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1 0 t h j u n e 2 0 0 8 : n e w c r e v a s s e e x p l o r a t i o n !
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a cover of a song by the great multi-instrumentalist sufjan stevens, from his album "the avalanche": i'm not much of a singer, and i have no idea what the words mean but its a beautiful little song and i recommend his albums " illinois", "the avalanche", and "a sun came"
another minimal guitar tune, this time on electric guitar. named after some characters in a dream i had a few nights ago...!
on saturday dan, ali and i went to explore a crevasse on the nearby glacier. as usual these "slots" look fairly innocuous from the surface, but they are treated with immense care - usually the ones that you can see are the biggest ones, the only ones which have managed to avoid being "bridged" by snow. most crevasses are bridged, which means they can't be seen and you can easily fall through the bridge. for this reason many precautions are taken when travelling on foot on glaciated terrain. because this is the sort of thing that lies hidden below... |
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we abseiled into the unbridged section of the crevasse, and then proceed along it's covered length for one rope's length, with dan fixing the rope to the wall with ice screws. |
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looking back up towards ali, and the rope we abseiled down to get in. there were some amazing mushroom-like snow formations attached to the solid ice walls, and huge icicles embedded in the walls. |
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above, me below a beautiful ice xylophone - these icicles made great sounds but i didn't have a recording device unfortunately... (photo by ali massey (www.antarcticali.blogspot.com)) |
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a group photo just before we ascend the rope back out. |
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(photo by ali massey (www.antarcticali.blogspot.com)) |
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6th June : a guitar tune i recorded today.... can't wait til i can record on my own guitar! i think this sounds quite nice:
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3 r d j u n e 2 0 0 8 : b e n d i n g g u i t a r s i d e s |
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| the first nacreous
clouds of the year... these aren't the best examples but we'll
hopefully be seeing more extensive displays in the next few months.
these are stratospheric clouds which occur much higher in the atmosphere
than normal weather clouds which is why they shine well before dawn and
after dusk.
the following pictures are of my continued guitar making progress. starting to look sort of like a musical instrument? The Bending of the Sides was really exciting! you can download a timelapse of some of the process at this link:
Guitar Sides Bending Timelapse (right click and save as...) Much thanks to Al Homer (mechanic) who set up the torch, various steel pipes, and other apparatus required for this process....
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the first pipe was good to start with, but it couldn't provide a tight enough curve for some parts, so Al slices me off another bit of steel pipe... |
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the basic setup, with the pipe heating up due to the oxy-acetylene torch in one end... al holds a nifty mechanics tool which gives the temperature of the surface in degrees C - we're aiming for 170 - 200 degrees, since the idea is that the rosewood sides are soaked for 15 minutes to absorb water, then pressed onto the pipe, boiling the water in the wood and steaming the fibres to soften them and allow the wood to bend (see below): |
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8 hours, 1 lunch, 3 metal tubes, and lots of sweat later.... the sides of a antarctic guitar settling in the mould... woohoo! |
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website by rob webster -
two thousand and eight emedentesathotmaildotcom |
