vinyl drag

This is an audio document of the progressive deterioration that...

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:24:00 +0100

This is an audio document of the progressive deterioration that took place on the vinyl. Here I’ve stacked every recording that I made since October on top of each other, so they play in sync. Creative fade-in and fade-out techniques were then used to create this track that starts from the first ever recording and gradually degrades over time to become the final recording I made.

I really love this recording, and it really makes this whole project so much more rewarding for me. I must mention that the motor on my turntable, being like everything technological, is prone to slight shifts in it’s performance and ultimately the speed that it turns the platter will vary slightly with every recording. I took a great deal of time getting the recordings as close to perfect synchronisation as possible, but due to the fluctuations that can occur from heat, and probably many other depending factors the record will never spin at exactly that same speed twice. This is most noticeable at the end when the piece ends a few times. You’ll hear what I mean.

Enjoy.

This will help to show how my files looked when stacked on top...

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:20:00 +0100

This will help to show how my files looked when stacked on top of each other in Logic.

The yellow lines here show each track’s unique volume...

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:00:00 +0100

The yellow lines here show each track’s unique volume level and also how one recording fades out whilst the next fades in. This is how I got all the tracks to sound like one long composition.

makou: CHRISTIAN MARCLAY Cyanotypes

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0100

makou:

CHRISTIAN MARCLAY
Cyanotypes

and with that…goodbye. I believe this is a good time to...

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:32:00 +0100

and with that…goodbye.

I believe this is a good time to end the project. The end of the road so to speak.

This will be the last time I document the records degradation on this blog. I’m now going to spend my time cleaning up the page so it’s worthy to be presented as my end of year piece. I’m going to be uploading a couple of recordings that I made that you will have never heard before, along with a montage of all 16 recordings.

Inspired by a scene in a movie I watched on Friday night, The...

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 12:42:00 +0100

Inspired by a scene in a movie I watched on Friday night, The Boat that Rocked, I began to wonder whether vinyl would withstand being immersed in water for a long period of time. So last night I put the record in the biggest wok I had in my kitchen, filled the whole thing with water and left it to sit over night.

I’ll let you listen to the results. I am amazed.

Presentation

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 20:09:00 +0000

Today was the day I had to present the progress of my piece to both the Sonic Artists and the Fine Artists at Middlesex.

//This is pretty much copied from my presentation notes so I apologize for any repetition.//

I started by showing the György Ligeti video that I watched which gave me the original idea for the piece (which can be seen here). I mentioned that the thing with analog media such as video tape, cassettes and vinyl is that over time, and with wear and tear, small transformations start to happen that are not in the original creators control.

These little dips in pitch, the spots that appear over the image and other fluctuations that materialize are what interests me greatly as they are absolutely unique to every single video.

It was then when I read about sound artist Christian Marclay that I started to think about this process a lot more. One of Marclay’s projects in particular fascinated me and that was his 1985 piece Record Without a Cover which is a piece of 12” vinyl with the instructions “Do not store in a protective package” embossed onto the surface. A record left out of its protective packaging will inevitably accumulate all sorts of dust particles, it will become vulnerable to sunlight and also sharp objects will damage its surface. All these and more will help to create a new recordings through modification that is absolutely unique to each pressing.

So with these two concepts in mind I got to work on conceiving my work for the year Vinyl Drag.

Vinyl Drag is a documentation experiment that is taking place on a slab of 12” vinyl that I had pressed. The idea is to document the process of degredation that takes place on this specific piece of vinyl over the year school starting in October.

I mentioned that the project was alive online in blog form and gave the URL.

I then played the original recording, made before any degradation had taken place and finished by playing the class a unique live performance of Vinyl Drag.

Revelations: It turns out that the recording made last Saturday...

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:48:00 +0000

Revelations:

It turns out that the recording made last Saturday was with some faulty audio cables. No wonder the track could barely be heard. Anyhow here’s the recording for this week, with a fixed cable. I still don’t understand how the record has survived this long. I guess vinyl is slightly more resilient than I first thought. Ah, and you might think that the last minute of the recording is fabricated but it’s honestly not, the needle jumped from the silent part at the end of the record back into the grooves all by itself, twice.

"Old records have the quality of time passed, this sense of loss. I am trying to bring it back to..."

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

“Old records have the quality of time passed, this sense of loss. I am trying to bring it back to life through my art”

- Christian Marclay

You may think your speakers are turned down real low when you...

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 13:52:00 +0000

You may think your speakers are turned down real low when you listen to this, but in fact the overall volume level of the track has dropped dramatically. This is recorded at the same volume level that it has always been recorded at. I think Vinyl Drag may end very soon at this rate.

Here’s the waveforms in sync shown in Logic. On top is the recording from today and underneath is the untouched original track recorded back in October. The dynamic range has drastically fallen and the clicks, pops and noise that has risen due to the degradation has made the underlying track almost invisible.

Another interesting Christian Marclay video. It begins with a...

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Another interesting Christian Marclay video. It begins with a performance, however the interesting part comes at 4:47 when they start talking about Record Without a Cover.

“I really allow the record to change with time, instead of wanting something that’s a fixed document. I’m interested in how things change over time.” Christian Marclay

The recording posted yesterday (March 04th) was actually the...

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

The recording posted yesterday (March 04th) was actually the second recording I made that day. The first was similar to January 28th in that the needle didn’t want to stick in the groove of the record and just moved about at random. In this recording you can hear this process happening.

It’s Vinyl Drag Wednesday! Here’s the upload for...

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 23:48:00 +0000

It’s Vinyl Drag Wednesday! Here’s the upload for this week. It’s getting pretty ruined now and I’m really interested in how the sound looks in Logic, the waveform is very compressed and flat, with no dynamic range. However, I haven’t put any processing on the track whatsoever, and it is recorded in the same way as it has been the whole project. It seems that with degradation comes reduced dynamic level.

If this project serves any practical purpose at all so far, I...

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 20:00:00 +0000

If this project serves any practical purpose at all so far, I think it would be that you should never let hairspray get anywhere near your record collection. As this recording clearly shows; hairspray and vinyl just do not go well together. The outcome is severely crunchy and nasty.

As I’ve mentioned, Janek Schaefer is a large influence of...

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

As I’ve mentioned, Janek Schaefer is a large influence of mine, and to my work with Vinyl Drag and here’s a video of him smashing a load of records. For entertainment purposes of course!

"I could only afford records in thrift stores. Then you could find wonderful things, but now..."

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

“I could only afford records in thrift stores. Then you could find wonderful things, but now everything is a collectible. I like the recycling idea - using the stuff that people don’t want anymore, and make new music out of it.”

- Christian Marclay

Christian Marclay: Record Without a Cover

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 14:31:00 +0000

Christian Marclay: Record Without a Cover:

A link to a reissue version of Christian Marclay’s Record Without a Cover - The piece of work that very much inspired this whole project.

The record has been laying in a well used drawer for some time...

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:21:00 +0000

The record has been laying in a well used drawer for some time now and this is what happened the first time I tried to play it. I don’t need to give much of an explanation, just let your ears do the talking. The needle is clearly having a hard time sticking to any one groove and just ends up flailing all over the record. It’s brilliant. I couldn’t have set this up if I tried.

This is what happened the second time I put the needle on the...

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 07:00:00 +0000

This is what happened the second time I put the needle on the record. Clearly it’s having a much better time at sticking in the groove but the degradation of the record is really showing. The sound is very harsh and there’s a great deal of surface noise.

I cite Turntablism as a large influential factor on my work with...

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I cite Turntablism as a large influential factor on my work with Vinyl Drag. It’s the fundamental idea of using a medium, such as vinyl, in a new way that I’m interested in the most. And over on the more musical side of things there’s this Canadian Turntablist Kid Koala who is extremely inventive with his records and uses them to create interesting narratives. This video does its best to explain what he does.