My first thoughts on seeing WELL was the saying my Dad used to use, “Well well well, three holes in the ground”  to this day I have no idea what it means. I was then reminded of the in class discussion about regulating the outcomes of the random generator to colours which made me think ink wells, or wells of colour. From these initial thoughts I have the basis of the first and second experiments.

Mind map from class exercise:

Experiment One: Find out what “Well well well three holes in the ground” means or comes from and respond to it.

A Google search initially brought up “Well well well three holes in the ground” an album by Itch released 14th of February 2005

Link to the Album Well Well Well Three Holes in the Ground

I don’t think this is what my Dad was referring to so I kept adjusting the search terms. After further searching it seems the saying comes as a twist on a Dad Joke

You hear the one about the three holes in the ground filled with water?
No?
Well, well, well….

The Album is more interesting than the Dad Joke… Sitting with the idea of the Album I was reminded of some of my colleagues at work who continuously create and present music. Watching their creations is fascinating and I am always tempted to started, but also too afraid to start as I do not consider myself musical. In the context of this course, I thought what would I do if I knew I could not fail.

Experiment One:
• Copy down all the lyrics from the album Well Well Well Three Holes in the Ground by Itch (in the order of the songs on the album), shuffle the lines using the same website from the Random Generator. ((Don’t play the album till after finishing the experiment!))
• 14th February 2005; 14022005 is the date the album was released. By removing the zeros I come to the number 14225; 1+4+2+2+5 = 14
• I will select the first 14 lines of the shuffled song lyrics as my lyrics.
• Record the lyrics, more inspired by the idea of poetry and spoken word poetry.
• Play the recording back into GarageBand and add in music and/or sounds.

Selected lyrics:

  1. Soaked in the sunshine the pylons are humming, 
  2. His knuckles they read love and hate, 
  3. Until it snaps like a branch because I was your sail. 
  4. Who stood by the pavement edge? 
  5. Chop off my head full of voices, 
  6. Do you find it hard to say what you really mean? 
  7. If this is my fate my destiny, 
  8. Then I don’t want it.
  9. But no one remembers, 
  10. They’ve left me here clutching at straws, 
  11. And the seconds will stretch out like the good old days your farther would say. 
  12. Don’t you judge this book by its cover? 
  13. It swills in our bellies like butterflies, 
  14. the burning of ears.

Screen grab from Garage Band, I was able to mitigate some of the anxiety of recording and playing back my own voice by playing with the synth to change the voices around.

 

After playing around with my own voice I wanted to record a longer clip using all the shuffled lyrics. From the in class discussion, I was inspired to use a free text to speech website to convert the lyrics to Portuguese, German, French, and British English. I played the tracks back in Garage Band and used the voice synth to change the voices of the Portuguese, German and French. I really didn’t like the result as I felt it had less humanity, less feeling.

 

Screen grab of the process in Garage Band.