Appendix B Working notes · not for publication Two inks, out of register

Working notes

Appendix
B
Draft

Photocopied from a notebook, twice, at the wrong setting. Kept because the errors are more useful than the notes.

Cat. 003

Slow Machine

Two decks. Deck A plays into deck B, deck B plays back into A. The delay is however long the tape takes to walk across the room. About nine seconds if you put them far enough apart.

— it degrades. that’s the piece.

Cat. 005

Stairwell

Six floors. Sing one note on the ground floor, walk up, sing it again on each landing. The building transposes you. By the fifth floor you are a semitone sharp and it is not your fault.

recorded March. someone’s dog on take 4 — kept it.

Cat. 010

Paper, Burning

Felt between the hammers, bulldog clips on the low strings, a sheet of tracing paper laid over the soundboard. The paper is the instrument. The piano is the amplifier.

do NOT actually burn anything (2019)

Appendix An abstract textured surface, close

A short list of things that did not work

  1. Recording a room with the door open. You get the corridor.
  2. Asking players to “play quietly.” Ask them to play as though someone is asleep upstairs.
  3. Any microphone more than a metre away from anything.
  4. Notating silence in bars. Notate it in seconds, or it becomes a rest and people wait through it.
  5. Explaining the piece before the performance.

the last one took eleven years to learn

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