'spaghetti and meatballs'

ok - so the raging debate in our household is whether raw food recipes (which are pretty much vegetarian) should give themselves names from the 'meat or cooked food world'. actually it's not really a raging debate - i am clearly in the minority - the other two believe these recipes should drop the 'trying-to-be-like-something-they're-not' and sell themselves for what they really are - delicious food from raw fruit/veges...i guess it's kinda like the-artist-formerly-known-as....scenario.

i'm ok with the old names - it makes me feel somewhat 'normal' and if i have a hankering for some old taste or texture then the recipe names give me something to go on...and there's only so many times you can say mushroom/onion/carrot/celery/nut mixture formed into delicious patties and dehydrated!

hence tonight's dinner - spaghetti and meatballs from the rawmazing blog

i tell you - the artist formally known as 'meatballs' are amazing!!

we'll see what rating the household give this dish....

rAw....the relevance of iTchy skiN in a sOund blOg

so for the second time in the last 7 years, i've had a major outbreak of eczema - major because it has been both sudden and widespread. i had eczema as a kid and patches of it in adult life (nothing i wasn't used to) but 6 years ago, after working myself to the ground and contracting a virus, the eczema appeared and spread right over my body - after trying to treat naturally, i ended up in hospital with skin wraps and potassium baths, and emerged like i'd been in a beauty parlour.

this time, the occurence was quick and fairly widespread, and, although i've had ten days of the steroid prednizone, i'm more determined and, i think, more able to succesfully treat it naturally.

this time, i'm reminded that this may not be a one-off scenario, but something i need to pay attention to - my health is now more precious to me and something i want to proactively nurture. 

eczema for me is more than itchy skin - as Hinemoana's friend Kate said 'there is nobility in rising above pain, but not much nobility in rising above itching'...but, having this severity a second time around, i'm aware of all that it is - a chronic feeling of unwellness, soreness, low energy, cold, vulnerability to weather and temperature - at the moment i function best between 10am and 8pm...sleeplessness (my partner is currently sleeping in the next room to escape the night scratches (and dreaming about running off with David Bowie so i really do need to get a handle on the eczema fast!)


but now i also want to see the eczema as a gift - and particularly this time around, it seems that every inclination i've had towards healing has been intuited and then confirmed by my readings/learnings. i am grateful to the people who have documented their journeys and learnings and so feel it is my time to do the same - to be more open about my goings on.


this blog was intended as a sound blog and it will continue to be one, but it will incorporate other areas of interest that have remained hidden for fear that i may be a hippie-new-age freak. 


the first learnings when i entered the new zealand school of music to study sonic art was the reminder that sound is vibration - pretty much at the same time i started this study i was interoduced to the teachings of the law of attraction mainly through abraham-hicks. this teaching starts with the premise that we are vibrational beings.


at music school, i became enamoured with the contact mic - a device that amplifies vibration and converts to sound. i have just purchased 2 contact mics and a hydrophone from jez riley french. yahoody.


and of course, eastern thinking identifies the beginiings of dis-ease on a vibrational level - so raw food/raw sound fits in my book.

here is an abraham clip - not the one i was looking for but along the lines...

and yes...i can identify quite a few months of conflicted, out of alignment, negative vibrational thinking that brought me here...


so now the healing begins - in this sense the eczema is a gift - to show where i was vibrationally out of whack and out of alignment with myself. 


one of the areas i was out of alignment was in the area of eating - and when the eczema hit, it was the first thing that my attention came to for change - firstly because i largely lost my appetite straight away...


around about this time, i found these guys...matthew armstrong and victoria whitehead and their 100 day juice feast...

i stumbled on these guys because i was interested in the james arthur ray trial and was googling all over town - they happened to include a post where they commented on the trial - i followed them every day after. so i found them on day 23 of their feast - they are now on day 94...i spent the next 2 weeks predominantly juicing - this worked because my appetite was largely gone anyway - my body's way of telling me that i was detoxifying and needed to help my body do this.

i decided pretty quickly i needed to go off gluten and dairy. 


my first readings led me to consider the alkaline diet - overly acidic foods lead to an acidic pH and the need for rebalancing...alkaline foods are predominantly leafy green vegetables so my juices became greener and more bitter - i also added wheat-grass powder.

around the same time, hinemoana's cousin anahera, leant me the following book....

this book looks at the eastern view of dis-ease. according to this view eczema is caused by the stagnation or over-toxicity of the liver and with it's inability to detox, the skin steps in and becomes a huge detoxifying agent...this condition is also referred to as the heating of the system and so recommends cooling foods - again, the primary ones being leafy green veges and raw food...

in the middle of this, my eczema got worse and one morning i woke with skin that made me feel like i was a burns victim and was weeping - i was also mentally and emotionally feeling more despondent and vulnerable and was concerned about infection (which happened the first time) - so i took myself to a doctor...the result - a one week course of prednizone followed by 7 days of decreasing dose for weaning off...i felt immediate relief and the skin cleared but after the first three days could still feel the eczema in the system - i knew it was being suppressed and would reappear once the course ended - still i was grateful for the relief and, in a way hoped that it would be sufficient to knock it back for good. this wasn't to be and i continued in my research.


i researched other sites of people who have healed from eczema, and overwhelmingly, the sites i found talked about slow, systematic healing and strengthening of the digestive system throug the eating of raw food.


so after much thought, i have decided to go raw...


one thing about this choice is that i want it to be more about moving toward health rather than deprivation - so my intention is to be raw as much as possible but not to slam myself if i deviate...this is a lifestyle change i want to make long-term so even if eventually i am 70-30% that will be better than what i was - for now though i want to give my liver and system a chance to rebalance.


gluten and dairy are definitely off though and i have noticed massive differences particularly in now having clear sinuses.


hinemoana and marian have been supportive and are enjoying (or not) some new recipes...i have to say raw food isn't what it sounds like - there are some amazing flavour combinations...it is taking some rethinking re: shopping and preparation but i will get there...will post some of the good recipes here...


if i was in new york i'd definitely be visitn the restaurant pure food and wine


so that is me - it's all about vibration and energy at the end of the day...raw food/raw sound.


it's not been a great skin day today, but with contact mics and recipes in hand i'll keep you posted.

anD i wenT to tHis poeT / fillinG puffs

two more improvisations using pre-recorded excerpts of songs/pieces/field recordings.

this is continuing play from last time. as i remarked to marian, maybe they are more 'significant' in the making of them than to the listener, as i have the history of the making of the songs / recordings etched in my physical/aural memory whereas a first-time listener is receiving them as they are - a new 'meaningless' whole.

the first track also includes portions of vaitoa's latest piece 'the land of fun-ness'.

AnD i wEnt to thIs poeT2 by christinewhite

i have been listening to hinemoana's sketches from her 'work in progress' presentation in iowa. she has also been experimenting with the recontextualising of text and sound recordings and inviting the listener to consider the sounds of words over their meaning. you can listen to them here.

it seems that we are experimenting in similar areas - albeit from opposite sides of the world.

i still have some difficulty with wondering how the work i'm doing would be received - or, how to present it in such a way that it isn't just jumble. i mean anyone can randomly put things together can't they? as john cage once said in response to "anyone could do this work"....'yeah, but they don't'.

what makes this kind of improvisation (or any improvisation for that matter) good? we can all appreciate a guitar solo - in some ways because of the skill of the player, and because our ears have been trained to appreciate the licks, the references being made in a solo that draws on years of the foundations for blues, jazz and rock.

how do we integrate improvisations such as these sketches i have here? well - i'm gonna continue to go with the theory that, in the space of a performance, where song snippets are introduced and then re-introduced, the listener can feel that they are on the same journey.

fillinG puffs includes snippets from my two minute sketch songs - powder puff and filling up.

FillinG puFfs by christinewhite

sexy appliances includes powder puff, filling up and casio from vaitoa's piece 'the land of fun-ness'

Sexy appliAnces by christinewhite

and...some photos just coz we like pretty pictures :)

fiL...l1nG uP the {drEamy} heaTer

today i have continued orienting myself in gleetchlab for the purpose of learning how to improvise with recordings.

i'm looking for a new way of making music that feels ignites me. this is taking the form, so far, of a combination of song sketches (2 minute improvised 'songs'), field recordings and sounds from the workbench instrument. i have a sense that, if i were to offer music in a live performance context, i want to combine these in a greater 'arc' of story/song/sound.

i was inspired by a jane siberry concert hinemoana and i went to - in fact - we were able to go to two within a week which was great because we were able to see the extent to which she drew on her song/story material in different ways to create a 'greater whole' - a large story which was 'the concert' and was comprised of the smaller stories we could call 'her songs'.

i haven't known what these 2 minute sketch songs have been about apart from feeling like a case of writer's block ("what - you can't even stay the distance to finish a whole song anymore"?). but now i have a sense of wanting to play with them like cogs of a wheel - sticking different parts together to see how they work.

this what today's play has been about - i have used a guitar improvisation, a recording of the heater, and components of the two minute sketch called filling up.

i look forward to combining more than one song to see what eventuates - i just need to prepare the separate tracks.

for now i have these sketch examples:

1210 fillup sketch1 by christinewhite

ps. these were crudely recorded back through the speakers, still haven't refined this part of the process. good though as the birds decided to join in with this one.

1210 fillup sketch2 by christinewhite

1210 fillup sketch3 by christinewhite

sounds from my neighbourhood - the water tower

the water tower is on a hill at the back of a reserve behind our house. it's pretty much completely made of concrete but i took a contact mic to see what i could find.

pipe

a series of pipes run around the perimetre of the tower. i chose one and began tapping it - it has amazing overtones and a long sustain. the pipe itself doesn't make any sound, it's only when it's activated you get to hear the sounds travelling through it.




the first sound is from me scraping the outside of the pipe with my hands.

Pipe 2 by christinewhite

this sound is from circling the inside of the pipe with a stick.

Pipe 3 by christinewhite

steel casing

further around the water tower was the main stairwell to the top. at the base of the stair structure was a metal guard with a steel box mounted on it housing a padlock.


i had a lot of fun with this structure, running the back of a cello bow over it.

Steel box by christinewhite

i also placed the box inside the cavity of the box casing and moved it over the surface. this created a breath-like timbre with tonal changes.

Inside steel box by christinewhite

i was also able to pull a metal sheet around the casing which reverberated through it. this recording is complete with text message (DM tweet) from my partner Hinemoana in the wild west of wyoming.

Rattling the steel by christinewhite

when flames become music...

ok...so i'm using a title here which references steve roden's airform archives (one of my favourite sites).

today i decided to continue with the original heater recording - to explore the recording further as visual artists do with sketches - different angles, colours, materials.

which lead me to thinking about graphic score, in particular the meshing of what we see with what we hear. this was fuelled in part by the photographic scores of jez riley french and the recent writings of steve roden, particularly his post when sounds become drawings

i have been wanting to familiarise myself a bit more with the gleetchlab programme i have. gleetchlab allows realtime processing of sound. i decided to have a play with some of the DSPs available in gleetchlab and started with spectrfilter.

spectrafilter is a 128 band eq. using the flame photo as a graphic score, i manipulated the spectra by attempting to simulate graphically the shape of the flames in the photo. the result was as follows:


and the sound result...

Heater132 spectrafilter by christinewhite


next i decided to play with the mephisto which is described as a 'step sequenced delay with down sample'. once again i chose the parameters based on a visual comparison with the flame photo.


the sound result is as follows:

Heater132 mephisto by christinewhite

i was on a fun roll by now so next i loaded another heater recording and eq'd it again according to the graphic. this time i was able to have two heater recordings with flat eq and one with flame-eq - this replicated the flame and the gold bars of the heater.

ok so i needed three gold bars on top and two on the bottom...i was having too much fun to check!

i added two more affects for fun - one was a reversing of this particular heater recording, and the other was a stutter affect. the stutter affect may have been overused - it had no direct graphical reference to the 'score' it was my intuitive addition and i told myself it reminded me of the crackings of a natural fire.

what remained was to choose what parameters were used when - and this was largely intuitive at this stage as i was getting my head around using the application. so here is a demo excerpt and the final screenshots. listening back now it prob needs some smoothing out on the ears - mixing not being my strong point...but it is a starting place for me in exploring place and sound and integrating them somehow.





way over in there heat(her) by christinewhite

house study 132 - heater

having now moved from a bach-style cottage-on-a-hill to a modernised bungalow on the flat, i am beginning a series of sound studies for our new home...and it begins with the gas heater.

i actually became aware of some beautiful heater drones the day after World Listening Day (18 July 2010). my partner hinemoana's new poetry book 'koiwi koiwi' was launched on World Listening Day - it has some pretty amazing sound imagery coincidentally. you can find out more about it here.

anyways, i got pretty crook that night (not self inflicted no) and so the next morning was partially spent lying on the floor in the lounge recovering. in rest and stillness we can often hear sounds we otherwise wouldn't, and it was in this state that the heater came alive for me. it possibly was made all the more present because my head was resting on the wooden floor and so the drones of the heater travelled from the floor and in through the bones of my head.

on that particular day it was very calming.

so, with homemade contact mic in tow, i have now recorded the heater. my flatmate marian commented that it sounds like a whole haunted house is residing in there...we could hear metallic booms and banging that aren't always obvious in the living room or that otherwise sound like small creaks. i also particularly love the overtones when the fan is on.

i have added some eq to try and minimise the static sounds and tones which seem to be part and parcel of the homemade contact mic set-up i use.

some sounds are of me lifting the cover to turn on/off the fan or to turn the heater up. it's a right playground.

a whole world right there in the heater.