Thursday 31 May 2018

Milton Keynes Gallery improvised music night (Scratch night)

My Ronzatori had it's first performance at one of Milton Keynes art galleries Improvised music nights (Scratch Nights). Here's a video of Sound artist Johnny Hill playing my machine, accompanied on guitar by Jakub M.


I was very pleased with the variety of sounds it could achieve over the course of being played for nearly two hours.

The Theremin Vox web site has some sound clips of intonarumori. Here you can identify those sounds made by a rubbing or plucking disc, the string being hit and the drum membrane being struck.
 
http://www.thereminvox.com/filemanager/list/12/index.html

Wednesday 23 May 2018

The Ronzatori Intonarumori adding the mechanisms

It was my intention to try and replicate the Ronzatori as truthfully to the photograph as I could but this has proved to be difficult.

I believe my mechanisms still remain true to the sound of the intonarumori but are more practical and easier for me to execute. Also the addition of extra mechanisms and motor speed controllers allows me more control and variations during a performance.
As you can see I've used small geared motors instead of the bell hammer buzzer mechanism used originally. I did try to use a buzzer but found the mechanism jammed as the string was tightened and pulled the drum membrane towards the hammer/ lever. A rotating 'nunchaku' type mechanism seem to work just as effectively to beat against the membrane.



A further mystery was the 'gurgler' mechanism Russolo describes. The mechanism in the original photograph looks like a weighted vertical metal rod which is dangled and presumably hit against the string. I found this difficult to replicate. It seemed easier to have this metal rod hit the string horizontally using gravity and it effected by a sudden drop cam.


Of course once you start playing around with mechanisms which effect the strings other ideas come to mind. These other possibilities must have occurred to Russolo and his assistant Ugo Piatti whilst making the intonarumori so such alternate mechanisms could have been used in the many other machines. Here I've added a further nunchaku and a lever/bow which strokes the string.


Finally all these mechanisms are further controlled by these small motor speed controllers. I appreciate Russolo would not have been able to do this using micro controllers.
The Ronzatori fully wired up. Note the card board safety shield. It was pointed out to me that as the instrument is often played with the top open in order to see the working mechanisms, so there could be a health and safety issue with bits flying off.

I hadn't thought of potential H&S issues but here I'm reminded of performances of  Max Eastley, Steve Beresford, Paul Burwell, and David Toop's Whirled Music. Where the performers had to protect both themselves and the audience from the instruments which they 'whirled'.