Accidental Music

Constantly, everyday,sirens and shouts from down below outside fit right in with whatever I'm listening to, despite the fact that it's annoying as hell, it usually fits right in. This would probably confuse me if I were to dose in my current residence.

When I lived in Graham Road where it impacts Mare Street, ie overlooking the traffic lights, the traffic noise was clearly immense. Every week at the same time, the dustcart would haul up, and go through its entire opening, tipping, whatever, routine: as it did so, it played this fabulous deep seven-note tune, same every time, kind of like Close Encounters, only microtonal. The whole range probably was less than a minor third. My flatmates would run and shout "Mark's singing the traffic again" — and they were right, because I was.

I used to travel on old slam door trains on the line between Byfleet and New Haw and Wimbledon every weeknight for 18 months or so. Just as the trains came out of B+NH station and at a few points between there and Wimbledon the movement of the wheels against the tracks made this constantly shifting shimmering sound, sort of like the guitar on To Heres Knows When only pushed up a couple of octaves. I usually had to strain to hear it through the normal hum and clatter, but with a bit of concentration it seemed to loom above the background as though I was hearing it in a different way to the rest. looking back on it, I strongly suspect that I was hearing it differently, in that to a least some extent I was willing it into existence and therefore hearing it in my head without it passing through my ears. Certainly, no-one else I ever travelled with ever seemed to notice it.

Whenever I visit my friends in Scotland I am shocked at the noises their bathroom plumbing makes. Not because it makes noise; I figure "house music" is par for the course in Govan squats - but because of its uncanny resemblance to the whirry, slightly electrified regular beats of dance music. Now I know why Glasgow kids are so mad for the dance - it reminds them of the most comforting room in the house.

I walked into the bathroom of a house I was renting w/ some friends for a weekend and heard the most beautiful deep, slowly oscillating drone. Turned out the jets on the hottub had been turned on w/ out there being any water in the tub. It was this amazing low, humming sucking sound. I wanted to record it.

The dawn chorus, occasionally.

My mum's old spin-dryer... y'know the old journalistic stand-by 'spine-chilling' - well, this rickety mid-60s centrifuge in a peeling white shell, with its mildewed drain and fraying AC cord, genuinely had that effect on me. Frightening and entrancing at the same time. It was hair-raising jet roar, low-note womby comfort and fire hazard all at once. See also: Maryanne Amacher, Penderecki, the Victoria Line between Highbury & Islington and Finsbury Park.

Trains are a marvellous source of this kind of material - the Pinefox will back me up on the rich tones of the Eurostar escaping from its brakes at Ashford International on a clear spring afternoon last year; finding corroboration for the shrill, tangled, metallic birdsong of Inter-City train toilet sinks (it comes out of the plughole - it really does) might be more difficult.

Leaky kitchen faucet + cats dining = Clicks + Cuts.

The sound of a train whistle at the dead of night from 3 miles away. Just that hollow reverb of a whistle, it reminds of Trans-Europe Express...

My mother slicing cucumbers, not when she's going fast but when she's watching TV or something at the same time. The regularity of it, occasional pauses, falling back into a pattern. So that if I listened long enough, there might be a pattern that encompasses it all.

The sound, through my window, of cars going by through light rain; makes them a bit more muted, and swooshier. Middle of the day is best because there's a more regular flow of traffic.

Traffic around 10 - midnight on a Friday or Saturday (other days too sometimes) tends to be annoying because I live in campustown right near most of the bars in Ames, so every so often (irregularly enough that it's all the more obnoxious) I get people driving by gunning their engines and possibly hooting and hollering (if it's summer), since I'm at just the right distance from the nearest stoplight for them to be still getting up to speed. And also they are out cruising.

I wrote once on josh blog about the drum corps across the lake last fall (I think, fall) mixed serendipitously with an Autechre track from LP5.

In '99 after spending eight hours and fifty dollars (on drugs) at a rave, I went home, had a shower and went to work at a cinema for another eight hours. Every machine in the candy bar was making music of some sort that I could hear from miles away, especially the Frozen Coke machine. It broke at some point in the afternoon, and even though I was on the other side of the foyer at the time and had no idea, I *knew*, because it stopped making Mills-style minimal techno and started making pyschedelic trance. Only the whole thing wasn't a good experience really; closer to awful, actually.

tube trains when overground

We are all on crack. (Except Robin, who is still taking belladonna.)

Friend of mine used to have a postal franking machine in his office which he swore made the same sound as 'The Power' by Snap.

I was on a train once and you know that sound produced when you have that friction between the wheels of the train and the rail. Well, that screeching sound seemed to go on for an eternity (30 seconds, anyway). I heard pretty much the same sound as produced by keiji Hano's guitar on the second disc of Fushitsusha's last album- I saw it... That of which I could only sense (about 10 minute mark, I think).

The passengers, of course, found it uncomfortable, I loved it though.

I could have sworn I'd answered this question already, but it must have been another forum...

Oh, the Fifth Avenue Sewer Sucker! Makes every dronerock kid's heart beat a little faster. I remember the first time I heard it, I came out the office, and heard this SOUND... like a thousand orchestras all playing the same note at once in different octaves... like the sound the Sonic Boom Arkestra will play in heaven! I ran around Rockefeller Centre trying to see if some music was playing somewhere, but it turned out that they were cleaning out the Fifth Ave sewers- huge pipes that ran the entire length of the island of Manhattan, all oscillating and vibrating and making the most BEAUTIFUL sound I've ever heard.

Ah, Anton's fridge. An ex-band mate I knew back in NYC, who had the most AMAZING fridge-buzz going on in his flat. I swear, the first time I heard it, I asked him "do you have some ambient Eno piece playing, cause this is lovely!" But no... alas. It was his fridge. I think at one time or another he'd had basically the entire SoundLab illbient/ambient collective over his flat trying to tape it, but to no avail. It had to be experienced to be believed. It sounded like a VCS3.

I can't beat anyone else's plaudits for distant trains - at night, or even at the end of a hazy late summer afternoon - or cars splashing through the drizzle. Traffic in general as composition: that bass tone running through it.

But also, disembarking from a London underground train and hearing the dull 'ding-dong'. Sometimes two notes are enough to hold a melody up. I usually walk away singing in the key it's given me.

Oh, and the sound of sirens and aircraft around and over Maryon Park, c. August 1999. Someone should make a record out of that.

Some noise disc called Storm and Stress.

..... oh wait, they were a BAND???

Hey, you know that rain-and-traffic stuff - I can hear it *now*!

Trains have already been done several times so I'll offer up this: the sound of multiple UPS units beeping frantically at slightly different pitches and tempos, mixed with the footsteps and keyclicks of IT people rushing to shut everything down in time.

Sean: What is a UPS unit?

Sorry to interrupt -- I've just remembered that the most common accidental music that I hear is the whirr/whine of ATM machines, 90% of which, just before dispensing your cash, make a perky little run that sounds exactly like the "CHARGE" organ theme that they play at ballparks. Dum-ta-dum-DUM-ta-DUUUUM.... CHAAAAARGE! (or rather, CAAAAASH)

Weird---the ATM whir-sequence in my town is a dead ringer for Woody the Woodpecker's laugh, with the ending trill comprised of the actual sound of the bills flipping off of the roll. So I think $160 would be the perfect amount to withdraw.

Soundwise: always ceiling fans for me. My current one, at its lowest setting, creaks in about the same melodic pattern as that opening loop of "To Here Knows When."

Someone on this forum has made a record out of (or, at least, using) the sounds of fireworks in Hackney, June 1999. You probably wouldn't like it, though, Reynard.

Mark: explain your drug analogy. I'm intrigued (he writes, from an incredibly over-protected perspective).

UPS unit: Uninterruptible Power Supply. Basically a big battery that will power your computer if the utility power fails, emitting a lot of beeping or whining if that happens to let everyone in the area know (if the lights going out weren't enough of an indication).

I, too, am 'over-protected'. Thank goodness.

How could I forget the fact that my office computer, when I switch it off, makes the sound from the beginning of 'Parades Go By'? The reason I have always forgotten to mention to this - I meant to mention it to Steady Mike so many times - is that I only hear it when I switch *off*, which means I'm leaving the office, and have shut down e-mail etc.

I was in Belfast one Saturday in 1991, and had enjoyed rather too many pints with friends discussing the anti-Gulf war rally we'd just attended. It was a pleasant afternoon and the city centre was full of shoppers. I found myself by a band-stand where the local Hare- Krishnas were hard at it chanting and drumming. Along came a fire + brimstone Paisleyite preacher with a megaphone ranting in an impenetrable Belfast patois about us all going to hell, whilst above us hovered the British army's eye-in-the-sky helicopter. I sat for a while listening to this unlikely combination.

The Hare-Krishna monks got more ecstatic as they tried to out-do the preacher, which only spurred him on, only his warnings of eternal damnation became increasing mangled by his malfunctioning megaphone. The helicopter blades swooshed ever lower. I was transfixed, it sounded just fabulous.

Robin: idea being yr hot-nature sound was the only thing that eg Coleridge might have got a hit off. Tho actually I think only Romantic Era chix used belladonna as eyedrops, to dilate the pupils and look total hentai porn.

This isn't quite on topic, but it's kinda close enough to fit in, so here goes:

I had Can's Ege Bamyasi playing on the stereo in my living room. Across the street from my apartment is an outdoors skating rink/basketball court where local kids hang out a lot (be patient I'll explain the connection). I then got up to go to the kitchen to get a cup of tea and then kind of fiddled around near my bookshelves looking for a book I needed for a memorandum I was writing. Anyway, I'd forgotten that I was playing any music at all and while I was thumbing through a book I noticed this music. I thought at first that it was the kids across the street at the roller rink playing some rap/hip-hop song or other (it sounded like hip- hop), then when I went back into the living room I realized it was the Can album.

I'm not making much sense.

FWIW, Mark: two years ago I'd have regarded the Coleridge comparison as the greatest insult imaginable. But I've mellowed no end since.

You probably wouldn't like it, though, Reynard.

You never know, he might.

Wahey. I wonder, I wonder ...

Mind you, he probably doesn't even know why I call him "Reynard".

Because he spilled his guts into a shopping bag? Does he know now?

Weird musical noises: the asthmatic chugging of Routemaster buses stopped at the traffic lights outside my window. The Brrrr/shudder made by the fridge when it's late at night, for no good reason. The strange filling-out electric drone of TV noise when you know it's on in another room or flat, but can't hear details. The Chok! noise made by the electricity meter in my living room. The onetwo.....three slice of the printer. I could go on but I'm surfing deadlines in shark-infested waters!

oh wow, there was construction going on outside the place i was staying in jersey city. and there was this really big tall machine that was sort of thrusting and driving some stuff. metal into metal, i think. and it had this really intense pounding beat going that started heavy then had this lighter sliding cymbal-crash sort of thing afterwards. it was great. also, the obvious radio/tv static. there was a time when channel 99 gave you this amazing layered rhythmic static pattern. i recorded some and mixed and distorted it and shit. oh, and have you ever hung out near a power station? they have some amazing resonant buzzes going sometimes.