this piece is something i’ve been working on for quite a while. it uses a piezo driver, which thanks to the lovely nicholas collins i know how to make now. the piezos i’ve been happily soldering into contact mic arrangements are actually made to PRODUCE sound rather than absorb it from a surface. if you solder a piezo to the output of an audio output transformer [with an 8 ohm load on one side], you get a vibrating disc, which when applied to a surface, will turn that surface into a speaker.
here’s mine – the transformer is housed in a little taped-up box with a speaker drawn on to remind me which way to connect it.
because the audio output transformer has to have an 8 ohm input, i have to connect it to the output of my radio shack amplifier [which delivers this load], and then the audio i want to amplify into its input. i will eventually get around to putting drivers into a more sophisticated arrangement without the radio shack amp [i have designs on a big glut of them all singing together].
i’m not too sure yet how artistic this piece is, although it clearly has designs in that direction. i recorded my voice onto a cassette tape on my sony tc 152sd tape recorder [a wonderful machine i found in a charity shop a long time ago - it's an old bootlegger's device i believe], and although the speech isn’t scripted in any way i do read out a poem by judy grahn at the end. she is great, if you like poetry you should check her out. i went through a phase of recording my friends taped letters after i picked this machine up, and i would inevitably end up reading poems and things too. as i explain in the piece, i’m not too comfortable with the sound of my spoken voice and although i have ambitions to do spoken word/music and poetry recordings, my voice is still putting me off, and it makes my poetry vocabulary a bit limited… nerves i suppose.
anyway, during this video the audio reverts back to the ‘clean’ tape playing when i turn off the radio shack amp before switching piezo positions. when the piezo is applied to the guitar though, that is what you hear – i’ve just turned down the source a bit and it distorts less. ah my faithful guitar and its clarity.
there will be more of these driver explorations on here soon – i am already thinking about the other permutations.
