On October 9th 2016 Aspects Of Physics did a sound installation environment at Bread & Salt grain silos. Our good friend Jason Lane invited us to be apart of his silo series there. We had gone to the space a few times and took notes and calculated the 2 main silos resonated at a D 1/4 step flat. After trying out a few different ideas we realized that just hitting the side of a silo produced a really nice effect that sounded a lot like percussion we used on a song from our first album call Entrainment. Coincidentally I had been working on servo controlled percussion and this seemed like a great way to bring it to fruition. Once everything was setup we created a sound backdrop triggering the silos walls using a modified pattern from the Entrainment song along with new sound sources made for the night. Every hour on the hour we did a modified performance close to the original Entrainment which would slowly dissipated back into the sound environment. The following week we came back and did a multitrack recording and our pal and videographer supreme Bill Perrine shot footage for a video which you can see below.
Tech Notes
- Percussion arms controlled using an Arduino Uno with a midi shield in handmade 3D printed wood case
- Mallets are secured using a custom 3D printed mount which is attached to a servo which has very strong force and rotation speed
