Slow Radio: The Halyards of Woodbridge

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The Halyards of Woodbridge

BBC Radio 3 - Slow Radio, The Halyards of Woodbridge

Iain Chambers records musical sounds along the river Deben amongst birdsong and boats.

Composer Iain Chambers takes a sound walk along Suffolk's River Deben, meeting avocets and curlew, and culminating in the musical sounds of Woodbridge boatyard.

Woodbridge in Suffolk is well known for its major Anglo-Saxon archaeological sites, including Sutton Hoo, burial site of Raedwald, the most powerful king of 7th-century England.

The town, bordered by the River Deben, has had a reputation as a centre for boat-building, rope-making and sail-making since the Middle Ages, with Francis Drake having ships built here.
 
But what caught composer Iain Chambers's attention on a recent visit was the striking sound of the halyards of the many boats moored in Woodbridge boatyard. Audible from the platforms of the train station, when heard up-close they create a bewitching collage of pitches and rhythms. These rhythms are constantly in flux, as different boat masts interact with each other, played by the wind.
 
This Slow Radio episode takes us from the boatyard in Woodbridge, along the River Deben towards Melton and back again. Alongside field recordings of the estuary’s curlews, dunlin, plover, redshank, avocets, lapwings, and sandpipers, we venture into a hidden sonic world made possible by contact microphones. These recordings allow us to hear the wind as a character itself, playing the taut halyards of boats, or exciting the large wire fences that border the river.

We hear the halyards pitched down, the patterns resembling a less clangorous relative of British church bell change-ringing, the pitches closer to Tibetan singing bowls.

Composed and produced by Iain Chambers
Recordings by Iain Chambers and Lisa Heledd Jones
An Open Audio production for BBC Radio 3

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