Songs and Sonics

There are few greater gifts to the creative noise enthusiast than Dollar Tree.

No, I’m not being paid to say that. It’s just something I’ve grown to realize over time.

Today’s project largely consists of parts found at — you guessed it — your local Dollar Tree. I don’t know if these exact parts are available at every Dollar Tree, or even if they’re available at my Dollar Tree. Their inventory seems to change as frequently as I change shirts. So you might need to find some substitute parts. If that’s the case, don’t worry — this isn’t rocket science. It’s just another fun way to play with sound.

First, allow me to introduce this garden hose-looking toy called a whirlie (blatant CD product placement to demonstrate relative whirlie size):

When you hold the end of the whirlie with the wide mouth and spin it fast enough, this unassuming plastic hose generates some otherworldly sustained tones. I used multiple, overdubbed whirlies in this way at the end of “Freetime” (from The Simple Carnival’s Menlo Park EP).

If you spin the whirlie faster, the pitch jumps up a fifth. Spin it even faster, and the pitch will be a fourth above that, making the pitch an octave above where you originally started. Spin it even faster, and the pitch jumps yet again. You can do this until your arm falls off or you go into orbit, whichever happens first.

Whirlies are even capable of playing melodies. If you cut the tubes to different lengths, you’ll get a different set of pitches to play. Of course, this melody-playing technique works best if you have more than two arms. Australian composer Sarah Hopkins does just this, as she writes serious music pieces for… whirlies. You read that right. Check out her web site if you don’t believe me.

But this project isn’t about using whirlies for their naturally pleasing tones. No, this is all about a homemade contraption I made called the Sound Spinner:

The Sound Spinner is a whirlie with a small speaker in the wide mouth end. The speaker is pointed toward the long end of the tube. So when you spin the whirlie, it throws the sound around the room in every direction, creating what’s called a Doppler effect. Have you ever noticed how an ambulance siren’s pitch will change as the vehicle fades into the distance? That’s the Doppler effect.

Pretty much. However, I have a real Leslie speaker, and they sound significantly different, even though they operate on the same principle.

The Sound Spinner costs only a few bucks to build, sounds worse than a real Leslie, and a human can actually “perform” with it. Do not discount the Sound Spinner’s ability to do a synthesizer filtering effect (by covering the open end of the whirlie with your hand) or a Peter Frampton talkback effect (by putting the open end of the whirlie in your mouth and “speaking”). And the Sound Spinner doubles as a variable speed autopanning device, if you spin it in front of a stereo microphone.

And don’t forget the visual impact this thing has! In the right musical situation, playing a Sound Spinner in a live show could leave a lasting impression on the audience… and possibly cause unparalleled fits of laughter.

Still, don’t let the potential embarrassment of using this gadget scare you from building one. It’s perfectly usable in the studio, where nobody can see how you got that weird sound.

What makes the Sound Spinner interesting is what it does to the source material you send through it. I used the Sound Spinner at the end of Really Really Weird (from the Me and My Arrow EP as well as Girls Aliens Food album), and the source material was a bit unusual.

What is this device? The model name has long escaped me, but it’s an environmental noisemaker I found at a thrift store and then circuit bended. It plays annoyingly grating 10-second loops of cricket, bird, and ocean noises, meant to “relax” the unlucky sap who received this as a gift. I installed some glitch-inducing switches and a big knob which controls the pitch/speed (sample rate) of the noise.

Since the end section of Really Really Weird is basically the sound of my studio going ballistic, I recorded some glitchy bird noises out of this device that gradually rise in pitch and speed. I then took that performance and fed it into the Sound Spinner, spinning it in front of a stereo microphone, for an extreme as possible stereo effect. The end result is buried in the mix, so much that it just serves to “tickle the ears” a bit when wearing headphones. (The effect is even more hidden than I originally intended in the final mix, because, as soon as the Sound Spiner becomes audible, the mix is swirling around and well on the way of marching toward your right ear.)

So here’s some mp3s to show what the Sound Spinner does and where it ended up in this particular song. These clips are best listened to with headphones.

The Sound Spinner consists of the following parts (the first five can be found at Dollar Tree):

A whirlie. ($1.00)

An external iPod speaker. ($1.00)

Foam to keep the speaker in place. ($1.00)

Electrical tape. ($1.00)

A piece of cardboard to close off the foam and speaker on the wide mouth end.

A powered computer speaker.

A long, 2-conductor audio cable to go from the computer speaker’s amplifier to the iPod speaker in the whirlie.

The external iPod speaker is one of those Dollar Tree finds; not only do you get two cheap stereo speakers for a buck, but included for no extra cost is a pushbutton switch and a decent 1/8″ stereo molded jack with cable. All of these parts can be utilized in other electronic projects.

What makes this particular model desireable is how the internal speaker fits perfectly within the whirlie’s wide mouth end.

The iPod speaker does not require external power, and it’s not loud enough to sufficiently force meaningful sound waves down the whirlie tube. I ended up using an AC-powered computer speaker as the “amplifier.”

So instead of the powered computer speaker sending a signal to one of its speakers, one speaker is eliminated entirely, and the other speaker’s signal is re-routed to the external iPod speaker.

Note that I don’t recommend working with AC power if you don’t know what you are doing with electronics. Heck, I don’t know even what I’m doing with electronics, and here I am writing an article about it. In my defense, I was scrounging around the house for a cheap amp to sacrifice, and this is what I found. So re-read that disclaimer a few paragraphs back and make sure you know what you’re getting into if you build one of these things.

You’ll want to wedge the iPod speaker in the one end of the whirlie (don’t glue or tape it in) then pack in some foam to keep the speaker in place.

Finally, you’ll need to cut a piece of cardboard and seal the end of the whirlie with electrical tape. The goal is to keep all of the sound from escaping the end that you hold.

And that’s it. Happy noisemaking!