Disquiet Junto 0253 Doorbell Rehab

We don't have a doorbell and I didn't notice many while traipsing around the neighbourhood with my kids this Halloween. However, with the Junto's directive to compose a doorbell sound, I knew exactly what I wanted to record.

Earlier this year I composed a piece called 'Ashmore Reef' that used my Nashville-tuned guitar. It has the three lower strings tuned with three higher strings to a get a result that's an octave higher. The opening tuning EADGBE demonstrates how strumming a chord gets a result more like a melody.



I think I might've written it on a blog around the time of 'Ashmore Reef' that I wanted to use the opening notes on the Nashville-tuned guitar as a doorbell sound. Anyway, that's what I've done here this week.

My son assisted and we made a short film to illustrate how the guitar sounds, both for a visitor at the front door and inside the home. In Ableton Live I've tried to smooth over the roughness of the Rode VideoMic, which sounds crunchy as the auto-gain attempts to limit the volume.

When I'd first explained the Junto to my son, he'd suggested that we record doorbells around town and then assemble them into the Super Mario Bros theme. Then we'd discussed the potential for a mechanical door strumming device, before settling on a short film-style response.

Another idea would've been to sample Men At Work's 'Who Can It Be Now?' but it makes me sad to think about saxophone player, Greg Ham.



Ham killed himself around time of the court case that found the band guilty of plagiarising a song that is known by most Australians. It saddens me that his musical reference to a cultural touchstone can be criminal as it quite clearly interprets the original in using the melody without the better-known lyric "Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree" -- like The Presets.