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6 t h m a r c h 2 0 0 8
g u i t a
r m o u l d
had a good relaxing sunday
with crappy weather - an excuse to get in
the carpenter's workshop and carry on making
my guitar mould...
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5 t h m a r c h 2 0 0 8
d j e m b
e p l a y i n g i
n c r e v a s s e
& g u i t a r b
u i l d i n g . . .
hola!
i am currently sitting down to write on a
very lovely saturday night, and much to my
delight i have a bottled ale on my right and
some very loud manu chao coming out of the
speakers - things are good, as they usually
are on a day when the sun comes out to cheer
us. i have a few little bits of things
which may be of some interest... here
is a short recording i made in the crevasse
last week of my djembe which i made a couple
of months ago:
djembe
in crevasse.mp3 (right click and
save as...)
also
i have started making an acoustic guitar.
a little bit of a step up from a djembe, you
might say, and you'd be right. my plan is
that if you do everything slowly enough, no
physical thing will ever be travelling fast
enough to make a mistake... well, i'm just
taking everything with care and time i should
have my own guitar by some point in
winter. here are a few pics of the
preparatory work (making a perspex template for
half of the body, and making a plywood mould in
which to build the body of the instrument):
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perfect timing!
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i've mentioned the projects of tris (fiddler
in our bands since i got here, and comms
manager). so i will now - tris built
himself a few interesting little things over
winter, and he was out a couple of weeks ago
on the edge of the wharf with one of the
most successful - a subsea remotely operated
vehicle (ROV) with a video camera lens on it
that he made mostly out of plumbing tubes
and polystyrene... it is
controlled with an array of buttons on the
end of a 30 metre cable that allows it to
get pretty deep, whilst the whole thing can
be watched on a little TV on the
surface.... a few pics: |
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you can just see
the two blu strips of the ROV on the surface before
it dives. the TV for watching the images is
shielded by the upturned wooden box. the box
and pole on the left of the picture is another
project that tris has built with matt balmer that's
pretty clever too : it's a hydrophone which
permanently lives in the sea and records the sounds
of seals and whales in the bay, broadcasting the
audio up to a computer in the base by radio
link... nifty.
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1 0 t
h f e b 2 0 0 8 . . .
t h e
m u s i c o f c r e v a s s
e s . . .
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on friday
evening after work, i went into a local
crevasse (regular readers will have seen
pictures of this on my old blog, and also from
the homepage of this website) with drew cook,
one of the field assistants that i wintered
with last year. i was armed with hands,
and my hands were armed with a recording
device, and myself and drew wandered through
the dripping crevasse sampling various sounds
like the vast icicle xylophone (glaciophone?),
which make a wonderful variety of noises
when hit in various ways with different
"implements" like ice axes, feet,
hands, metal bars, drum sticks, drum brushes,
other bits of ice etc etc... i also got
sounds of hitting my metal water bottle down
there and various peripheral sounds like the
creaking of boots and crampons on ice,
dripping and running water etc etc. I
have moulded them all into a piece of music
for your enjoyment which you can download
here:
the
crevasse
(right click
and save as...)
soon i will add
a recording of my antarctic-made drum which i
also lowered down into the crevasse and
recorded a few minutes worth of playing in
it's "natural" environment.
maybe a world first - playing a traditional
african drum in an ice cave?
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6 t
h f e b 2 0 0 8 . . .
l o n
g o v e r d u e u p d a t e
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hello blog
readers, it has been nearly a month since my
last update and i must right my rubbishness.
excuses? yes, i have some but none of
them are any good. it has been an
interesting month which has seen us complete
the 2007/08 field season, seen the departure
of 2 or our 4 twin otter aircraft, the visit
and departure of the HMS Endurance (where the
band played our furthest afield gig - a few
metres seaward of the wharf), and the move
into our long-awaited and newly completed
Building - New Bransfield House. all
good stuff. and to supplement that dose
of healthy activity, some extra-curricular
enjoyments have been forthcoming in the form
of boat trips to Leonie Island (a fairly rare
event, and my first time that far out from
base in a boat - 9km), and a few days skiing
up a stork bowl (dickie above during the first
of those).
The new
building is brilliant - really large and
nicely kitted out especially for the purposes
of eating, drinking and everything else food
related. pictures of our new relaxation
place soon, but i don't have any
yet.
In fact it has
been a bit dry on the photo front recently -
continued bad weather has scared the beauty of
the place which is hiding further north until
a gap in the barrage of rain, wind, sleet,
snow etc etc allows a return.
The last dash-7
has arrived, and the last dash-7 will depart -
it looks like sunday will be the day that most
of the management go North and which is kind
of the start of Winter. of course there
is still "last call" of the RRS
james clark ross in mid-april when the last
oif the non-winterers leave but it will feel
like winter is approaching fast with 40 folk
left after that plane leaves. hopefully
i will become more inspired once again with
the camera and provide some visual stimulation
on these pages soon, but for now here are a
couple of pictures from our "folk
night" a couple of weeks back which was
an opportunity for anyone on base to come on
stage and do something (don't know who to
credit these to im afraid). first one is
me doing a few songs with Drew, the second
with Riet "the Angry Belgian" Van de
Velde and Tris on fiddle. we're much
happier than we look!! until next
time.... rob
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