 I’ve had hours of fun experimenting with this simple Tape Loop Delay and Contact Microphone combination. How this works: the play head was carefully removed and extended from the player to the left (Sony TCM-3) and mounted inside a modified tape loop inserted inside the player (Sony TCM-939) to the right. A contact microphone is hooked up to the TCM-939, in this video I experiment with a wind up music toy and plastic comb!
15 Comments
 Background: a friend very kindly sent me a damaged microcassette he found by the roadside in the suburbs of Agia Paraskevi (Greece). Just over three minutes of audio was discovered: beeps from an answering machine, messages, plenty of background noise and snippets of background music. Lots of great raw audio to work with!
For this call out I invite you to use the found audio from the microcassette and do anything you like to it! The more experimental and creative the better!! If I receive enough submissions the plan is to release it on my label Quagga Curious Sounds, either as a CDr or audio cassette. All contributors would receive a complimentary copy or two if this happens. If you have a SoundCloud account you can download it: https://soundcloud.com/mridge/mcass-greece Or request it via email: mike-ridge[AT]hotmail.co.uk with the subject line MCASS CALL OUT, I’ll send it to you via WeTransfer. Useful Info: Maximum track duration per contributor: 5 minutes please! Deadline: 31 January 2019 (this can be extended if need be) Track Format: WAV Any questions etc. do ask on here or send an email. Firstly, a HUGE thanks for those that participated in the EC Mail Art Exchange project, I thoroughly enjoyed receiving such wonderful and inspiring pieces (visually and sonically!). I’ve dabbled in Mail Art on and off for a few years now, the act of physically making, writing and dispatching a postcard/letter/object to a friend or fellow artist on the other side of the world is always a rewarding experience. Not forgetting, the delight of arriving back home and discovering mail art goodies stuffed in your letterbox! Over the last few years I’ve been tinkering on and off with tape loops, more recently in the microcassette format. Standard compact cassette loops are definitely in vogue at the moment, with many great artists fabricating their own unique loops (Amulets always springs to mind). Making a workable microcassette loop is somewhat trickier to fashion but rewarding when a playable loop is made! Once the shell is (very) carefully prised open a myriad of challenges await, the most obvious being the tiny size you have to work within. The lighter and thinner magnetic tape is very fiddly and easy to damage. Installing the loop correctly inside the shell is a matter of patience, and a great deal of trial and error.  Two microcassette loops were fabricated which I’ve discovered to be a very accessible way to experiment with recorded sound. The hyper compressed sound quality of the format is one I’ve always enjoyed working with, switching between either 2.4 cm/s or 1.2 cm/s playing speeds on both units produces very satisfying results. My initial experiments eventually resulted in a brief demo video, the sound source being a simple metal singing bowl. A basic delay pedal is also included which goes great with this simple set-up. Do let me know your thoughts! |
Michael RidgeAs an artist I create works in various formats, but most often it involves sound and found objects. Archives |
RSS Feed