{"id":2088,"date":"2011-06-09T13:26:31","date_gmt":"2011-06-09T20:26:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/?p=2088"},"modified":"2011-06-09T13:26:31","modified_gmt":"2011-06-09T20:26:31","slug":"the-paymaster-ribbon-writer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/2011\/06\/09\/the-paymaster-ribbon-writer\/","title":{"rendered":"The Paymaster Ribbon Writer"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

The bottom reads, "WARNING: Beware Unauthorized Personnel." How true.<\/p><\/div>\n

My downstair work neighbors are an art collective, and all sorts of weird things show up in our lobby from time to time. One that caught my eye was a vintage adding machine. It sat in our lobby for weeks, unclaimed and unmoved (the thing is about 20lbs, despite being the size of a lunchbox), so I decided to borrow it and see what sounds I could get out of it.<\/p>\n

It’s in amazing shape for its age. There is a panel that is removable, ostensibly for where paper tape or imprinted ribbon would come out; removing this panel let the inner mechanisms be heard more clearly.<\/p>\n

Having close-miked small objects many times before, I guessed that this wasn’t a job for my usual small-condenser hypercardioid mics. The result would be too bass-heavy, sounding “out of scale.” If the sounds were going to be repurposed for, say, the mechanisms of a heavy doorway or industrial machine, the low frequencies would be deepened with downward pitch-shifting anyway.\u00c2\u00a0I wound up using a large condenser mic, since I was going for brightness, detail, and clarity.<\/p>\n

Here’s a compilation of some of the sounds it generated, stitched together from the two or three dozen discrete sounds I culled from it.<\/p>\n

[soundcloud url=”http:\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/16583852″ params=”show_comments=true&auto_play=false&color=ee0000″ width=”100%” height=”81″ ]
\n[R\u00c3\u00b8de NT1A microphone into Sound Devices 702 recorder]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My downstair work neighbors are an art collective, and all sorts of weird things show up in our lobby from time to time. One that caught my eye was a vintage adding machine. It sat in our lobby for weeks, unclaimed and unmoved (the thing is about 20lbs, despite being the size of a lunchbox), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[63,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2088"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2088"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2190,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2088\/revisions\/2190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}