington. There has also been an exhibition of giant Subbuteo players made by local schools at The Nest and The Homes Of Football gallery.
This second phase of Sightlines has been running since autumn, and has seen John work with locally based artists Kate Davis and Shaun Blezard on a variety of football related sound recording projects in schools , including a session with Poet and Broadcaster Ian McMillan who worked with a group of St. Bernard's students on the mysterious history of Barrow AFC legend, Al Mobility.
Glenn saw the 4-1 win over Gainsborough the other week, and was taking photographs during last night's game against Northwich. You can follow the progress of the project on this blog and if you have any questions or comments on the project, contact John at [email protected]
John Hall
