Jeremy Harbin

Virtual Breakout During the Outbreak June 6th Livestream

Shuttle [audioscapes]

Untitled for soundpedro

A little about the track if you’re curious:
Instead of getting out to collect found sounds around San Pedro, I stayed home and recorded people cheering from their windows and porches – they do it every night here at 8 o’clock. Maybe this is happening in your neighborhood too. It apparently started as a way to show support for health care workers but also seems to be a way for folks to blow off a little steam. Some of those sounds are recorded onto long tape loops and played along with a no-input mixer controlling a homemade tone generator. Everything’s run into a mixing board for me to bring sounds in and out and around. For what it’s worth, I think these cheers are now more reflective of how people are feeling during the long hours before and after 8 o’clock. The track itself is always shifting but static.

---

Proposed work as accepted for soundpedro 2020:
The No Input Orchestra

The no input orchestra is four quasi-sculptural stacks of sound producing equipment – mixing board, amplifier and speaker – facing each other, to be played as one instrument for the duration of soundpedro. They are the visual focus; lighting – a couple spotlights with color gels – is understated and inviting. 

The no input mixing board (NIMB) is a technique that turns a mixer into an instrument by feeding its outputs into its inputs. The result is a feedback system that is tamed by the manipulation of onboard controls. The “wrong” turn of a knob can make it scream, but the NIMB can as easily produce warm tones, rhythms, textures, and sounds that recall the human voice. 

I want to position four no input stations – each a 3 foot tall floor speaker with an amplifier on top and a mixing board on top of that – with speakers facing toward each other, and room to walk around them. I would play these stations as one instrument with the aim to achieve an enveloping sound environment for attendees to relish in the odd grain of the sounds and feel suspended by the tones, which all join together to form a cohesive voice. 

These stations would be positioned in a way that does not necessarily invite but dares listeners to become participants and play with the mixers. Ideally they think about how sound free from convention and idiom is mind expanding and just plain free, as in easy to make with things you already have or can at least obtain cheaply.

Shuttle Audioscape Untitled for soundpedro

Using field recordings from around Angels Gate and San Pedro and found sound from used cassettes in San Pedro thrift stores, I’d like to create a new piece for this year’s event. 

In my solo output and in improvisatory situations with musicians, I use my own recordings and sounds – often voice – scavenged from discarded cassettes. I supplement and process these with tape loops and tape systems, no-input mixer, modified electronics, and homemade circuits. I’m interested in setting up systems that play themselves with minimal intervention on my part – though my output to this point has not included a lot of that. So I’d like to explore that direction with sounds harvested from San Pedro to create a breathing, spacious, audio impression.