Blue Noun Introduces Crieff Maker Alpine Effects
Alpine Effects is Crieff-based maker John McCulloch, who makes transformers for electric guitars.
His work is visual and functional – he describes it as a 50/50 split, prioritising looking good and sounding good.
Alpine Effects at Blue Noun
This exhibition shares the evolution of his ideas and production.
John began making his own circuitry by hand, and more recently, he’s been looking at ways to outsource some basic circuit board design and build from there. He’s also integrating 3D digital printing into his work.
His pop-up exhibition at Blue Noun shares different components of his work – and how a simple circuit board has evolved into highly designed objects.
This show even includes a couple of the original paintings he runs through Photoshop to distort into graphics.
I invited John to exhibit as part of the Crieff Arts Festival at Blue Noun.
We already have our doors open for an exhibition of 14 portraits by the Polish Women’s Group, something that has been planned since March.
At quite the last minute, we decided to invite John to share the space and show his work in an event we are calling the Crieff Arts Festival Fringe.
The Invisible Maker
John’s work complements the portrait exhibition as both have themes of visibility and invisibility.
The Polish portraits are about women presenting a publicly Polish version of themselves.
They wear makeup and dramatic flower crowns that reference traditional culture, but theatrically. (For once?), they are not assimilating; they are standing out.
John’s work sits in an interesting place.
He is the invisible creator of the noises guitarists make. His work doesn’t have to be beautiful to do that, but the graphics are his mark.
I am attracted to John’s work because it is so sculptural (without knowing much about the sounds he is making).
In this installation image, you can see how well both shows sit together.
About My Language Work
I help people use their English in the ways they want or need to; like John, I am both invisible and an enabler.
John uses his skills to create tools for musicians to use. To do this, he must understand music at an expert level. Most musicians are obsessed with making their own noise; John’s sounds are ingredients in the works of others.
At Blue Noun, my role is similar. We rarely help people obsessed with English for the sake of it; our clients are trying to be themselves, as best they can in another language, and we have tools to help.
Most of the time, English is the path between you and what you want: a new perspective, a new job, new friends, a new passion.
You can reach most things faster when you are willing to put your thoughts into English, and then put those words out into the world.
About Being ‘Fringe’
We’re calling John’s exhibition the Crieff Art Festival Fringe. Partly because it was organised too late to go into the programme, partly because it’s on the fringe of what art is (and very different from the rest of the festival).
In art, as in language education, I’m drawn to the fringe. It’s where the interesting things happen. Things that escape definition.
Blue Noun’s English language holidays sit on the fringe of traditional language learning too: academically robust, but deliberately different from a conventional language course or language school.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
About Being ‘Fringe’
We’re calling John’s exhibition the Crieff Art Festival Fringe. Partly because it was organised too late to go into the programme, partly because it’s on the fringe of what art is (and very different from the rest of the festival).
In art, as in language education, I’m drawn to the fringe. It’s where the interesting things happen. Things that escape definition.
Blue Noun’s English language holidays sit on the fringe of traditional language learning too: academically robust, but deliberately different from a conventional language course or language school.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Discover how Blue Noun fits into the fringe of the wider language-learning picture, and why learning through real-world use matters alongside traditional study.
John’s Alpine Effects pop-up exhibition is on display at Blue Noun Language Hub alongside She Wears Her Heritage Like a Crown as part of Crieff Arts Festival week.
It’s free to visit, and our doors are open 11-4pm daily throughout the festival.
Come in, take a closer look at John’s work, and say hello.
A digital exhibition
This is my latest fuzz design. It has a tone control which I rarely do. The artwork is ink treated with salt and sodium hydroxide, then edited in Photoshop.
This is a fuzz pedal with a bias control which either starves or lets more voltage in to the signal, making it sound either really raucous or spluttery. It has a second foot switch which overloads the signal more and sounds like it’s in 8 but.
A phaser built on a recycled wood board.
A fuzz PCB I designed. It was based on the EHX big muff, but a modern interpretation
Foot switch daughter board, they make wiring a switch a lot quicker and tidies up the internal wiring
Samples of gouache artwork
The PCB for the Tundra, I really like this circuit, as I make everything for music that I want to play. The sound sits between bands like Spacemen 3, Dinosaur Jr all the way to groups like Sunn 0.
This is the starting point for every build. A pretty mundane thing to look at, but enclosures are so important in pedal building. Everything has to fit, it has to be strong and fit together well.
This is a breadboard. It is used in all kinds of electronic design. You power it with a battery or a power supply and build the circuit on it. It has rows of metal terminals that connect inside the breadboard. A must have for prototyping.
A prototype, a fuzz using an old wah wah housing, except it doesn’t wah, instead it gives what can only be described as a ripping velcro sound as you rock the pedal!
This was the enclosure for the wooden board. A touch Bob Ross, started as a watercolour and ended up editing it in Photoshop for more of a big blocks of colour look to it!
Random dare to build an effect on leather. I was into leather work for a while. I actually built three on thick leather. Not a project I would rush back to revisit!
Further Information
Follow Alpine Effects on Instagram
→ Crieff Arts Festival at the Blue Noun Venue
→ Portrait Exhibition at Blue Noun | She Wears Her Heritage Like a Crown
Related pages:
→ Culture-Led English Learning: Best Practice for a Language Holiday
→ Meet the Makers | Arts and Crafts Featured on Blue Noun Language Holidays
