Category Archives: engineering

LMJ #23 – "Electric Music" on the Victorian Stage

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There are many obscure, under-explored sonic marvels to be found in the old music hall annals – I’m rustling to publish a detailed survey soon.  In the meantime, the latest Leonardo Music Journal (#23) features my paper on ‘electrical music’ in Victorian music halls, focussing specifically on the work of the eccentric Johann Baptist Schalkenbach and his imitators.  In the 1860s Schalkenbach developed an act in which he played on an amalgamation of instruments he called the Piano-Orchestre Électro-Moteur (built around a reed harmonium).  Whilst playing, he would simultaneously trigger musical, noise and optical effects via the electromagnetic triggering of circuits connected to objects placed around the hall.  It’s a delicate precursor to the noise machines of the Italian Futurists.  Over the decades, the apparatus gradually became more spectacular as new features were added.

schalk-orchestra2

For some years now I’ve been hunting down ephemera relating to Schalkenbach and his copycats in the hope of shedding some light on the electrical music contraptions.  Precious little information exists, despite Schalkenbach performing for almost 40 years.   LMJ 23’s “‘Electric Music’ on the Victorian Stage: The Forgotten Work of J.B. Schalkenbach” forms the most complete account so far of Schalkenbach’s work.  My research also suggests that in the 1870s Schalkenbach assisted in the construction of acoustic magic tricks for celebrated magicians Maskelyne and Cooke.  Schalkenbach’s conspicuous absence from the “standard” prehistory of electronic music can perhaps be accounted for by the lack of credible information about the electrical aspects of his Piano-Orchestre Électro-Moteur.  Minor gripes rooted in nationalism possibly also contributed to his present obscurity – one early review states that Schalkenbach’s act met with great applause, but: “we fancy it would have gained still greater favour but for [his] singular resemblance to the great German Chancellor Prince Bismarck, which did not quite please some of the audience.”

Maskelyne & Cooke’s Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly. (Demolished in 1905)

Schalkenbach played upon the mysteriousness surrounding “electrical music”.  One newspaper reporter presumed that the rain sounds were electrically produced: “in a moment even electricity travels to the roof of the building and also to the apparatus around the hall, and causes vibrations as if a thunderstorm were heard approaching from the distance; you hear the howling of the wind and the downfall of a torrent of rain.”   Investigations reveal that, in reality, the electric action was only employed to control a door, releasing buckshot that rattled down concealed descending shafts (later to become a popular off-stage acoustic rain effect).  But Schalkenbach’s instrument was nevertheless very sophisticated.   In the 1890s, an electrical journal asked, “was it telephonically or phonographically that Herr J. B. Schalkenbach transmitted sounds to a distance?”  It is unlikely that either of these techniques were employed.  It appears to have been primarily electromagnetic triggering (including percussive sounds, motors, release mechanisms, explosives, detonations and light effects), the possibility of trembling-bell style feedback, and the basic wind bellows with their artful acoustic couplings through pipes and funnels.  Although, there are still many mysteries.

The descriptive, noisy, electrically actuated music pioneered by Schalkenbach was subsequently copied by many music hall acts, including Professor Beaumont (aka John Walmsley Beaumont) “Necromancer and Electric Musician”, Herr Renier, and most interestingly, H. F. Juleene (aka John Parsons) and Dot D’Alcorn (aka Susette D’Alcorn), a double act who titled their demonic centrepiece Mephisto.   Dot D’Alcorn is possibly the first professional female performer of an electrical musical instrument.  Juleene and Schalkenbach had an interesting run-in played out in the The Era stage newspaper involving aggressive placement of adverts.

In performance, Schalkenbach played his own music (which does not seem to have survived), and also included selections from operas, such as Daniel Auber’s La muette de Portici‬ and The Storm from Rossini’s William Tell.   Mephisto on the other hand, was more grounded in music hall styles, and some original Juleene compositions do exist.  Dot D’Alcorn would play the electric instrument dressed as Mephistopheles.  I have transcribed the surprisingly twee Mephisto Gavotte (the electrical parts are not scored) – it gives a flavour of the Mephisto repertoire.  It is a MIDI arrangement:

Schalkenbach and his ilk are particularly interesting in relation to the post-electronic music techniques outlined on this blog and elsewhere.  In ‘post-electronics’, acoustic sounds are wrought with close adherence to classical electronic music techniques.  Essentially: acoustics aspiring to electronic sound.  In Schalkenbach’s art, acoustics likewise aspire (or are styled) to ‘electric’ sound despite the utter non-existence of any “electric music” listening paradigms at that time(!).  Schalkenbach produces acoustic sounds – musical and non-musical – distant from the console, and presents them enigmatically as electrically produced sounds – sounds of mysterious provenance: the beginnings of sound art.

More coming soon…

Leonardo Music Journal #23 is out now.

Wok Music: Music of the Hemispheres

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The process of obtaining ‘miraculous agitations’, as I’ve written before, revolves around chance occurrences.  From a purely intuitive standpoint, it’s hard to pin down the catalyst that transforms a vibrating apparatus from a ‘bone-idle-tone’ into inspirational ‘tone-drama’ (that is, the once-in-a-blue-moon complex and inspiring acoustic stuff).  It appears as a chance convergence of microscopic parameters: an imperceptible movement of some element suddenly causing an emergent state…

The standard stainless steel cooking bowls (un-wok-like), with a paucity of tone-ballast.

The cauldron is perhaps the paradigm of all this tone-drama-seeking malarkey.  In fact, it’s surprising that cauldrons aren’t used more often in improv gigs.  Objects may be placed in a vibrating cauldron and stirred until the much longed-for ‘tone-drama’ emerges.  The cauldron body would be resonated electromagnetically, and eventually, with enough stirring trials, there will arrive a point where a highly specific configuration is obtained, bringing about pulsing rhythms or harmonic progressions.

When I was angling to incorporate pseudo-cauldrons into resonant assemblies, the adage “beggars can’t be choosers” manifested itself in the galling fact that dishes and bowls receptive to magnetism are very hard to find.  If you walk into a shop, all the stainless steel bowls will be non-magnetic.  This is frustrating, as many of the most resonant bowls will not be suitable for resonating via the electromagnetic field method (a non-contact method of resonating).

Looking in bins and trade waste containers can yield older steel bowls, where the steel was treated differently during manufacture, thus retaining its ferric virtue and allowing for EM resonation.  Although, these are rare.

Wok mounted to a sounding board with resonator and pickup coils.

Whereas in the past the poverty and unemployability that necessitated my dumpster-diving actions lent a teeth-gnashing restrictive atmosphere, it’s now obvious that this impoverished flâneur approach embraces chance happenings: a good thing.  One day, a wok presented itself.  Woks can be easily adapted to resonate.  When a wok handle is removed, woks resound like Tibetan bowls…  And they’re always (in my experience) responsive to magnetism too.  Woks are also somewhat hard to find, but they’re easily spotted, at least, whether in bins, car-boot sales, or vistas of ruin.

When a resonator coil is fixed in proximity to a wok’s rim, several harmonics can usually be obtained.  The most harmonically rich woks happen to be Ken Hom woks – this particular brand was the heaviest/densest I’ve so far found (the chrome handles of certain Ken Hom wok lids also make excellent subharmonic-generating objects to place inside woks).   The polarities and phase of the resonator coil / pickup coil combo can be arranged so that a descending scale of harmonics can be elicited by moving the pickup anticlockwise around the rim, on the right-hand side of the resonator (as shown in this scrawling).  When subharmonic ballast is added, a veritable sonic stir-fry is formed… with all the potency of the paradigmatic cauldron: thaumatacoustics in action.

So far, I have found four woks.  It is interesting to note that the resultant chords obtainable purely from the woks themselves – without adding objects inside – are chords of chance provided by the trade waste bins.   A convergence of people all deciding at a certain time to discard their woks resulted in this very specific chord.

I recorded a short and unpolished study simply to display aspects of this chord. (Please excuse the unskilful pickup collisions)….

Build your own Francis Bacon ‘Sound-House’

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I feel behaviourally aslant in my secret indulgence for dolls house paraphernalia.  But that’s mainly due to a culturally-instilled inhibition that really needs to be shaken off.  After all, dolls houses are affordable, but real houses are not.  As the saying goes, you must “live within your means”.

‘Rendering that scaffolding dangerous’

For some years now I’ve itched to create a Sound-House, as defined in Sir Francis Bacon’s unfinished fable ‘New Atlantis’ (1624):

“We have also sound-houses, where we practise and demonstrate all sounds and their generation.  We have harmonies which you have not, of quarter-sounds, and lesser slides of sounds; divers instruments of musick likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have, with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet.  We represent small sounds as great and deep, likewise great sounds extenuate and sharp.  We make divers tremblings and warblings of sounds, which in their original are entire.  We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and letters, and the voices and notes of beasts and birds.  We have certain helps, which set to the ear, do further the hearing greatly.  We have also divers strange and artificial echos reflecting the voice many times, and as it were tossing it, and some that give back the voice louder than it came, some shriller, and some deeper, yea, some rendring the voice differing in the letters or articulate sound from that they receive.  We have all means to convey sounds in trunks and pipes in strange lines and distances.”

A previous posting (here) touched upon some visual clues as to how Francis Bacon may have designed his Sound House if he had been tasked with realising one.

The “we have also sound-houses” passage has come to be quoted as a foresightful envisioning of electronic sound treatments.  Yet the majority of modern electronic works invariably pivot on trickeries and deceptions of the ear – keeping the listener ‘in the dark’ as to the nature of sound sources and treatments.  (Also, Bacon’s words conjure to mind a mechanical acoustic endeavour with contrivances similar to those imagined by his inventor contemporaries Salomon de Caus or Cornelis Drebbel.)  Allying Bacon’s Sound Houses with electronic sound technique seems incongruous when Bacon later writes a few paragraphs later:

“And surely, you will easily believe that we that have so many things truly natural, which induce admiration, could in a world of particulars deceive the senses, if we would disguise those things, and labour to make them more miraculous: But we do hate all impostures and lies insomuch, as we have severely forbidden it to all our fellows, under pain of ignominy and fines, that they do not shew any natural work or thing adorned or swelling, but only pure as it is, and without all affectations of strangeness.”

John Reid: Pyramid Sound-Houses?

If I ever had the opportunity to build a full size Baconian sound house, it would contain resonant granite sarcophagi (akin to those found in Egyptian tombs), moveable granite panelling and compartments.   Deep stone tunnels with mix-and-match obstructors.  Parallel surfaces for flutter echoes.  Bellow-pumped pipe tone generators and trumpeted alterants.   Clues may also be found in Bacon’s acoustical investigations documented in his Sylva Sylvarum.  In the meantime, I will continue experimenting with my dolls houses…  The dolls houses are more like weird garages, over-plumbed within an inch of their daintiness.  And the ‘dolls’ exist only in the mind.

Miraculous agitations in our acoustic environment – as I’ve written elsewhere – indicate the possibility of real-world sound rivalling electronic sound in terms of tonal complexity and delineation.  It is a question of engineering.  The miraculous agitation assemblies eventually come to resemble ‘houses’ – or ‘garages’ – stressed with the addition of perilously piled Jenga-like miscellany.  An ‘electromechnical Baconian dolls soundhouse garage’.   With all property so dismally unaffordable,  I would like to live in one of these… cohabiting with Cliff Richard’s proverbial ‘Living Doll’ – a husk of hope. (“Take a look at her hair, it’s real / And if you don’t believe what I say, just feel / I’m gonna lock her up in a trunk / So no big hunk can steal her away from me” [?!])

The Wire issue 344: Unofficial Channels: ‘Acoustic Synthesis’ and Post-Electronic Sound

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The ‘Unofficial Channels’ column of this month’s Wire magazine (#344) hosts a very short piece I’ve written on Acoustic Synthesis, giving a short overview on experimental manoeuvrings in the largely undefined sphere of post-electronic music.

As described elsewhere, ‘post-electronic music’ is a term I use to refer to the application of classical electronic music technique to acoustic systems, usually involving electro-mechanical parts and mechanical gears.

The sub-harmonic demonstrations of music theorist José A. Sotorrio are mentioned in the column.  Sotorrio’s introduction to the undertone series can be viewed here on Youtube.  A sounding tuning fork held against a movable obstruction (such as paper) produces different notes of the undertone series (seen at 1:00 in the video).  The ease at which the undertones can be elicited in physical vibrating systems provides glimpses of a sonic netherworld quite distinct from musical traditions derived from the overtone series.

Acoustic synthesis (as I practice it, at least) is principally concerned with enhancing the exactness with which mechanical controls act upon vibrating assemblies.  For instance, an electromagnetically sustained tuning fork may be gradually brought into contact with the paper by a vernier gear with a very high reduction ratio – this would allow undertones to be slowly scanned through discretely and selected.  These kinds of colliding interactions are an integral part of tone production.

The usage of adjustable prong-umbrellas to build up subharmonics (note the usage of a reverberant grille-pile)

The rich effect of subharmonics / undertones can be heard at the end of this short unfinished study on a small apparatus.   The growling occurs due to a vibrating prong colliding with a Rice Krispies box, periodically repelling it, before making contact again.  A swinging microphone adds a timbre shifting effect.

One may well wonder about the origins of post-electronic music.  I had often wondered if an ‘acoustic equivalent’ of a synthesiser was theorised during the electronic music heyday of the 1970s, or even earlier.  It seems that this was indeed almost touched upon by Terence Dwyer in his 1975 school course Making Electronic Music (Book 2 – Advanced).  The work of Terence Dwyer (now in his 90s) has received fresh attention recently thanks to Ian Helliwell‘s captivating article in last month’s The Wire (#343).

It is interesting to find Terence Dwyer suggesting the acoustic mimicry of electronic sounds in a volume of his Making Electronic Music textbook.  The textbooks serve as an introduction to the rudiments of electronic music for school students, but are practically concerned with tape splicing and tape effects.  Curiously, Book 2 contains a small section titled ‘Imitating Electronic Sounds’ – wonderful wispings towards a post-electronic modus operandi!  Acoustic equivalents are given: electronic waveforms and their acoustic substitutes:

Sine wave (pure, no harmonics) – Recorder, Tuning Fork, Whistling, Rubbed Wine Glass

Sawtooth (ramp) wave (all harmonics) – Kazoo, Comb and Paper

Squarewave (odd numbered harmonics) – Clarinet

White noise (random superimposition of all frequencies) – Vocal hissing by several people

Filtered noise (narrow bands of random frequencies) – One person making various hissings such as Ss, Sh, Ch, F, V, Z, Zh, Kh, Hh