Henry Hoagland
Composer | Sound Designer | Mixer
Title: Herbert Ashe Hemmerich
Type: Mixed Media, sound and fiction
Role: Composer
Instrumentation: Synthesizer
This was a short fiction/sound project I shared over instagram in winter/spring 2021. I’ve included the text of the posts as well as links to the short videos I made where I included the sounds the character (my fake great-uncle Herbert Ashe Hemmerich) had made as well as excerpts from his journals.
Doorbell I
Back in April, my quarantined aunt cleared out her attic and found a few boxes that belonged to my great uncle. Uncle Herbie (Herbert Ashe Hemmerich) was an electrical engineer and spent most of his life working in the home appliance division of Westinghouse in Pittsburgh. He was an amateur musician and never had a family of his own, so I’ve ended up with the collection.
The boxes contain notebooks and cassettes arranged in chronological order. The notebooks start in 1955, the tapes in 1967. Some of the tapes are too degraded to hear and others are just recordings of him playing classical piano, but I was quite taken with a series of tapes he made in the mid to late 70’s—all part of a vast composition project reimagining the sounds of home appliances.
I won’t pretend to understand any of his schematics —something to do with wiring piezoelectric speakers and synthesizer components into circuit boards—but the collection includes recordings of dozens of his doorbells, alarm clocks, coffee maker bleeps, etc. as well as Herbie’s musings on the nature of home products and sound.
I’ll be typing up and periodically sharing some of his work as I continue going through it. Perhaps I should feel a bit guilty because I’m sure Herbie didn’t show these to anyone while he was alive, but I really think there are worthy ideas in here. I’ve enjoyed stepping into his world.
Doorbell II
My great uncle’s second attempt at crafting a doorbell as well as excerpts from his journal. I haven’t included any of his writings between April and May of ‘74 because they’re mostly schematic tweaks and logs of each and every time the doorbell was pressed over that period (who rang, what was Uncle Herbie doing at the time, how did the doorbell sound in that part of the house, did the guest say anything about the doorbell, etc.
Doorbell VII
Think I finally figured out why Uncle Herbie wrote all these doorbells…
I’ve skipped Doorbells III-VI, because they were all variations on the same themes. He didn’t write much in the summer/fall of 1974. He did have some sort of epiphany on a flight to Minneapolis which I do think played some role in his formulation of Doorbell VII.
He wrote many pages on the “aspirational humanism” in the geometry of cornfields and roads, their sharpness vis a vis the coastlines of the Great Lakes. And then, how repeating rhythms—beats, dance, etc.—are geometric expressions through sound.
Otherwise, it doesn’t seem like he had an awful lot going on. As I’ve previously mentioned, he never married and had no family, so it seems like he just went to work and then came home to fiddle around with circuit boards.
Alarm Clock I
I’m not sure I even like Uncle Herbie’s first “alarm clock,” though the technical limits of his circuit boards, oscillators, filters, etc probably made anything more tuneful a bit difficult.
Alarm Clock IV