familia: delay


familia: Electrocoustic = 2007
species: Feedback Harp

The Feedback Harp is a collaborational work of Ben Houston and Arius Blaze.

This piece was an incredibly ambitious undertaking...We worked on it for 3 months!

We intended for this piece to feedback controllably, to be sampled and altered in as many ways as we could think of...The result is an enormous mashup of sound with a very sweet undertone to it - with the added bonus of gritty possibilities.

We designed the string section to feed through several circuits...First it runs side by side through a low tech pitch shifter and analog echo with controls for feedback, time, and, eq's and input levels...

The pitch shifter also runs through the echo and can be faded in or out. It has two two-way switches that shift pitch up or down or in combination, or knob to effect feedback and decay and a switch to filter some of that feedback.

The output signal is a mix of the echo and the shifter..

Those signals are run into a much more high tech sampler delay circuit with a vast array of possibilities. About two seconds of delay, three primary delay times to choose from, and an entire switch/button array section that allows for thousands of possibilities to alter the function of the delay and fuck up sampled sounds to a great degree.

The string section you see on the left of the panel is the switch/button array. The buttons are extremely easy to press as we've allowed for less than 1/16" space for each...Tapping them lightly does the trick, or those connections can be switched to themselves or eachother for a constant effect.

Finally the delay signal runs into an amplifier and a speaker is mounted under the metal plate of the string section. The amp has controls for tone and volume and the speaker runs side by side with a 1/4" out. The addition of the speaker adds to the intention of the piece being an adjustable feedback machine.

You'll notice to the left of the string section there is a mounted metal pack - this is the battery pack. This piece is designed to be entirely portable.

The housing for this piece is a vintage real leather case with removable lid.

Sounds are hear:

feedback1

This and the next recording are examples of the harder end of the feedback harp. This piece can also be extremely subtle and sweet in the vein of clicks and cuts and amvbient works and we'll capture that as soon as possible as well...

feedback2

I prefer the previous recording for it's fullness but this one captures a different aspect of the sound the latter doesn't. There is much more possibility and we consider this an instrument to actually be mastered - and I have not.

feedback remix

Here we have a recording temporary for the site...It's a Venetian Snares remix. We simply sent the recording through the added audio input and pushed buttons and twisted knobs for the bulk of the track - then cut it short a bit to save space. It is otherwise unedited and uneffected outside the feedback harp. Of course, unless you know the track you'll likely have no idea of what we're actually doing so we'll also try to get a good example of something universally recognizable being fuqt with as well. Or get the original and compare

And here are some more new sounds...The first is very simple but gathers some of the sweet droniness of the piece...The second gets some more of the mellow sounds as well...And the last is an example of utilizing the string plate as a microphone and altering those signals:

feedback3

feedback4

feedback5