January 29th, 2010
through the use of a phonograph, the first crude reproductions of arbitrary sound were able to be made – but not without intrinsic antique glitch. you certainly couldn’t take one out into the field back then (lest you be attacked by ticked off natives). well allot has changed both politically and scientifically across the planet that has in part led to us having much more feasible options when it comes to fulfilling our phonography festishes:
enter the samson zoom h2 – my personal choice for making timeless phonographs in a seemingly modern era. after all a sound artists needs a good field recorder to record sonic fields with!
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Tags: field recorder, phonograph, zoom h2
Posted in gear, technique | No Comments »
December 17th, 2009
extra! extra! read all about it! mad bedroom scientists are inventing new ways of allowing you to control ableton etc. with your mobile device!
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Tags: ableton, iphone, itouch, midi, osc, remote control
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December 17th, 2009
while desperately trying to avoid doing any, uh, real work today i shipwrecked across a fun little space oddity in the vast soup that is google video. this scientiferific video demonstrates the power of a single sign wave resonating particles of salt into complex geometric shapes (aka cymatics):
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Tags: cymatics, resonation, sand, vibrations
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December 17th, 2009
a good friend of mine, david last (sorry this is not a michael jackson tribute article), obviously has way too much time on his hands. but honestly this kind of boredom doesn’t mean humans have to fight it out with vegetables to achieve higher levels intelligence. rather, we can use their bio feedback signals (what little there is) – to generate sounds, midi signals, and hopefully music! So the experiment is as follows:
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Tags: david last, plants, resonance, sensor, sound art
Posted in misc.random, sound art | No Comments »
December 17th, 2009
visceral conductive manipulation (vcm). wtf does this even mean… really? is this a new form of massage therapy involving stones, bad ambient music and the nintendo power glove? perhaps a new uber expensive add-on for the iphone? considering the human body is 70% water with conductive properties, given the right noisy electronic device in need of a little human touch there is no end to the manipulation possible (i.e. jazz mutant lemur, multitouch music wall, wavetable, lofi cardboard sampler ).
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Tags: human circuit, lucky dragons
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December 17th, 2009
Random fact: It is stated that one earth-day rotation equals 24 octaves below 194.18HZ – give or take, this is the key of ‘G’. So with that fact in mind one could equally deduce that any aspect of observable surrounding can be translated/quantized into some viable music source. In my opinion physics and science, though rather useful as a practicality of thought, don’t make much for potent inspiration when composing palpable tracks for the public.
However an on going schtick of mine to exploit contact microphones, (aka “Piezo transducers” or more commonly “drum triggers”) on everyday objects seems to constantly present rather interesting results bringing physics into a more visceral form of real music.
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Tags: contact mic, earth sound, sound technique, vibration
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December 16th, 2009
i’m not sure how many times I heard my mother tell me growing up – “don’t play with that – eat that!”. probably half a zillion times. well apparently eating vegetables isn’t the only healthy thing you can do with them. this japanese man has created many amazing fruit flutes:
awesome music with wegitables!
Tags: musical fruit, vegitables
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December 16th, 2009
transmogrify:
\trans-MOG-ruh-fy\, transitive verb:
To change into a different shape or to transform, often with bizarre or humorous effect.
One night while under the influence of boredom, I spent an eternity tweaking a percussive track in Ableton that was coming together as solidly as ice cream on a hot summer’s day. I ran the sample through one effect after another trying to breathe new life into it but to no avail. Alas after running the track through a multi-band compressor the thought occurred: what if I take the beat, split it into 4 bands, and run each band through various effects at the same time? Enter: your very own transmogrification station…
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Tags: ableton, sound design, transmogrifiy, tutorial
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December 16th, 2009
for some stretch of time, i’ve always had this crazy idea of creating a monolithic sound diary (done and done). it would span years of production as i would add ten-second clips here, one-minute of work there; every day slaving bit by bit – building up some zeitgeist stretch of a song until finally, after 100s of years of labor, i would unveil it as this overly bloated, narcissistic rant!
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Tags: ambient, concept, sound art, time stretch
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December 14th, 2009
anybody who is into alternative forms of art, experimental sound design and the internet should check out this subversive mozilla firefox plugin called lily. the previous link says it all. the myriad demo videos of what this little program is capable of are awesome. it really exemplifies that all forms of information can be translated into limitless artistic life forms.
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Tags: alternative production, firefox, lily, max/msp
Posted in sound art, technique | 1 Comment »
