Mort Rye: Torque (pre-release demo CD-R) CD Track Listing
Mort Rye
Torque (pre-release demo CD-R) (2002)
Recently, for Christmas, I received a set of five toy tops. They are a European toy that is awesome to play with. The tops come in five decreasing sizes, and the point of the game is to get them all spinning with the largest one on the bottom and the smallest on the top. I realized that if I lay my electric guitar flat and spun the tops on it they produce uniquesounds that have a nice element of randomness to them I decided this would be a good basis for a piece, but there were decisions that needed to bemade. I had to have the distortion on in order to bring out the more subtle sound the tops made rubbing against the strings. The piece has a natural period, where the tops wind down and there is a cycle as I wind up the next top and an explosion as the tops hit the strings at full speed. Ialso decided that I liked the idea of hearing the tops from the top and bottom, so I recorded with a mic the sound of the tops spinning on the guitar, as well as the output from the guitar itself. Like two different perspectives on the same sound. I did this twice, both times for as long asthe tape would run in my four-track... or about 15 minutes. The first iteration I used the three smallest tops, since the smaller ones bounced around more. I used the two smallest until about half way through the piecewhen I lost the smallest one under the table and then I used the second two smallest for the rest of the piece. For the second iteration I used all five tops (realizing that the big ones staying in one place lent a nice drone) and set as a goal for myself to get all five tops spinning at once on the guitar (as a variation on the original top game.) Both times the placement of the tops was determined by experimentation. Some places onthe guitar would cause the tops to start sliding up and down the guitar faster, and other places it would hold in one place causing a drone sound. I named the pieces Torque A and Torque B because on those occasions where I give myself the opportunity to sit down and allow a random word to come into my head, 'torque' seems to usually be one of the first. In this case,it also happened to be somewhat appropriate.
This misc cd contains 2 tracks and runs 31min 3sec.
Freedb: 16074502
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Category
: Music
Tags
: music songs tracks misc Misc- Mort Rye - Torque A (15:27)
- Mort Rye - Torque B (15:33)