wouter van veldhoven

My name is Wouter van Veldhoven, I make music using collected second hand materials including, cans, old tape recorders, cigar boxes, broken radios, toy pianos, antique televisions, walkmans, etc. These collected objects are then reworked into experimental, often automated, musical instruments and recording devices. The music balances somewhere between dusty, lo-fi experimental electronics, installation art and jangly ambient. I have released solo albums and collaborative works (with a.o. Sima Kim, Greg Haines and Machinefabriek) on various labels such as Tapeworm, Umor Rex, Slaapwel, Digitalis and Morc Here I'll post the things I collect and some updates/insights on the things I'm working on, have finished, want to do and fail to do...

[woutervanveldhoven]

some taperecorder weirdness

[woutervanveldhoven]

Experiment: build an automated snaredrum get some tape recorders, televisions plus some other (half broken) machines and wire it all together. Result: a sort of slow krautrock monster.

[woutervanveldhoven]

You are amazing. Beautiful music!! beautiful creations. Hoping one day to work with you or maybe own one of your instruments! Just putting that thought into the universe & in ur ask box hah.

thanks! I'm not really good at cooperative work.. but I could help you build your own machines if you'd like that! I check my FB messenger more often than tumblr, feel free to ask me stuff over there as well.

[woutervanveldhoven]

Wouter, first off, let me say that I love your work. Have found it through a thread on the muffwiggler forum. I'm thinking of getting into using tape recorders and tape loops myself and am trying to decide about which tape recorder to get. There's a place in Germany that sells new old stock Uher 4000 Report Monitors. Not very cheap, but at least I'd know they are in good condition. Would you think the Uher is a good start? Would love to hear from you with any tips! Cheers, Thorsten

probably a bit late.. sorry about that. Not sure if it is of any use now, but the report monitor is one of my most favourite recorders. Very versatile machine! sturdy and compact too. Go for it! brilliant start!

[woutervanveldhoven]

I think I mutilated the reed organ... sorry..

[woutervanveldhoven]

chromatic explorations with live tape-pitching and automated bells.

[woutervanveldhoven]

RELEASE (or sort of anyway) : A head stuck in tape; When it comes to music I'm not the most communicative guy.. I'm also not immune to quirks like being insecure about my own work. These things combined have often delayed releases to a point where I didn't want to release the material at all anymore. Sorry to the labels and other folks who have spend time in wanting to release my work and eventually didn't get to release anything or are still waiting. Also sorry to the fans who have been waiting and waiting too. For now I am not going to release anything until I might accidentally might create something I would really like to release, but that is not really the point of this post. For all the people that don't care about my doubts and more about the music: I did collect some unreleased tracks and (semi-)finished albums (including "Sings of Safety" the would-be follow up to "Four Simple Songs for Five Dead Bumblebees") for you in an unofficial "release" ready for you to download from bandcamp for free (or whatever you'd like to pay ) Enjoy!! And I'll probably be uploading some hard to get EP's on there soon as well (as soon as I find the raw recordings again..)

[woutervanveldhoven]

Monophonic cassette mellotron and automated zithers

over the last weeks I've been building some new instruments, including a cassette walkman that can be used as a sort of monophonic "mellotron" (you know, the brilliant tape sampler from the 60's), playing the tape at varying speeds to create different notes.

Another instrument is the automated zither, which is just an old zither that I saved from the junkyard with a couple of solenoids and electro-motors attached to it (and some minor John Cage-like preparations to create extra harmonics): 

I then connected these machines (plus an automated toy piano I made a while ago and a tape recorder) using a doepfer a100 system and a home cooked relay board like this:

which resulted in this little composition:

[woutervanveldhoven]

Composition to keep your Zen during tape recorder maintenance

[woutervanveldhoven]

the studio is alive..

[woutervanveldhoven]

a melancholic canon for six old tape-recorders and a tea-box violin

[fieldmic]

I of IV - Pauline Oliveros

Composed in 1966, this work is a good example of Oliveros’ earlier electronic music. A configuration of tape recorders is cross-patched into each other, each recorder having a magnetic tape loop running on it. This makes for a type of “automatic generation” system, with everything feeding back throughout the whole circuit. Similar to Richard Maxfield’s procedure, Oliveros obtains the sound of the bias frequencies of tape recorders combined with the difference, or lower “ghost tones”, produced by the interference of very high frequencies. The effect is of massive waves of tones. [allmusic.com]

[woutervanveldhoven]

Two sad tape recorders having a depressing conversation in my livingroom.. ...they are unhappy and it looks like they’ll be repeating their moans ad infinitum

[woutervanveldhoven]

new installation at rood|noot.

if you get bored you can always play the game "find the sleeping dog"

[woutervanveldhoven]

Hi! Please would you mind breaking down how the lullabies composition was made? Thanks!

No problem :)I made a couple of short tape loops and recorded some short melodic thingies on them (toy box, melodically, box-violin and vocals), all in the same key (probably a minor, cause my toy box only has the white keys...). I then put played those and mixed them together, fading in some loops, fading others out and recording the result on a four track recorder.I used different old (cheap) valve recorders for the different loops to get the different timbres, they all have their unique sounds :)

[woutervanveldhoven]

Live setup

[woutervanveldhoven]

 Lying in state

An installation at st Joseph Church, Amsterdam

A requiem for a broken tape recorder