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 Sound UbuWeb |
Anton Bruhin Anton Bruhin + Stephan Wittwer "Neun Improvisierte Stücke" (1974)
InOut 1. InOut (Zürich, May 17-22, 1981) INOUT was recorded on a Sanyo M7300L stereo radio cassette recorder with both an integrated and external microphone. The recorder is in the recording standby position, both RECORD and PAUSE buttons are pushed. Then I sing or play a tone into the microphone. During this tone, I release the PAUSE button by pushing it. Subsequently, I press the PAUSE button again within a fraction of a second. Now the first short note is recorded. In InOut I added this way thousands of very short notes like a patchwork, like an acoustic quilt with geometric irregularities and varied patterns. The percussive effect was produced by the clicking noise of the PAUSE button. Recorded with the integrated microphone, those clickings appear with pretty high amplitude, depending on the vehemence by which I pushed the button. Recorded with the external microphone, the clicking will not be recorded and remain silent on tape. For InOut I alternated both possibilities; for a longer passage I recorded solely clicking noises to obtain a percussion solo. 2. Musik, vielleicht fur Sie Ch-Phon: PVC pipe. One end of the pipe is shped to a kind of clarinet mouthpiece. The reed is fixed on it with a rubber band. The instrument has 7 finger holdes and a hole for the thumb. Mouthharp. Quackie: gag instrument with a plastic air pump with two lamellas and a horn, voice. Recorded on a cassette recorder with endless loop cassette. 3. Wochenwende Ch-Phon, tuning whistle, mouthharp, bell, piano, voice I do not recall how many layers the wochenwende recording is made of, it's difficult to make it out by listening,. Ch-Phon: PVC pipe. One end of the pipe is shped to a kind of clarinet mouthpiece. The reed is fixed on it with a rubber band. The instrument has 7 finger holdes and a hole for the thumb. Mouthharp. Quackie: gag instrument with a plastic air pump with two lamellas and a horn, voice. Recorded on a cassette recorder with endless loop cassette. 4. Die Welt Poem by Christian von Hofmannswaldau (1617-1679) Music by Anton Bruhin (b. 1949) Zürich, July 14, 1976 Tuning fork, piano and voice. Recorded on a cassette recorder equiped with almost used up batteries. The tape speed while recording was unsteady and generally too slow. At replay with standard speed the music sounds faster and in a higher pitch. Recording sounds with a highter amplitude (louder) needs more electric power, softer sounds need less power. That's why the tape speed is not only slow but also unsteady. The piece starts with a reference note (tone), generated by a 440 hertz frequency tuning fork, which is in the concert pitch "a." This way the degree of pitch and speed deviation can be compared. The percussive attack of the stroken tuning fork produced maximum amplitude, then it diminished gradually. In this case the pitch of the starting reference not moves from b' to c', c' sharp, d' and d' sharp. The audible fading out time of the tuning fork lasts about 22 seconds. R o t o m o t o r 1. Orax 2. Lange Tone 3. Versuchpilz 6 4. Paul is 35 5. Rotomotor R o t o m o t o r covers two different areas of Bruhin's research. The first one is represented by a group of works including the short and mysterious environmental recording 'ORAX' as well as 'Lange Tone', 'VERSUCHPILZ 6' and 'Paul is 35', three excerpts from the epic 'MC-10 zyklus' created between 1976 and 1977 recording various layers of sound sources on two cassette recorders with loudspeakers. The complete zyklus consists of 12 different episodes (each one ten minutes long) which investigate the multi-layer ping-pong recording technique; the spatial illusion of the monoaural replay which moves away from the listener's ears into the depth of space. Far away sounds coming from a cosmic dimension or from an abyssal space, moving fore and back. The loss of sound quality considered as stoned space improvement. 'r o t o m o t o r: ein motorische Idiotikon', the title track, is a 28 minutes long reading, one of Bruhin's major works. Rotomotor is a poetic Idiotikon of the swiss-german dialect where, instead of the straight alphabetical order, the words are organised according to the similarities of their letters (each word differ from the previous one by just one letter). For this reading a delay equipment which repeated the signal after 0.6 seconds was used and each word is superimposed to the echo of the preceding one. On one hand this echo generates the rhythm of the performance, on the other it supports the acoustic metamorphosis of the words. Again, a very simple concept perfectly accomplished. What results from the whole program is maybe difficult to describe, maybe more easily perceivable in a state of alternate consciousness. But surely a quite unique sense of acoustics approach; so no surprise to see him mentioned in the mythical Nurse With Wound reference list. Chance meeting in an Alpine chalet of a roto-Bruhin and an AKRE." |