Woebot
Well-known member
Found this in the Kraftwerk book:
"Part of the problem, as they found on their US tour, was that early synthesisers were notoriously unreliable and difficult to tune. Often they had to be turned on in the afternoon in order to be in tune for the evening. Even then, the heat from the audience or the lighting rig would put them out of tune again. These problems were further exacerbated by the differences in voltage between countries. At the time, Germany worked on 220 volts at 50 hertz whist France operated on 110 volts at 60 hertz. Ralh Hutter:
"I remember well that time we played in Paris on 110 volts and all the tempos ere out of tune. At 8pm the big factories that plug into the network were making the voltage fluctuate. Thats the reality, Peugeot were making our tempos change."
Whiuch reminded me of this about La Monte Young:
"It is no accident that Young derives the fundamental tones of his Dream House installations from the 60Hz Bb of the electrical grid; in fact, when setting up installations in Europe, Young adjusts his frequencies so that they fall within the harmonic series of a fundamental derived from the 50 Hz European electrical grid. "
More:
"The Bb figuratively echoes the wind Young famously recalls hearing as it whistled around the cabin of his childhood, and, more literally, resonates within a quarter tone of the whir of the machine shop where he worked as a teenager—the motors running off of the 60Hz current of the electrical grid, North America’s continual drone. It portends the 60Hz fundamental tone implied acoustically by the complex harmonics of the Dream House installations and even presages the Bb tambura drone to which Young would later sing raga—and, on at least one occasion, the cowboy songs of his childhood. The Bb at the center of the Trio is not simply a line, but a timeline, on which Young charts his personal and musical life.
and a bit more:
"“There are two examples of sounds of electrical power transformers that I remember listening to during the first four and a half years of my life. One was a telephone pole on the Bern road (there’s only one road in Bern, Idaho; it is gravel)... I used to stand next to this pole and listen to the sound. The other electrical sound was produced by a small power distribution station just outside of Montpelier next to a Conoco gas depot that my grandfather managed... Sometimes on warm days I would climb up on top of the huge gasoline storage tanks and sit in the hot sun, smelling the gasoline fumes, listening to the sounds, daydreaming and looking off at the mountains.”"
(sxtract from Jeremy Grimshaw: "The Tabula (not so) Rasa: La Monte Young’s Serial Works and the Beginnings of Minimalism, 1956-58")
What I like about this is how it dovetials with the idea of "Om" the tone which is the central vibration of the universe. La Monte's "Electric Grid Drones" thus serve as "The Urban Om"
And I couldn't resist including this which I found in Jane Grigson's "English Food"
(on discussing the roasting of Boned Roast Sirloin of Beef)
"Turn the heat down to mark 4, 180C (350F), and leave for 30 minutes per kilo (15 minutes per pound). This gives you rare beef. For a joint of 2 1/2 kilos(5lb upwards), reduce the oven temperature to mark 5, 190C (375F).
The snag about this method is low Sunday and Holiday gas pressures. With such problems, you will do better to stick to the method of the recipe above."
"Part of the problem, as they found on their US tour, was that early synthesisers were notoriously unreliable and difficult to tune. Often they had to be turned on in the afternoon in order to be in tune for the evening. Even then, the heat from the audience or the lighting rig would put them out of tune again. These problems were further exacerbated by the differences in voltage between countries. At the time, Germany worked on 220 volts at 50 hertz whist France operated on 110 volts at 60 hertz. Ralh Hutter:
"I remember well that time we played in Paris on 110 volts and all the tempos ere out of tune. At 8pm the big factories that plug into the network were making the voltage fluctuate. Thats the reality, Peugeot were making our tempos change."
Whiuch reminded me of this about La Monte Young:
"It is no accident that Young derives the fundamental tones of his Dream House installations from the 60Hz Bb of the electrical grid; in fact, when setting up installations in Europe, Young adjusts his frequencies so that they fall within the harmonic series of a fundamental derived from the 50 Hz European electrical grid. "
More:
"The Bb figuratively echoes the wind Young famously recalls hearing as it whistled around the cabin of his childhood, and, more literally, resonates within a quarter tone of the whir of the machine shop where he worked as a teenager—the motors running off of the 60Hz current of the electrical grid, North America’s continual drone. It portends the 60Hz fundamental tone implied acoustically by the complex harmonics of the Dream House installations and even presages the Bb tambura drone to which Young would later sing raga—and, on at least one occasion, the cowboy songs of his childhood. The Bb at the center of the Trio is not simply a line, but a timeline, on which Young charts his personal and musical life.
and a bit more:
"“There are two examples of sounds of electrical power transformers that I remember listening to during the first four and a half years of my life. One was a telephone pole on the Bern road (there’s only one road in Bern, Idaho; it is gravel)... I used to stand next to this pole and listen to the sound. The other electrical sound was produced by a small power distribution station just outside of Montpelier next to a Conoco gas depot that my grandfather managed... Sometimes on warm days I would climb up on top of the huge gasoline storage tanks and sit in the hot sun, smelling the gasoline fumes, listening to the sounds, daydreaming and looking off at the mountains.”"
(sxtract from Jeremy Grimshaw: "The Tabula (not so) Rasa: La Monte Young’s Serial Works and the Beginnings of Minimalism, 1956-58")
What I like about this is how it dovetials with the idea of "Om" the tone which is the central vibration of the universe. La Monte's "Electric Grid Drones" thus serve as "The Urban Om"
And I couldn't resist including this which I found in Jane Grigson's "English Food"
(on discussing the roasting of Boned Roast Sirloin of Beef)
"Turn the heat down to mark 4, 180C (350F), and leave for 30 minutes per kilo (15 minutes per pound). This gives you rare beef. For a joint of 2 1/2 kilos(5lb upwards), reduce the oven temperature to mark 5, 190C (375F).
The snag about this method is low Sunday and Holiday gas pressures. With such problems, you will do better to stick to the method of the recipe above."
