Dispatch from Costa Rica
February / March 2011
The jungle provides incredible wildlife recording opportunities, of course, but I'm also very excited by the instrument I've created from the spiral stainless steel stairway to the roof on our host's house. It's not much to the naked ear but to the parabolic microphone placed on the steel step it's unbelievable.
I'm using nylon drummer's 'brushes' on the railings. I put the parabolic mic face down on one of the steel steps and get the railings to start something akin to sympathetic vibrations where the sounds, when miced, are reminiscent of gamelan, micro tonal and very trippy, swelling, moving, trance inducing—seriously. Really exciting stuff, and quite challenging because I don't have those muscles developed. But I'm working on it every day just like it's a new instrument, which it is.
Charlie Lindsay's Stairway Instrument
Rainforest
Strange Flower
Red Eye Tree Frog
Tiger Heron
SITES
EMF :: Arts Electric :: EMF Productions :: Ear to the Earth :: CDeMusic :: EMF Media :: EMF Institute