Late at night in my flat in North London, I stepped out of bed and placed my bare feet onto the carpet to go to the bathroom. It was the journey back to bed that will forever be etched into my memory. That sensation of a slug between my toes can never be erased. There will always be a before and after I stepped on that slug.
![A vintage scientific illustration of ten different slug species, each labeled and accompanied by size measurements in millimeters. The slugs vary in size from 15 mm to 200 mm and are depicted with detailed, color-rendered views showcasing their unique physical characteristics A vintage scientific illustration of ten different slug species, each labeled and accompanied by size measurements in millimeters. The slugs vary in size from 15 mm to 200 mm and are depicted with detailed, color-rendered views showcasing their unique physical characteristics](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1e6d171d-4de4-418c-a088-9beb9bd6bc5b_719x992.png)
Last month, I facilitated the workshop "Slime and Slug Trail Music Box Composition" at Modern Art Oxford for YWMP’s No. 80 Festival. It combined one of my favorite things in the world with one of my least favorite things: music boxes and… slugs. I’m currently blessed to live in a place with access to a garden, where I like to grow things and where slugs and snails like to eat said things. When I step into the garden early in the morning, I’m often greeted by the traces of activity from slimy nocturnal critters. My garden is a smorgasbord of slime trails and snail-munched green leaves.
Somehow, these trails and holes started to remind me of the shapes and lines found on a strip of music box paper. What has always fascinated me about music boxes is that the holes you punch in the paper—the very things you remove—create the music.
You can perhaps imagine that once I made that connection, I started seeing graphic scores, melodies, and music everywhere.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4c81fdee-e517-4180-ac4c-e069c873b17d.heic)
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7ccffc27-3354-401a-8732-8490ac03face.heic)
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F013aaf25-4ec9-478f-9ae0-6a4c8b3b796f.heic)
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F53a30e12-f51f-47e2-b0c0-5103d18b4679.heic)
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F57e9e058-5de1-4ac1-a3c5-6dd1d8ee481c.heic)
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_474,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa8e56182-6ac5-4208-ba99-55234fa39a0b.heic)
Music Boxes
I was first introduced to music box composition during my first year as a student in the Electronic Music Course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. It was a great way to learn about the origins of electronic music and the modern step-sequencer. I was captivated by the tactile experience of punching holes, the fiddly hand-cranking of the wheel, and the percussive noise it added to the notes being played.
Music Box Basics
The paper strip you feed into the music box is essentially music notation paper with added grid lines. However, you don’t need to read music to start composing for a music box. Instead, you can base your composition on creating an interesting pattern. In my "Slime and Slug Trail Music Box Composition" workshop, rather than punching out carefully planned melodies and chords, it was all about replicating the trails of slugs or snails onto the music paper. Anything goes, really, which is one of the things I love about composing for a music box!
There is, however, one limitation to keep in mind when composing or arranging for music boxes; the same note can't be played in rapid succession. This is because the hooks which trigger the music comb need a small bit of time to reset. Different notes can play in quick succession though and you can stack notes on top of each other vertically to create chords.
To illustrate:
You can buy your own music box composition kit here.
![A table is filled with musical composition tools. There is a booklet titled "Slime Trail Music Box Composition," rolls of perforated music box paper, a hand-crank music box, a xylophone, and various pens and pencils, suggesting a workspace for creating music box compositions. A table is filled with musical composition tools. There is a booklet titled "Slime Trail Music Box Composition," rolls of perforated music box paper, a hand-crank music box, a xylophone, and various pens and pencils, suggesting a workspace for creating music box compositions.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F58e7cb05-b216-4640-9f17-d3b7bfdd6949_2000x1335.jpeg)
Despite following a similar brief in the workshop, every participant managed to create something unique and beautiful. Unamplified music boxes are rather quiet, and since we were sharing the workshop space with DJ sets, a café, and an art workshop, I had to find a way for people to better hear their compositions. I decided to hook up a pair of contact mics on a chair to my audio interface and into Logic Pro X, allowing everyone to hear their music amplified and also record the takes. This lo-fi approach means that the recordings feature the lovely mechanical noises of the crank turning, as well as some background chatter and DJ sets seeping through.
Here is an example from the workshop:
Things that made it into my notebook
Hannah Peel’s use of music boxes both live and in her sound design, film scores and solo albums:
Another artist’s inspiring take on discovering the beauty in nature’s slug and slime trails that I came by: Emily Wick and ‘THE SHIMMERING SLIME DRAWINGS OF SNAILS AND SLUGS’.
‘How Slug slime could help heal a broken heart’: Being on a path of slime trial discovery my interest was of course immedieatly sparked when I read this headline. While the broken heart mentioned in the article is referring to actual hearts rather than a broken hearts in romantic, metaphorical terms I couldn’t help myself finding it rather poetic.
This website where you can make and share your own music box melodies. You can also use it to plan your composition and listen to it, before you commit to the hole punching on physical music notation paper.
Kathy Hinde’s Bird Box Migrations (2008) which, similarly to my slime trails, explores a picture as a musical score:
I came across Keenan O’Meara’s music when I was looking up second hand 4 and 2-track cassette tape recorders. He recorded a hole ep on a gorgeous little Tascam Mini Portastudio 02 Mkii armed only with his voice into an Ev-re15 mic and a nylon string guitar directly into a sm57. I’m sold(!) and so I’ve added three of his tracks onto my monthly Spotify Playlist.
omg the little slug music box song is gorgeous! i haven't worked with music boxes before but this is making me want to. also thanks for sharing that gorgeous keenan o'meara track.
I loved making the slime trail music. I've been playing around with adding all sorts of effects...it now sounds like a space snail!