Comments for OF SOUND MIND

Comment on Wonders of the cassette tape loop, part 1 by Luke

Luke — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:48:47 +0000

I have a Q, when you make a tape loop do you record onto the loop. Confusing to ask, but what i mean is do you already have the material you want to loop on the cassette before you cut it and stick it in a shell or do you make a loop stick it in a recorder then record while it’s looping.

I ask because i have made a few tape loops using splicing tape and nice 45 deg angles on the join, but they always come out sounding like…well shit.

Comment on Prepared Walkman Improvisation by howsthatsound

howsthatsound — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:33:15 +0000

travis, it’s hard to say what exactly is the issue here. it could be impedance, it could be a grounding issue on that cheap walkman. i have had similar issues myself. i tried playing this prepared walkman through an amp and mixer the other day, and it behaved completely different. it still make some great sounds, but it was not what i wanted, so it looks like we are in a similar boat. if i figure anything out i will post.

fwiw, switching to another jack won’t help as the jack is just a connecting device and has no bearing on the interference you’re experiencing. impedance is most likely the culprit i’d say.

Comment on Prepared Walkman Improvisation by travis

travis — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 02:02:25 +0000

hey i’m working on a cheapo walkmen right now, it already played back tapes at a slower pitch so i’m adding a pitch pot to it.. messing around with it i was listening through headphones straight from the headphone jack and it sounded really cool warping the music on the cassette.. but when i plug it into my studio mixer with a 1/8″ to 1/4″ cord the only thing you can hear through the speakers is the motor and stuff but no audio from the cassette?? i’ve tried different cords and inputs on my mixer and no difference.. but plugging my headphones back into the walkmen i hear the audio everytime.. it’s baffling me…
if you can help at all pleeeaase send me an e-mail.. i have a 1/4″ jack i’m gonna try to hook up as the output for the walkmen to see if that works..

Comment on Short Wave Music Rocks! by Myke Dodge Weiskopf

Myke Dodge Weiskopf — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 05:47:15 +0000

Hi there. Just a follow-up … Shortwavemusic is back online with new material starting 1 October. Visit it at its new home at http://www.myke.me. Thanks!

Comment on iPhone noise study by howsthatsound

howsthatsound — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:45:00 +0000

yeah, i’ve had that before. a similar thing happens when you tune a shortwave radio to static, place it next to the computer and use the computer as usual. the radio static modulates based on what’s going on on screen.

i have noticed something like this happening with the audio out on my mac. at the beginning/end of sounds, mp3s, whatever, there will be a burst of quiet noise. always meant to record some of it, but never have.

Comment on iPhone noise study by Mark

Mark — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:34:02 +0000

This same exact thing used to happen with my previous laptop, some kind of ground problem…the sounds would change based on the brightness/patternedness of whatever was on the screen. It was such an annoying and disabling problem, though, that I could never hear it as potentially useful noise. Maybe I should revisit….

Comment on Phin in a haystack by Ortega

Ortega — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:58:59 +0000

i read some similar in other blogs. but i do not think the same. sorry. maybe check better some more sources to point the thing out. community resources

Comment on iPhone noise study by rockHEAD

rockHEAD — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 15:17:25 +0000

invasion of the mechanical wasps, arriving in formation overhead. I feel that this may be a suitable soundtrack for the climactic final scene, where a swarm of these wasps devour the lead character in the middle of a desert before flying off.

Comment on What is this all about? by howsthatsound

howsthatsound — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:56:12 +0000

thanks for the kind words mike!
that’s a great story. i love stuff like that. i used to use a voice activated recorder to record sounds in my house and in my backyard when i wasn’t home. mostly i would get passing airplanes, but occasionally i would get completely inexplicable sounds. once i got a voice very near my recorder and some shuffling around. my back yeard at the time had a seven foot tall fence around it. that freaked me out a bit, but it was very exciting to listen to.

i have been meaning to do some recordings of silences and incidental sounds from films. i’m always noticing these amazing clusters of unintentional sounds when i’m watching tv. ha.

Comment on What is this all about? by MIKE HANSEN

MIKE HANSEN — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 23:45:37 +0000

thank you for a really interesting sight. Other people think I am crazy when I tell them stuff like this exists. I love your stuff. Just a few observations.

Ever notice sometimes when you find any old reel-to-reel tape recorders. they were usually used to record house parties of grown ups, business meetings in a house, or a grown up social gathering’s?

Here is something that caught my eye that I would like to explore: I live in San Jose California. There are 2 cable tv stations devoted to educational programming, usually to the 2 junior colleges. You cant get a schedule, nor can you get a comprehensive one on the college webpages.

For some reason, they broadcast a lot of NASA footage from Florida. it goes on for a long time. In Florida, when they are not sending crews into space and reporting it, they seem to do a lot of things…not sure if it is an official lift off, but you see footage of people inside the shuttle floating around, doing things, fixing things, but…

Usually the scenes that you see are long one camera shots of (Stationary camera) of the people at there computers, looking out for the shuttle and what is happening (far away), maybe the inside of the shuttle with hardly anything moving, and sometimes the outside of the ship.

Sometimes there is transmissions. For long periods of time, there is much silence. When there is transmission, the fidelity of the voices are different. Sometimes there like the “APOLLO 11″ static, sometimes they are very clear, sometimes 2 different transmissions at once, different sound quality, sometimes there is very interesting extrainious noises.

This can be interesting. So on a lark, one night, I grabbed a recording tape, my battery powered voice activated taperecorder, a headphone jack on each end radio shack type thing (you know), and hooked it up to the headphone jack on my television, set the levels, and whenever somebody spoke, the tape would turn on.

Very Interesting stuff.