The Guzeek, or, the Gunfire Sound Effects Generator

(The Sun Herald, October 24, 1954)

 

(BBC Engineering Division Monograph: Radiophonics in the BBC, 1963)

Whilst researching the early (pre?) history of Australian electronic music (that is to say, the space between Percy Grangiers experiments in Free Music from the 1930's and 1940's and Keith Humbles establishment of the Electronic Music Studio at the University of Melbourne in 1966, and Val Stephens appearance on the compilation Electronic Music issued by Folkways in 1967) I came across this intriguing news report on the Guzeek, or, the Gunfire Sound Effects Generator. This small, unassuming machine was an electronic white noise generator designed to, as it suggests, imitate the sound of gunfire. Utilised in Army training exercises during 1954 to produce a sonic assault, and reduce the damage inflicted through ammunition on the Sydney National Park, sitting in as the theater of war, the Guzeek was hooked up to a large PA system installed throughout the park spitting out an encyclopaedic level of assault weapon imitations into the serene soundscape of the park - a hybrid of a mechanical Lyre Bird and some shell shocked veteran out of a Samuel Fuller film.

A strange inheritor of Luigi Russolo's Intonarumori's, the Guzeek was designed by the engineering team at the 2UE radio station though I am uncertain whether the machine they constructed was an original creation or a modification of a similarly named machine designed that same year by the radiophonic engineers at the BBC (soon to be united under the title of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop…). To experience what the Guzeek may have sounded like there is available online a digital approximation of the BBC's Guzeek, available here, digitally reconstructed by a team who have recreated a range of Radiophonic devices to play online.