Last week I went on a day trip to the Musical Museum in Brentford, on reccomendation from my tutor Gareth. Full of bizzare clockwork musical instruments, it was eye-opening with regards to my own mechanical dreams. Firstly, it made me realise that the sky is the limit in this field, but that much of the (reachable) limit has been achieved at least 100 years ago – to be creating interesting work in the field I should be working to combine the electronic and the mechanical in new and exciting ways; both acoustic and electronic sound sources, aiming for interaction between acoustic sound and raw voltages. Mechanical LFO, perhaps, using a similar method seen below to generate some sort of cyclical motion?? [Bellows, too. See later blog posts]

There is a gothic sensibility to these instruments that I would like to reflect in my works. The dark stained wood, creaking, humming, whirring, clicking and visible mechanisms drew me in and enthralled me with childlike wonder. This is a characteristic that modern technologies lack as the mechanisms through which they achieve complex ideas are obscured – this proffering of the knowledge of how exactly devices work is key to my sensibilities, I feel.

Further blog posts will try and demonstrate methods that I can use to incorporate mechanical ideas into my synths.