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.