After a 3 week break, we got back together with the Bedford ‘Bat-Choir’ (as they’ve come to be known !). This time we had a chance to rehearse in St Cuthbert’s Hall – which is where we’ll be doing the performance. I invited Ben Salmons, the guitarist from another workshop. He had spent a little bit of time working things out, and we’d discussed things that could work – mainly to make drones, and atmospheric textures. Ben turned up with an electric guitar, a bow, a bank of pedals and a Marshall amp… nice! Andy Keep, who I’ve met a few times for advice on this project, also came along. 

It was quite different in the resonant space of St Cuthbert’s Hall, perfect for voices – but it made me a little nervous about the sonar distance sensors… how would they behave? Also – unfortunately, the heating had broken – so it was REALLY COLD!... eek… we managed though – and the choir were great for putting up with the cold temperature. We went through some structures, and shaped the ideas. It seemed like a good idea to be really quite minimal with the instructions, and we decided to call them ‘behaviours’.  It was (again) really interesting watching the whole choir get used to using the devices in the space – practicing on their own.

This was the first time we had all 10 devices all working at the same time – and I really started to get a sense of what it could be like… 

We REALLY needed the reverb back though, … the little speakers in the Bat Boxes, are not particularly loud, and without the reverb tended to sound quite flat… even in such a resonant space, it seemed easy for people’s sounds to get lost in amongst the general atmosphere. The guitar sounded great, but we needed to make some spaces where there was very minimal input. It was good at the start to give the choir a starting point to find notes to start with. 

The sensors were fairly accurate, but at times, some of them tended to ‘stick’ at one particular distance – so we need to have a look into that and see if we can stop that happening… but all in all, they functioned well….NO CRASHES AT ALL!! amazing progress!

Also - for some reason - there were lots of particularly amusing moments during the rehearsal - including an infectious burst of giggling because Lesley had managed to record a sound that was a bit like a chicken... still practicing biomimicry then...