Randomatones

I like the Randomatones to be visible sound sources, in preference to them being low profile or hidden. The early ones were painted bright colours, while all the recent ones have had coloured LEDs to make them really stand out. The new hanging setup will feature a new bright LED setup I'm trying. The white blob near the bottom of the circuit board is a composite LED, comprising a red, a blue and a green component. Essentially it's a 3-watt pixel, but I will be running its individual colours only, and at less power.

Each of the eight speakers will have one of these LED circuit boards, where the LED will light according to the signal going into the the speaker. The LED will be green if the signal is zero or very quiet, blue at moderate level and red at peak level. The colour changes will be sharp rather than gradual. I might try that approach another time, or perhaps base the colours on the frequency of the sound.

Spare speakers I have collected for one purpose or another, most for Randomatones, but not all. Each one of these will part of an eight-speaker hanging Randomatone installion I'll be setting up for one day only on 02 Feb 2025 at the Walthamstow Wetlands Engine House. Details in the poster below.

Driving home to London from a gig in Sheffield in the midst of Storm Bert, I passed through Chesterfield, where I knew there was a small canal tunnel underneath the A619. Although it was after 11pm and I was 170 miles from home, I stopped to take a quick look. Having not been able to make a video earlier in the day because of high winds, I was surprised to find there was virtually no wind here at all. The tunnel was entirely unlit, but had a decent natural reverb given it was narrow, having width enough for one canal boat only, little more than 40m long.

So I set up for a video, using the two new floating Randomatones I built at the end of the summer. For the first time on a canal tunnel shoot, I had two phantom-powered microphones with approximately 25m of cable between them to get good stereo separation. Almost all of what you hear in the soundtrack is from those mics.

Also in this video I captured the complete journey from the south end of the tunnel to the north, carried along by the current. With some editing between the three cameras, except for right at the end, you are watching that journey in real time. After scooping the devices out of the water, I had everything packed up and back in the car just before midnight.

For the first time, I'll be doing a Randomatones installation early next year. A new eight-speaker Randomatone configuration will be appearing at the Engine House in the Walthamstow Wetlands Nature Reserve. I'm hugely excited about it, as it combines many interests that appeal to me: electronics, ambient music, sonic art installations, randomly twinkling LEDs, Victorian buildings especially ones that once house vast machinery, sitting around doing nothing at the weekend, and cafés that sell enormous croissants. If you're anywhere near, why not pop in and absorb a little randomised ambient music with a hot cup of tea on a wintery Sunday.

I had a gig in Sheffield one winter evening, so in the morning I set off for the Drakeholes Tunnel in South Yorkshire. Winter video shoots in canal tunnels are good because canal boats are much less likely to be going through. I left London in calm weather, but as I got further up the A1, the rain blew and the wind roared, and when I got to this spot on the Chesterfield canal just opposite the Mucky Duck pub, I knew a video shoot would be impossible. If the conditions are wrong, they're wrong. So I stayed in the car and had a sandwich and some tea instead, and got the gig load-in in good time.

At the point I set off back down to London later that night, the weather was much calmer, and I was able to make a video in a different spot on that trip after all.

I first visited the Papplewick Pumping Station in 2019 with my family, thinking it was a steam museum only. When we got there, we discovered they were doing tours of a disused Victorian underground reservoir, part of the site beneath a hill above the pumping engines. The reservoir had opened in 1880, but developed a crack in 1906 and had lain empty for over a century.

I had a Beatrix Players gig scheduled for September 2024 in Leicester, just under an hour away, and arranged a visit to Papplewick for a Randomatones recording/video for the next day. I had given myself an hour to set up, record/video and dismantle. Both units had worked perfectly the night before. When I switched them on here, the red unit would not connect to my wifi controller. You can see me having to start it manually. That also meant it was still at indoor gig volume. Still able to control the blue unit, I turned it up almost full, and the entirely cavernous space seemed to come alive with song. The sound was absolutely incredible.

I spent some time over the summer working on two kinds of Randomatones. One was a new floating design, for which I had bought parts last year and made a start on the construction earlier this year. I then stopped to build a couple of standing units in time for a gig in early summer, and then another one a few weeks later. The standing units found themselves with a third gig a couple of days ago. A band I play in, Beatrix Players, had a gig at The Musician Leicester, and I was due to pack the standing units in the car for my trip to Leicester for a video shoot the following day. A couple of days before, the support act fell ill. So they did the support instead, seen in this short video, on their first outing with their new loudspeakers.

Mystery location to be revealed shortly. This is how you get down into it. The acoustic is amazing in this place.

The new floating units are now a bit closer to being ready. They have speakers, batteries (under the main deck, not visible) and LEDs, wired so I can test them without connecting the Raspberry Pi electronics. The electronics for these new units are boxed. This was to protect them from water when used on floating units, but it also means I can swap them easily between whichever floating or standing units I'm about to video. At the moment, that requires a screwdriver and some fiddling. I'm wondering if I could make the electronics more easily swappable using 9-pin serial connectors.

Next task is to connect the motors. Each has just one, as these are not going to be steerable like the blue unit. That is a decision I may later regret, but likely I'm going to do the first videos of these either with the boat, or where I can reach them easily from the edge with my hook. Plus, anyway, I quite like them when the motors are off.

After fitting the motors, I'll be adding a small bearing socket joint to the mast tops, for attaching the connecting rods. And after that they'll be ready, but the one thing left to do will be to make a separator to keep them apart in their carrying case. More on that later.

Short video of the Randomatones providing pre-show sounds as people wandered in before Improvizone took to the stage.

I have not done much with these new floating units since the beginning of the year, continuing instead to make videos with the larger units and then borrowing the speakers for the standing versions. The standing versions now have their own speakers, so now I'm getting back into building these new floating units. Both chassis now painted, I can now attach the speakers and the propellors. The electronics will be lifted from the standing units. I'm not going to be making videos of both at the same time, so hopefully 5-10 mins with a screwdriver on each should obviate spending another £200 on duplicating the parts.

I built the standing units in a bit of a rush a couple of months ago in time for a gig. In order to get them built quickly, I used speakers I had bought especially for a new pair of floating units that will be more water-resistant. The cone speakers, for example, had waterproof plastic cones.

I now want to go ahead and finish the new floating units, so I bought some cheap speakers for the standing ones. I've now fitted them, involving some modification to the structure on each unit. I'm just about happy with the weight distribution. When I first built them, I had the speakers arranged in complete rotational symmetry, which balanced the weight well, but at the expense of directionality of the sound. It didn't seem to make any audible difference whether the units were rotating or not, apart from the motor noise.

Another thing I'm not sure made any difference was the directional cylinders on the cone speakers. If nothing else, they were useful as something for the LEDs to illuminate. I haven't worked out where I'm going to put the LEDs yet. I need to wire up the speakers first.

These units have one planned outing in the midlands at the end of September. Besides that, I might see if I can get them some more gig pre-show features.

The video I made a couple of months ago in practice for their appearance at a gig in Cambridge at the end of July. The audio is a blend of the real-life sound in the room, which has lots of bearing joint noise as the motors spin the units. When I was mixing the soundtrack, I was struck by the difference between the direct digital audio from the devices and the room sound as heard through the speakers. Whole parts that are apparent in the digital version seem inaudible in the room recording. I'm not sure I care that much. I deliberately chose plastic horn speakers to convey a kind of disembodied, other-worldly remoteness. I was hoping the cone speakers would compensate, as the standard ones seem to on the floating units, but these mylar speakers (borrowed from some newer more water-resistant floating units I started making) might not be helping.

The Randomatones at their second "gig", at the fifth Heart Of Noise evening in Cambridge, featuring Improvizone, which was my old London-based improvising group 15 or so years ago, and has occasionally resurfaced since. Again the Randomatones provided pre-show ambient music sounds, and not insignificant lighting throughout the whole evening.

Videoed over three months ago, this was probably the last floating video for a while, as I'm concentrating on indoor versions for now, that don't need quiet enclosed watery spaces such as this fabulous tunnel on the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal in Wales. Took some finding on the map, for a start. On this peaceful spring day, too early for boaters to be passing up and down (though I did see a pair of kayakers pass through), this was an excellent location. I didn't notice at the time, but can hear in the recordings now, that it was an acoustic reinforcing chamber for birdsong, even in the middle of the tunnel.

The new standing Randomatones had a gig last month, but without the lighting that has adorned recent Randomatones versions. In fact the LEDs were all there (if you look very carefully in the video you might see them), but I had wired them up incorrectly and they blew instantly. That is to say, one of them did on each machine, but because they were wired in series, nothing worked.

So the first thing I did after getting them home again was to repair the lighting. Today I made a video with both units lit, in the usual red and blue (I should see if other LED colours are available), and this time with both spinning, standing at the bottom of my stairs. As well as replacing the lights, I spent absolutely ages getting to the red unit spin function working very slightly better.

An edit-together of the Armitage video I shot in the spring. At video number 29, I'm happy that I've managed to come fairly close to getting a good audio recording of the experience, even if visually this one is not always that interesting. With a close-up camera and microphones more-or-less at water level making up the bulk of this feature, I'm quite pleased with the general unpolished honesty of this piece. The sound of water falling from the roof onto the floats is more gunshot than drip, and you get to see just how must time the devices spend bashing into the sides.

A short video documenting a few pre-show minutes of a special Highams Park Live event on Friday 24 May 2024 for which the Randomatones generated ambient music in front of a live audience. I was still trying to put them together two hours before the show, so some of the usual features were missing. But the sound was just right and suited the show perfectly.

I had assumed they would be too quiet for a room full of chattering audience, and took microphones and a small desk to give them a boost through the PA. In fact the volume was fine, as I discovered at the end of the show, when I left them running while taking the mics down, and didn't really hear the difference.

Almost showtime at Highams Park Live, where the Randomatones, positioned on the right (stage left, up to no good obviously), are providing pre-show/interval/closing ambient music for the first ever complete performance of "The Dance of the First and the Last", a musical and spoken word epic conceived as a wake-up call to humanity. Organiser, composer and guitarist Nigel Mear (seated left) invited me to contribute after I described the Randomatones to him in the pub one evening.

Two more days to get these ready before they are due to appear in front of a live audience. I'm happy with the rotation in the lower one, the upper one has been a lot more difficult to get right, and is not quite there. I may just leave it static.

I definitely want to get lights on, having kept them white in order to show up some bright coloured LEDs I have ready and waiting. Also I want some directional assists on the mylar speakers, which will be simple white cylinders for now. The attachments to the speakers are in place already.

Essentially assembled. Meaning, if I had to go out and do a shoot with it later today, I could. It makes noise, and it rotates. I want to put some lights on it, mainly to make it look better, but also I have a procedure of referring to the devices by colour, and because these new ones are white, they need some coloured LEDs on them so I know which is which.

Also some cable ties wouldn't do any harm.

It's mounted on a drum stand, which I have several of, being a drummer. The one in use here usually belongs with my home electronic kit, which I haven't had set up for a while, and which has exactly the right sized hole for the base of the Randomatone mount, which is also a spare from my electronic kit setup. Or it is at the moment. I may have an opportunity/excuse to present both my electronic drums and the Randomatones at a gig in a couple of months, so I might need to rethink the hardware.

Yesterday was building, today painting. Whereas I painted the floating ones different colours, I have a mind to leave these white, as each will have at least three bright coloured LEDs positioned in ways that should make everything glow. The first standing units were white. I never did anything with them, as they weren't portable.

The results of my extremely amateur carpentry grabbing a few hours here and there over the last few days. My workshop is outside, and any power tooling I use is solar powered, so the (temporary) dry warmth of our early British summer is good building time. Next up, some painting. Some bits are white already, either because I've started painting them already, or because I salvaged them from previous construction attempts, successful or otherwise. After the painting, the remembering of how everything was supposed to fit together.

The first Randomatones were standing devices. I thought about making them rotate, but decided that the best way to do that would be to make some floating ones. Then, on a bike ride one day, I saw a location that I might be able use for a video if I had some hanging versions that spun. I used those for a while, before going ahead and building some floating versions.

I've now used those in many videos. I had started to build some newer, lighter floating versions, but spent the first few months of this year continuing to make videos with the older ones. I now have a couple of possible engagements coming up where I could use some standing ones again. I definitely want rotation this time. So I've been trying out a couple of ideas. Almost definitely, the finished version will look nothing like this. It will likely use the same components though - waterproof plastic cone speakers, two small plastic horn speakers, and the electronics in a waterproof box. Waterproofing will usually be unnecessary, except perhaps in one place I have in mind.

Probably the best example yet of why I like making videos in canal tunnels. I managed a few long shots here, each of well over a minute. The trick to those, unsurprisingly, is to sit in the boat and do nothing for as long as possible, letting the devices do their thing. And even better, at some point, turn off the rotation.

Made the day after a gig in Manchester, this is the last of four videos of my pop-up sonic art installations I made on that trip. I spent a long time in this tunnel, and have a lot of leftover footage from some of the other cameras, this video mostly featuring footage from my gimbal device. This was only the second time I had used it, and was just about getting the hang of it.

One reason for spending a long time in the tunnel was to carry out my strategy that I settled on in Newbold of putting the devices in the water upstream and letting them drift downwards, rotating or otherwise. I don't often get the chance to put it into practice, either because I'm in my boat, for which I have not yet worked out the fundamentals of paddling, or because letting them loose in the current would send them cascading over a waterfall, and so forth. In this case there was some current (there is often very little), but the rotation of the units can counteract it, meaning they don't drift downstream very quickly.

Having started at the brick end, I soon got bored of waiting and pulled them into the rocky area, which was much more interesting. But here, the pink unit suffered a direct hit from some water falling from the ceiling and started to malfunction, so I stopped the shoot, having barely captured a few minutes in the rocky area.

I have a plan to make a much longer and less watchable ambient background video from this using all the good spare footage.

With a gig to do in Chepstow, and having to travel there from London, I had a few options for canal tunnel locations that I could plausibly visit within more-or-less the same journey. This was a good choice. Not too long, meaning there was a modest glow of useful light from either end, but long enough and wide enough for a good natural reverb. The first problem was getting everything into the water. There were some steps from the towpath down to the tunnel portal, but then a good 2" between drop from the ledge to the water. I narrowly succeed in lowering the Randomatones into the water without losing the floats. Next problem was to get into the boat without capsizing it. As you can see from the picture that I'm still dry, I managed.

Being mid April on a not particularly busy stretch of canal, I wasn't massively surprised not to have been disturbed by any boat traffic, but felt lucky all the same to have been left to savour this fantastic shoot. Every shoot has at least one technical problem or another. On this one, despite having tested it carefully the day before, the orange (brought out of retirement for one last shoot) wouldn't connect to my WiFi, even after a reboot. Didn't matter much, I built in a workaround for that.

My one slight regret is that I had been considering setting up an underwater camera, but hadnt't brought it. Typically canal water in the UK is not worth the bother, visibility is centimetres at best. (Oddly, the water in the Limehouse Cut in London is surprisingly clear.) I tried it for the Cookley shoot, but used only footage from before I submerged the camera. On this canal the water was very clear, further evidence that the waterway is little used. So this is the second time an underwater camera might have been stunning, the first being Sapperton last November, whose water is normally completely undisturbed by boats, people, or anything.

Tomorrow I have one last Randomatones shoot for the next several months in mind (I avoid videoing on canals in the summer). I'm driving to Chepstow for a gig, so I hope to be going somewhere special beforehand, and as this will be the last one for a while, I'm bringing out the amber machine, which has only been in three videos so far (Limehouse, Birlec and Mimmshall). That's mainly because it's a bit big, and the pink one I built after it is easier to get in my hold-all.

Besides a software update, it needs to keep up with a couple of additions I have made to the blue and pink ones. The first is a light at the top of the mast. These were intended to provide extra roof lighting in the tunnel, so that the surroundings are even slightly visible, as opposed to most of the video being shots of two Randomatones glowing in the darkness that could be anywhere. The second is a cover over the electronics, which were as exposed as ever on this unit, and I've come to realise that is not a good idea when going into canal tunnels with a load of water pouring through the roof. The cover is a half a juice bottle, with the label removed.

The third is the automatic start button, visible here to the left of the microphone, with a red LED glowing next to it. This button has proved essential. One or other of the devices often fails to connect to the Wifi, meaning I can't start or stop it playing or rotating. This button essentially does both, so that even though I can't connect to it, I can still get a shoot out of it with it doing its job.

Second of two videos under Manchester Piccadilly on the Rochdale Canal between the Dale St and Piccadilly Locks. In this one I was about to call it a day, but given it was chucking down with rain, I stayed undercover and tried out my new floating audio and video recording unit, complete with two Rode NT5 microphones and two cameras, one on top of a mast. Pretty much a failure, although all I really cared about at this stage was that it would stay upright and not capsize. I was able to use some of the video from the lower camera. The upper camera was pointing too high and basically rubbish. The audio only recorded intermittently, for a bit, before descending into complete silence. I think the battery died. When I tried it the next day I got nothing at all.

Both parts of this shoot were a disappointment. On a calm quiet day this would have been an adventurous and thrilling space, but the water was way too turbulent for me to get a decent video of it on the day I was there.

First of two videos under Manchester Piccadilly on the Rochdale Canal between the Dale St and Piccadilly Locks. This was a fantastic location, but in terms of getting a good audio recording it was spoiled by the roar of the excess canal water tumbling over the lock gates at both ends. Perhaps one day I will return to this location with some new Randomatone versions, and there will have been much less rain, so that I can get much closer to the Dale Street end, with its imposing bridge arches.

I loved the rocky fabric of this secluded spot under the A513 in Staffordshire. It's a location only a boater would know about, not that I want any boaters about when I'm making a video. Fortunately for me, at 8am on a rainy Sunday morning in March, there weren't any and I had the place to myself. Besides some slight camera issues, and general taking an eternity to get set up, this was an exemplary shoot. I got the units in the water undercover. I was expecting the water level to be much lower, but the amount of recent rain had raised it to the point I was able reach it from under the bridge. It had also given it a noticeable current, meaning once I had dragged them to the other end, they floated downstream perfectly over 10 or so graceful and sublime minutes.

Having not been able to shut the pink unit down properly at the end of yesterday's shoot, it was still playing in its previous key, whereas I had reset the blue one to play in a different key. Theoretically you might think this would result in clanging dissonance, but with only two or three notes in play at a time, the interlacing notes made for some luscious chord sequences and they sounded fantastic together.

This is the Snarestone Tunnel on the Ashby Canal in Leicestershire, where I stopped on the way up from London to a gig in Stoke-on-Trent this evening. Great location, no wind, no rain (until I emerged), no leaks, no boats, with somewhere I could park my car nearby. Minor technical issues on this one, for some reason the pink unit wouldn't start its audio processing automatically, and needed me to press the manual override button I had very cleverly added to the units a few weeks before, having wished I had one on several shoots in the past.

I was in slightly better control of my boat this time. As I sat in it, drifting on the slight current into the middle of the tunnel, I savoured this stunning sight and sound of the two units against the backdrop of the south portal, spoilt only by something pokey in my rucksack digging into my back as I sat against it.

On the way up to a gig in Manchester a few weeks ago, I stopped at this tunnel on the Grand Union Canal in Warwickshire. I had been through it on a canal boat trip in 2020, but remembered only the imposing western entrance (seen here at the beginning of the video) and nothing else about it. I didn’t remember that it had water pouring in through the roof everywhere, as was the case on the day I turned up. It had been raining up and down the country, so I assumed this was the reason. In fact the tunnel always leaks, giving rise to many flowstone formations inside. I didn’t see much of that on the day, as I did not venture in past an enormous cascade maybe 20m in from the entrance, which would have wrecked my non-waterproof devices.

Despite noisy waterfalls the other side of this lock and the one immediately upstream, on the Rochdale Canal under Manchester Piccadilly, I thought the water was just about calm enough for a Randomatones video, and even if the sound turned out to be unusable, here at least was an opportunity to test the recording. Fearful of the currents, I tethered the recording unit to the side, while it joined up with the sound-making units via a new V-shaped connecting rod setup made from thin, lightweight and very expensive aluminium L-beams. Feeling after 10 mins or so that I got quite a nice shoot out of it, I decided to stop videoing, take a couple of stills, and just enjoy the sight and sound for a few minutes, something I almost never (get to) do on a shoot, and yet which is the whole idea of this sonic art project. I managed a couple of minutes, before I realised the tether had come undone, and my fragile devices where about to get swept into the lock.

The Deansgate tunnel on the Rochdale Canal in Manchester on a wet February evening, where I had gone for a gig the following day. It was part of a generally wet February, with a lot of rain up and down the country, and a lot of that rain draining into the canal. You can see it pouring over the lock gate at the end of the tunnel. That ruled out videoing in this location, partly because of the roar of the temporary lock-gate waterfall, but mainly because of the turbulence. For a Randomatone video, I want stillness.

A couple of things have dissatisfied me about floating Randomatone video shoots in the past. One is that I've seldom been able to get a good audio recording. The floating units have onboard mics, but those are too close, and capture too much mechanical noise from propellors etc, and not enough ambient sound from the location. Another is that I've not been able to get decent close-up video of the units while still capturing the location. I can get close-up video from towpaths in tunnels, but video from one tunnel tends to look like video from any other, and I could be anywhere.

So this is an experimental third unit that I wanted to put together using only as much equipment as I had already, without spending much money. The only things I invested in were windjammers and shock-proof mounts for my two Rode NT5 microphones, and a stereo USB mixer with two phantom-powered XLR inputs. I powered the mixer from a small 9V battery via a 7805 voltage regulator I scavenged from some other old equipment I taken to bits. The video is captured via my trusty old LG G5 phone, plus a higher wide-angle view from the small action camera that also doubles as the Wifi hub. The same 5V supply can power those two devices if necessary. Sadly it seems like the G5, despite its newer USB-C connection (unusual in 2017 when I bought it) doesn't recognise the USB mixer as a stereo audio source for its video. No matter, it has its own mics, and I record the Rode NT5s on a separate Zoom digital recorder at the bottom of the float. The whole thing sits in a black plastic enclosure that came off an old car vacuum cleaner, which I thought I was only keeping for the motor. Funny how things are useful. The black enclosure exactly fits the middle of the silver swim ring.

Slowly getting on with the first new build, on my tidier-than usual work table. The Raspberry 3 model A+ and the HifiBerry are going inside a water-resistant plastic enclosure, for when the unit accidentally drifts under a cascade of water pouring down from a canal tunnel roof. Doubling up horn and waterproof speakers to try and get the most out of the amp. Earlier spinning Randomatone versions had only one small horn and one small cone speaker and they were too quiet. The wooden "deck" will sit on top of the normal 24" silver float, with a short mast for coupling to another unit (I would not let these loose by themselves).