Last week’s Bike Show on Resonance fm was fascinating. Jack has discovered a number of experimental musicians who use bicycles as musical instruments, such as the bikelophone above (you can hear samples of the latter here).
Jack has also pledged to deliver the London premiere of Godfried-Willem Raes’ 2nd Symphony, the ‘Symphony for Singing Bicycles‘. It is performed by a minimum of 12 cyclists equipped with dynamo-powered loudspeakers.
By cycling at different velocities, (the last cyclist overtakes continuouslythe whole group), glissandi are obtained. At very specific velocities, resonance will occur in the tubes. By cycling on different pavements, timbre-variation and frequency modulation is obtained. Cobble-stones provoke tremolos, narrow streets reverb and echo the sounds
Love that, quite hard to find enough room where you won’t be drowned out by the cars round here though.
My friend Huw is in the Levenshulme Bicycle Orchestra, I’ve heard a few clips and it sounds interesting – they are playing on Saturday http://www.levenshulmebicycleorchestra.com/
and this just came up on digg
http://createdigitalmusic.com/2006/11/28/nutcracker-suite-played-exclusively-on-bicycle-parts/
The Ride of the Sugar Plum Fairy…
Don’t you just love a novelty song? Especially when it’s played on bike parts………
[...] 20 November 2006: experimental music and the bicycle, via the all-bike blog Velorution [...]
I attended once such a concert. It was fascinating.I really liked it.