Tuesday, July 24, 2007

The A Box

Today I was telling a songwriter friend about the A Box. Paul Davey, who played sax with Helen and the Horns, is very good at electronics. We discovered that the best note for all the Horns to tune to was A, and he made a little brown plastic box with holes in the top and one chrome switch. When you switched the switch on, the little box played concert A. When you switched it off, it stopped. When the battery ran out, it simply stopped working, instead of playing a note that wasn't A, and confusing everybody.
Once, we were round the trombonist's house yakking. There was a persistent hum and we couldn't work out what it was and where it was coming from. We'd manage to forget about it, then it would start irritating us all over again. Finally, we realised that the A box had managed to switch itself on inside the trombonist's trombone case and it had been playing A to itself all evening.

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