Amazing music machine

A friend of mine sent me a video yesterday. It shows an amazing machine that sends balls, presumably using air pressure, in the manner of a tennis serving machine. These hit various pieces wood and metal and even strings to produce a very listenable jazz-rock score. According to the accompanying blurb the machine is made from components used in farm machinery, is displayed at the University of Iowa and is to be donated to the Smithsonian.

Watching a small image on my computer I was taken in for a while. It is still a wonderful piece of work and well worth watching but is actually a CGI animation. If you would like to see it in Real Player or similar send me your email (email me via my website if you'd prefer) and I'll send it on. It seems to be doing the rounds as a hoax so hopefully I'm not offending anybody's copyright.

It is a remarkable 'invention', makes jazz-rock accessible and will, I am sure, inspire some real instruments in a similar vein. Enjoy.

Recording the blacksmith

Back in May, Cogitator posted a short clip of a blacksmith hammering away at an anvil. This made a strong impression on me and when I came across a blacksmith at a camp in August I knew to take advantage of the situation.

Dave Perks brought a portable forge with him to the camp and set it up in the shade of some trees. He was very happy to demonstrate the rhythmic nature of his hammering technique: so many beats on the iron being forged, interspersed with beats on the anvil in order to maintain momentum. He had brought along an unusual piece of scrap iron, a disc with fins, that he wanted to make mountable as a gong. I managed to capture most of the process in one way or another and have made the results into a short movie (3'52).