Completely finished “20032009200″ which is great as it gave me a good outline for “21032009200″ and did a lot of thinking about the project in general. The more I get deeper into the piece I see that it is becoming more logical, more mathematical, almost like a computer program, not it’s structure but it’s themes it’s use of those ideas. The piece is about the museum and in preparation for it I looked into the history of the machines, the history of the building, the people, encoding, etc if I had just written it in without looking into it, it wouldn’t have the depth it now has, it is a study of The National Museum of Computing.

“Function” for instance does work like a function call in a program it appears later in the music, but it goes back to “Late at the office” (which also take rhythms from “Obsolete?” the final piece) and returns with additional rhythms. It also goes back to “Math” and does the same. Yes, I am aware composers have been sewing themes throughout pieces forever, but it’s new to me especially a piece in 3/4 briefly overlayed with harsh rhythms in 4/4 definetely stands out and it’s nice. I think I will draw a diagram.

“Math” has a very specific rhythm and I hadn’t been able to get it out of my head, it uses a –   – - -   – rhythm. In morse code it would approximately be E S E, that doesn’t stand for anything it’s just a rhythm that was in my head. Anyway, to me it sound like a typewriter slowly tapping out a message, which in turn made me think about the Colossus Typewriter, and then about the encryption or masking that the Lorenz used. If A is the plain text and C is the obscuring character then F is the cipher-text (you can find out more about this here at Tony Sale’s website). So I overlayed the rhythm with itself thus creating a different rhythm, again this is a practice used for ages by composers it just makes me think about it different when dealing with this subject matter as the rhythm could then be turned back into morse code with a different outcome. This doubled-up rhythm is then doubled again and makes an appearance in “20032009200″.

But thats all I am gonna give you, you’ll have to come and listen. Closely.

After getting all the samples, today was mainly spent chopping them up. I am slowly putting together “200320092000″ and “210320092000″ as I have taken the rhythms from the adding machines and reproduced them in various forms both song are completely different so both performances will be too. I have completely finished “BEEP” and the video for it, and it has amused everyone that has seen it, which is a good sign. Finished “Late at the office” if Sly & The Family Stone made music with these machines I think this is how it would sound.

It seems that “Obsolete?” is gonna be 90% rhythm which is quite nice, and has about 100+ different rhythms in it, instead of the five main pieces I had in my head there are about twelve shorter pieces. I am slowly putting them in order and piecing together the video as well, which is the difficult bit. Making a thirty minute music video in two months is quite a difficult task, I must remember that in the future.

So back in the studio tomorrow too.

Ok Friday the 13th over without a hitch, I arose early today at 5.30am to set off for TNMOC on my usual four hour journey to get there, it was a good day. I had specific tasks to do, like re record the Brunsviga and Bulmers adding machines, but with specific numbers in them, one was 20/03/2009/2000 which will of course be 20th March 2009 at 8pm which will be half way through the first performance of “Obsolete?”. By putting the number in and turning the handle it creates a rhythm, and that rhythm will be used for basis of part of the composition, which in turn will make the 21/03/2009/2000 which will of course be 21st March 2009 at 8pm performance slightly different to the one on the 20th.

The second bit of encoding was to encode the word “BEEP” into morse code, which lead to several conversations of “What does it mean”, “Beep”, “No Matthew what does it mean”, “Beep”. Then after encoding “BEEP” it creates a morse code rhythm a rhythm of beeps. Which I find a amusing the idea of creating a piece of music out of beeps.

The day was interrupted but in a nice way as I was featured on BBC News 24, E24 which can be viewed here for the next 7 days via BBC iPlayer. It was great I really like the Elliott 803 (Please note I have now spelt it correctly this time) and it was wonderful to see it on TV.

Back to work me and a few of the other volunteers started turning on random machines, I would get a call along the lines of “come have a listen to this” and I would come and record the sound and film it. Things like M22 Paper tape punch and a line printer that screeched really loud, all good.

And then it happened, I wandered past Colossus and it was different, the sound was different, Colossus when running properly has a set rhythm and a set sound, but today it was running a different algorithm not only that but some of the panels for the relays were off, so you could see inside even more and it altered the sound as well. After a few questions I set up recorded and filmed and was very happy with the new sounds from Colossus.

I did a bit on the BBC Micro mainly recorded longer versions of the sounds I already had not much needed doing on that.

The Elliot 803 was out of comission today for repairs which gave a chance to chat to the volunteers about it’s inner workings, and found out about it’s ability to created “logic waves” they said they wouldn’t be powerfull enough to power a speaker without amplification, but it might make the Elliott 803 sound different. We also got to turn on the tape reader, the Elliott 803 uses a very unique system. From what I understand it uses 35mm film covered in maganetic stuff? So we turned that on and filmed and recorded that too.

So loads of new sounds and loads to get on with tomorrow and Tuesday in the studio.

Was meant to go out tonight and see VV Brown at the Barfly in Camden, but then came the snow :( I am sure I will bump into her again soon.

So I spent pretty much the whole day listening to “THEN GOTO 1980″ over and over, I am happy with all the parts, just not the arrangement, it won’t take much longer. It’s quite long though, almost 6 minutes!

I have also started work on the piece called “Very Economical” that uses the Elliot 803 after tinkering with it for an hour, I realised something obvious. As I want people to experience the sounds of the Elliot 803 the way they would outside of the performance, I realised I wouldn’t be able to use harmony. The Elliot 803 is only capable of one channel, one beep at a time, in order to get around that I am gonna have to flick between the notes very fast to create pseudo harmony which the Elliot 803 is capable of. It’s “Very Economical” because it will only use one channel, it is only capable of producing around two octaves, and only in F Major (with no E it would seem), and it was used for mathematics and banking, is that too much? I am pleased how it is turning out, it won’t be a very long piece, just extremely elaborate and yet economical with it’s use of sound?

So just to recap on the Elliot 803, one channel, 2 octaves, F major with no E, not in tune with other instruments, maybe not entirely in tune with itself and I am not allowed to pitch shift it to fix it. I love the Elliot 803. It’s amazing.

“Math” is now done, it’s ends the way I want it to, instead of it abruptly being destroyed by a cataclysmic beat.

I have been working on this for a couple of weeks and suddenly realised I haven’t blogged about it and that I have only been talking about my visits to the museum, collecting and designing the sounds. Anyway, I have loads of it done, it might sound crazy anouncing a performance of something that hasn’t been entirely written yet, but in all fairness it’s all in my head and usually stays there for a couple of months and it only takes a few hours in the studio to scoop it out and pop it into the real world once I have a few of the sounds.

Already finished are “While”, “THEN GOTO 1980″, “Simple Math” and “Math” which was what you may have heard in the trailer. There are a lot of little short pieces that link together the larger pieces and tie theme all together thematically, rhythmically and so on. It is very weird writing this and “And The Revoltion” back to back as they are so different. But overall very pleased, especially with “THEN GOTO 1980″ it features alot of machines from the 80′s obviously but alot of ones I haven’t used before like the MSX-HX10 and the Sord CGL M5 and they are lovely. There will probably also be Dragon 32 on there on bass and the Atari 800XL and the BBC Micro will supplying the percussion.

I will be heading to the museum on Saturday to hopefully wire a cable directly in to the brain of the Elliot 803 I have to be under supervision for this as it’s quite dangerous, but will undoubtedly result in the optimum sound quality possible, so it’s gotta be done.

Then I am heading off to Scotland next week to be locked away to write the rest and tweak everything a little bit more.

I was all on my own at the museum today apart from the builders working on the new displays. So it gave me a chance to have a go on DECTalk (a speech synthesis computer) and make it say funny things, I’m not going to use it for much but it was quite good fun and made it do what I needed it to do. I got straight, to work first up was the MSX HX-10 which is lovely it has the most deep bass sound every and much like the Elliot 803 it can cut through alot of other computers sounds. Sadly the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A I was hoping to work on was unresponsive, but it looked amazing, shiny silver thing. I hope it can be repaired. Also the Acorn Atom was without power. So I redid some of the BBC Micro and much to my amusement it was tuned differently to the day before? I also managed to get some 5″ floppy disks formtted, not sure if I should be so excited about that but I am. I also got to document the IBM 029 Keypunch which is turning out to be responsible for a large part of the percussion throughout “Obsolete?”.

I stayed overnight in Bletchley, so I could get to work early, but I didn’t realise that I would be able to get in this early. I started at  7.41am and got absolutely loads done. I got all of the sounds I need out of the Sord M5, BBC Micro, Amstrad CPC 464, and The Atari 800XL. I had a good hour with the Elliot 803 before the museum opened. Recorded loads of calculators grinding, clinking and crunching.

Just as I was leaving I discovered three “new” computers in an area I hadn’t really looked around before, An MSX-HX10, Texas Instruments TI-99/4A and an Acorn Atom. Sadly the MSX had some crazy plug on it but luckily Tony Fraser was able to rewire it for me. 4pm time to go home but glad as I got absolutely loads done.

Soon I shall start work on the 16-bit machines like the Atari ST and the Amiga 500.

Yet another trip to the museum today, mainly for interviews for BBC 6 Music and BBC News 24.

I got to get the sounds of the Dragon 32 done, it either seems to produce rather unique square waves or it’s attempting to create a very rough triangle wave as shown on the oscilloscope, either way that’s how it’s gonna be for this project, but it does sound rather nice. Will get to work on the Sord M5, BBC Micro & Atari 800XL tomorrow.

Also it’s interesting to note that alot of the machines aren’t in tune with eachother not only that, they are often not in tune with other machines of the same type. So some of the machines will have solo performances which I quite like the idea of anyway.

One of the rules I have made for myself for this project is that I can’t alter the pitch or add any post production to the sounds, I want them to be as the listener would experience them whilst in front of the machine.

My visit today to TNMOC was great all of the other researchers are now aware of what I am doing and why I was so obsessed with the sound side of the machines and I got to talk openly to them about what I was doing. Again I was helped by John Sinclair, he showed me the “double 5 shift” procedure on the Elliot 803 twice so I could memorise how to do it, and I finally did.

The other day I went into the storage area where they keep the museums excess computers, it was like going shopping in the 80′s. I picked up a Atari 800XL, Dragon 32, Oric Atmos, Oric 1, Grundy Newbrain, and ofcourse a BBC Micro and a few others, and assembled them in my workshop area. I also dug out a Sord CGL M5, the x and the l key was jammed down, so I had to open and clean it. It now works perfectly and is ready to be used for some serious chip tune music.

Apart from the Atari 800xl and the BBC Micro, “Obsolete?” will feature mainly computers that I have never used before, so to get the project done I am having to learn my way around about twenty new machines, yes alot of them are z80′s and 6502′s but they all have their unique quirks to them.

So today I mainly spent poking at a Dragon 32, making go beep, quite simple yet enjoyable stuff, I did however notice that the clock sped up and down only by milliseconds but still noticable. I must remember to try out POKE 65495,0 which effectively doubles the BASIC ROM Interpreter speed.

Next week will will be an intensive week of working on these machines and I am quite excited about it.

I am very excited.

Recently I Pixelh8 have had the good fortune, with the help of The National Museum of Computing and the Performing Rights Society Foundation, to have a huge music project of mine funded. The project is to write a piece of music composed from sounds from some of the rarest and earliest computers and computing devices in the world to be performed at the World War II code breaking centre Bletchley Park, Milton Keynes on March 20th and 21st 2009.

The project entitled “Obsolete?” will make use of machines such as Colossus Mark 2 world’s first programmable, digital, electronic, computing device used for code breaking in World War II and probably one of, if not the most significant computer in the world. Another computer to be used is Elliot 803 from 1960, a giant machine that has only 4k!!! I think it’s one of only three left in the world and I love it!

The blogs leading up to it have now also been declassified and can be accessed by clicking here.

On the flipside the piece will also feature several other commonplace computing devices that have either been discarded or branded as “Obsolete?” as time moved on, so yes I will be using the ubiquitous BBC Micro too.

This will be chip tune music but unlike any other you have ever heard.

These machines have been restored to working order and in some cases completely reconstructed by volunteers and researchers at TNMOC, and I am honoured to be associated with these hard working men and women and the unique history of Bletchley Park.

This is to be one of many computer music related projects I am hoping to bring to the museum and I am very, very excited. I strongly recommend you go and visit The National Museum of Computing in the meantime, but you won’t get any more information about “Obsolete?” just yet, as it is classified information.

March 20th, 2009 tickets can be purchased here and March 21st, 2009 tickets can be purchased here. The evening will include the performance, Q&A with myself about the music, a special tour of the museum and a visit to Colossus. Only one hundred tickets per evening so hurry!

Pixelh8