Foraging for Streetsweeper Blades (for Magda Mayas)
Dave Brown
Foraging for Streetsweeper Blades (for Magda Mayas)
I was performing a show with the prepared instrument trio Pateras/Baxter/Brown in Bern, Switzerland in 2006. Sharing the bill was the Australian duo of cellist Anthea Caddy and sound artist Thembi Soddell. I noticed that Anthea was employing thin metal strips to garner percussive sounds from the body and strings of the cello. One of her striking actions was scraping these metal strips across the cello’s strings and bridge, which when amplified produced searing scream-like sounds along with the more percussive employments I’d observed earlier. I was fascinated and asked her something stupid like, “Where did she get them made?” She replied, “They’re discarded streetsweeper blades from Australia.” She merely picked them up from the streets and gutters of Melbourne. She promptly gifted me one and after gentle but swift inauguration into my arsenal of utensils, these slim metal blades transformed my approach to the semi-acoustic guitar.
This initial experience led to a minor obsession with streetsweeper blades and these, new to me utensils, became the basis of a slowly developing group of prepared guitar techniques that I brought into service when performing. Firstly, I utilized the blades as devices to help alter the intonation of my instrument by weaving them through the strings of the guitar above the fretboard. This also led to them deadening the resonance of the strings to a degree, creating a percussive effect. By complete accident, through inadvertently knocking the blades while in place and amplified, I discovered their variable tonal and percussive abilities that were defined by a combination of their lengths and transverse positional placement through the strings. They made beautiful, pitched twangs dependent on their placement and level of amplification. Due to my practice of utilizing contact microphones on the headstock and body of the semi-acoustic guitar it appeared obvious to me to employ extra numbers of these fine blades, that vary in length and flexibility, to create further tonalities and twangs by weaving them through the strings above the nut (hovering over the truss-rod cover) and below the bridge (suspended between it and the tailpiece). All these combinations formed a beautiful adjunct to the little, badly tuned percussion orchestra I was building by other means along the length of the guitar strings. Through experimentation and practical discoveries, these deployments of streetsweeper blades quickly became a standardized setup I utilized for my prepared guitar techniques. These placements have remained largely unchanged for 10 to 12 years.
On less frequent occasions, I will dramatically sweep the blades along the length of the fretboard while they’re intertwined with the guitar strings, this produces a searing, scraping sound not dissimilar the scraping sounds I initially was inspired by when conjured from Anthea Caddy’s cello.
For a three-year period, I resided in the Western suburbs of Melbourne, this was during the time I was first discovering and expanding my prepared guitar techniques. I had a regular coffee and kick to kick (Australian Rules Football) with a local companion. One of our coffee haunts was run by Ethiopian immigrants and situated in the Footscray mall area where, because parking was at a premium in that vicinity, I’d often park my car some distance from the coffee joint. This was a boon, as I’d wander through the backstreets and alleyways with a sharp eye searching, hunting for streetsweeper blades! After coffee, I’d trek back to the car clutching a handful of streetsweeper blades while juggling a football with the other arm.
Dave Brown is a composer/performer (guitar, bass), based in Melbourne, Australia.