{"id":299,"date":"2009-07-23T15:26:35","date_gmt":"2009-07-23T22:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/?p=299"},"modified":"2010-10-02T19:01:40","modified_gmt":"2010-10-03T02:01:40","slug":"misusing-the-ebow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/2009\/07\/23\/misusing-the-ebow\/","title":{"rendered":"Misusing the eBow"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"eBowing

eBowing a tensioned cable on a fence gate. I mean, doesn't everyone spend their Sundays doing this?<\/p><\/div>\n

The eBow<\/a>\"\" has been around for decades, and it does one thing only, albeit very well: It excites metal objects with a magnetic field. It’s meant to be used to get synth tones out of guitars, and used right, it can be beautiful.<\/p>\n

“Used right” usually doesn’t apply when I get my hands on such things.<\/p>\n

Having purchased an eBow this year, I didn’t sit and play my guitar with it. Instead, I switched it on and walked around the neighborhood looking for guitar-string-like objects that might make even more interesting noises.<\/p>\n

I came upon a fence gate that had a tensioned cable secured with a turnbuckle (to keep the large door from warping). While I could barely hear the cable resonate, I could also hear the wood of the door vibrating. To my mind, that meant only one thing: contact microphones<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As you can see from the photo, I taped one contact mic to the turnbuckle, and another to the door. I didn’t want one on the cable to decrease its oscillation. I tracked each contact mic to a separate channel on my field recorder.<\/p>\n

I recorded about 16 minutes of pretty interesting tones, but the audio levels were quite low. The hums and drones were nice, but I liked it even better when the cable would strike and vibrate against the eBow itself, adding a sound like metal being stretched and warped. It sounded like a much more aggressive Alan Lamb<\/a> recording. Perhaps someday I can use it expressively as a layer in some transformative or warping sequence, and certainly chopping it up to microsample it will yield untold button sounds, clicks, wonks, vrrrmmms, and other sonic sweetness.<\/p>\n

I layered some of the more dynamic, expressive parts into a short clip that you can check out below.<\/p>\n

[soundcloud url=”http:\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/5763991″ params=”show_comments=true&auto_play=false&color=ee0000″ width=”100%” height=”81″ ]
\n[Piezo contact microphones into Sound Devices 702]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The eBow has been around for decades, and it does one thing only, albeit very well: It excites metal objects with a magnetic field. It’s meant to be used to get synth tones out of guitars, and used right, it can be beautiful. “Used right” usually doesn’t apply when I get my hands on such […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,4],"tags":[13,9,10,321],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299"}],"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=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1688,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions\/1688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}