The Sound of Music

Just a quickie from me today. (Phew! I hear you cry). I’m thinking sounds, I’m thinking radio plays and imaginative producers, I’m feeling inspired by a conversation about apples…One of our colleagues here at BioRegional was involved in a live audience recording of apple-crunching at the Barbican. This sound then became part of a tune by a musician called Matthew Herbert. That reminded me of the Star Wars exhibition I went to see in Bradford where they disclosed the secrets of some of the Star Wars sounds. (Don’t read on if you’d prefer to remain in thrall of the force…) Did you know that the noise of the light sabres was made by swinging a microphone behind a telly to pick up the feedback which then became the sound we learned to love…and to fear…

Have you got any secrets about sound?

Love from Steph and The laundry

I have been trying to learn how to knit recently and have been mainly constructing small squares of striped material. Although useless in more ways than you can imagine, the dream that one day that I might actually make something beautiful keeps me going. Some of the stuff I indulge my imagination in are tales of yore - women weaving their life stories into stunning silk whose gleam and (woolly?) perfection make the sun itself envious…Anyhoo, then I remembered the tale of Rumplestiltskin and thought I’d share it with you. A good fairy tale can remind us all that dwarves, pixies and goblins can be ruthless in their business and mustn’t be messed with.  (more…)

After getting a rather touching blog comment from a certain Blarg who’s cat is (incidentally) called Laundry (see http://www.flickr.com/photos/blargblarg/2285206534/ for a pic) it got us Laundrettes thinking about other people and animals in our lives with funny names by coincidence. (more…)

Well done Steph for a completely bonkers blog last week, I loved it.

This week I’ve been thinking about scores to films. I pondered to my friend that:

There are no films with good soundtracks any more, my number one favourite is Back to the Future, deeer deeeer deeeer, di di di di di der, (hold on, I can’t do this the whole way through the email, I’m going to get our IT specialist to help me record my dum di dums and post it on the blog, wish me luck with that). With the possible exception of Jurassic Park, rousing (that’s rousing without the a, naughty) scores died out in the 80s.

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