I finally got the amazing percussionists Bree Van Reyk and Claire Edwardes on board the HMAS Vampire destroyer to see what kinds of sounds we could make, but also to find out more about the typical kind of sounds that would have been made on a daily basis with the incredibly helpful staff and volunteers of the ANMM.

In this video, filmed and edited by Jessica Lawless, you can see experiments first in a gun turret, then the engine room, and then the steam room. The latter two are not currently open to the public, so it was pretty exciting to get inside them and look around.

I had been thinking that if we found amazing sounds my choice would be to go back into the ship and sample them, for recording at the Sydney Conservatorium’s studios later in the year, or to use traditional percussion instruments and other readily-available sound sources to imitate them in the studio.

But Bree and Claire both thought that we really should get back into those spaces to record. We’d have to do this in the evening (so it’s not too noisy), but Hamish thinks that we can do it. So my job now is to review about an hour of footage and choose the sounds I’m keen to use and the spaces they’ll take place in. Exciting stuff. I also need to work out how all of this will fit together in the final piece, which on top of the other changes to the project recently means I need to get back to a structural plan… another blog soon…