Dictaphone cassette collage part 2

So, it’s been nearly a year since I first mentioned this technique, and since then, I’ve been in quite a few places and recorded a ton of audio snippets. Funny thing is, I’m still not even near filling up a tape, and at this point, I’m in no rush. I have however, ripped what i’ve done so far and edited it some, and i really like it. It’s strange listening back now, and not remembering what half of it even is. It’s a delightfully screwed-up ride through the past year of my life.

Once I was done, I wanted to hear it in stereo, so i chopped the track exactly in half and made a stereo file. This one is particularly enjoyable. I love the random sonic collisions that take place. Sometimes the placement of sounds is so perfect, I wonder if I some how composed it intuitively, but I know that’s just not possible.

So, now that i’ve gone and done this, I feel like I have finally gotten it out of my system, and I don’t really need to do it anymore. The funny thing is, that I can’t stop recording sounds! I may go back to the loop cassettes and start building a sound catalog, but I can’t help thinking I’ll wind up back on the same old tape, in exactly the place i left off, continuing the journey.

– Dictaphone Cassette Collage Mono

– Dictaphone Cassette Collage Stereo

While my ipod gently weeps

I’m travelling and don’t have time for a full post, but I recorded this a couple days ago and wanted to get it up. I rather enjoy it. I hope you do too. More on when I get back.

– Untitled

Edit:

So in case you hadn’t guessed by the mp3 filename, this track was assembled in real-time, or as I implied, improvised by my ipod. I selected three sound files to use as material and chopped them up into individual sound events.  I also gave a similar treatment to about four minutes of absolute silence. I took the sounds and the silence and made a playlist on my ipod containing all of those fragments. I then set my ipod to play the playlist at random, and began recording. I did this twice, hence the stereo version above.

The sound sources were:
– The ambience and chatter preceding a musical performance I recently recorded.
– The sounds of my dogs wrestling, which i fed through noise removal software
– the sounds of an overtone sax thing i made 

I’m pretty impressed by the results, and I think I may be working in this way more in the future. I’m always intrigued when I hear sound events happening without the burden of the human perception of time. There can never be any real “groove” or “vibe” or “flow” to random sound, so you never get into a scenario of sound events being predictable, and i like this element of surprise.

I’m going to do another one of these soon, but with four tracks, each one a different instrument. I’m looking forward to hearing the outcome of that.

ATTACK! (for 5 skilled or unskilled performers)

Performers should select acoustic instruments or objects that can be struck, plucked, or otherwise sounded in such a way as to not produce a constant tone, but a clear attack and decay.

Instructions for performers:
– play one sound at a time and let it die out completely before making another one
– don’t play if anyone else is playing
– play as often as possible
– if two or more start at the same time, all but one must stifle their sound
– you may observe, but do not communiacte with the other performers
– play either for a predetermined amount of time, or until it is time to stop

Music for four performers and four laptops

All performers should be male, and should be selected because they have completed Mario Brothers previously. The four performers should perform in a rectangular (preferably square) room, with each performer positioned in each corner, facing inward.

Performers are to be outfitted with laptops (make and model up to what is available). Laptops are to be equipped with an emulator running “Mario Brothers”. A contact mic is to be placed on each laptop so as to pick up keystrokes as loudly as possible, and connected to an amplifier, pointing toward the center of the room. (sounds from the game itself are not to be included, performers may only use the computer keyboard for gameplay) 

Performers are to be to be instructed to race to successfully complete the game first. The piece is over when someone does, and their prize is whatever the take from the door is.

Possible visuals: images of the four player’s screens, projected on top of one another.

So Do You Think the Future of Music is Dead?

Hahaha, made you groan! Ok, so this is kind of ridiculous, but I had to do it for the sake of… well, ridiculousness! A friend of mine turned me on to the above video the other day (1st part of like a 5 or so part series). It’s an interview with Mike Patton from like ’92 or something. It is HYSTERICAL! It goes something like this… Interviewer asks dumb question, Patton gives dumb answer in between bites of a really gross looking sandwich. It’s brilliant! At one point (after Patton says a series of really disparaging things about the state of music today) the interviewer asks if Patton thinks the future of music is dead. 

I’m just going to let you stew in the brilliance of the question for a moment…  

aaaaand we’re back. So Patton then gives one of the best answers to that question I think possible. Anyway, I was laughing my head off. So for some reason this exchange inspired me to make the following rip off of “It’s Gonna Rain” with the question and response. If you can actually listen to this whole track you deserve an award. I have to say though, if you do… at about the 3 minute mark your brain will start doing really weird things with you perception of time, it’s quite strange. Anyway, here it is… 

– The worst thing about music…

Random Ritual. Prepared Guitar and Voices.

I got bored of having my guitars in standard tuning a while back, and started to get interested in learning to finger-pick. Mostly because I finally turned an ear to John Fahey after ignoring him for a long time (for no reason at all, except maybe hearing his name too much) and got my head ripped clean off by the sheer perfection of the musical world this man was able to create. Not that I wanted to go out and be another Jack Rose or Ben Chasny (though, they are great) I just thought if most of my guitar playing is going to be done alone, mostly amusing myself, I might as well learn how to play so it sounds like it’s 3 people.

Anyhow, so that never really happened as it take some more of what I have not, (no, not talent) time. Though I still fully intend to learn to at least get by playing finger-style (and about a million other things). So what I ended up with was a guitar tuned to one of Fahey’s standards, that was slowly but surely slipping out of tune. For some reason though, it seemed to slip IN tune… just a different sound or something. One day a picked it up and sort of tuned it into tolerability, and it had a sort of koto-like sound. The for some reason of other, I thought it’d kind of sound more like a koto if the strings were muted some. So I crammed some paper between the strings near the nut like so:

As soon as I began to play it, i felt like i was on to something. It has an interesting way of making what ever strings are open sound like an accompanying instrument and whatever is being fretted, some kind of lead. So I’ve been playing it like this for months now, whenever my computer is loading a big file (ha ha) and I’ve really grown to love it. I have no idea what the tuning is b/c it’s so far from normal tuning, even with a tuner I’m going to just get a bunch of pitches it will be nearly impossible to replicate again. (Maybe someone who has a good ear could tell me more) SO I’m basically keeping it like this at least for now.

I’ve been wanting to post about this tuning for a while, but I wanted you all to be able to hear it. Problem was, I just wasn’t getting around to recording it. So today I figured I’d do it quick and dirty. This is recorded through my computer mic (that’s what that hard drive crunch is in the background). It’s a track of guitar, improvised and unedited and a track of vocals done the same, but then delayed and reversed to make the third track. It’s pretty crunchy sounding, but I kind of like the ambience the noise seems to create. Enjoy!

 – Random Ritual

Season’s Holidays! Happy Greetings! A Gift for you and yours!

Holiday madness being what it is (work’s no party either) I figured I probably wouldn’t have the time to do a post pre-christmas. However, as I was thinking about it, I realized I do have something to share. Though I haven’t been posting them, Al and I have continued to record, almost weekly improvisations. I would post them all, I just like to, if I can, present them in a more “finished” state than I usually have time for. I thought I’d make an exception though, 1, because I haven’t posted anything form us in a while and 2, because I fear christmas delaying my posting even more than usual. So here we go…

This was recorded this past friday at Al’s house which has become the new recording place of choice for a number of reasons. The session is about 72 minutes long with a decent variety of sounds being made. Here’s a (probably incomplete) rundown of what is being played: four-track loops, realistic dx-440 radio, modified singing christmas ball, tape feedback circuit, brass bowl, wooden box, tongue drum, pig scraper, bells, chimes, cymbals, 4 oscillator noise box, wooden xylophone, saw-blade, vibes, organ, bell piano, harmonica, rams horn, kalimba, surfaces, various apartment furnishings, etc. The session has been loosely subdivided into six parts, though each part may encompass more than one discernible movement. Hope you guys enjoy this, it was a lot of fun to make.

latralmagog, session XVIII:

– part 1 

– part 2

– part 3

– part 4

– part 5

– part 6 

Christian Marclay’s “Ensemble” at the ICA

I recently had the pleasure of seeing and hearing the sound installation “Ensemble” curated by Christian Marclay. Here’s the rundown from the ICA:

The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) is pleased to present “Ensemble,” a group exhibition of works that make sound, guest curated by artist and musician Christian Marclay. Marclay has been selected as the inaugural curator of the Katherine Stein Sachs CW’69 and Keith L. Sachs W’67 Guest Curator Program, a new initiative designed to bring outside points of view to ICA. Marclay is a leading figure in the worlds of performance, visual art and experimental music.

Likening his approach to that of a composer, Marclay has chosen a variety of sculpture and installations based on their sound quality and compatibility to sonically inhabit the same large first floor gallery. Visitors are invited to interact with some of the works, others are triggered by motion detectors, or set on timers. The installation will create an ambient sound environment, intermittently producing a wide range of sounds, from the very quiet notes of a music box to the loud ringing of a bronze bell. They have been selected so that they can share the same resonant space and interact like the various instruments of a musical ensemble. It will include iconic works by artists such as Harry Bertoia, Yoko Ono, and Michelangelo Pistoletto, as well as new works by the current generation.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect based on the description, these kinds of things can take a myriad of shapes, but what was in my mind wound up being fairly close in nature to what i experienced at the show. This is a very dynamic sound landscape. Almost unrelenting at times. During some of the denser moments it’s almost claustrophobic due to the resonance of the space. As the descritpion says, pieces range from very quiet to very loud. While this was sometimes interesting, I found the louder pieces to be almost oppressive at times and they were in general the least thought out, volume seeming to be a concept in and of itself. While there is certainly something to be said on both sides of this arguement, I felt that the quiet pieces were so much more powerful and so much more enjoyable that the loud ones, and unfortunately kept getting drowned out.

This however did not hamper my enjoyment very much at all, and there were moments when it was quiet enough to hear all of the small stuff, which for the most part was a real treat. My absolute favorite of all the exhibits, was also one of the simplest. A pool, filled with dishes and bowls that was being “stirred” constantly by a compressor.

The resultant sound is as delicate and wonderfully aimless as windchimes, but with an almost gamelan-like sound. I could have sat and listened to this for hours. In fact, part of my wants to build a replica of it for my house. Smaller of course.

Other pieces of notice were; a tongue drum table which was shaped like and acoustic guitar body and had 5 seperately tuned sets of tonuges (I want this for my dining room… in my dreams), a set of three metronomes, set to different timings (mini Steve Reich), and a system of dangling bits of china, agitated by spinning record players.

Aside from some overly loud sounds (why a siren?) and some pieces that were either broken or too hard to figure out to keep interest, it was a really wonderful show. It was great just to be in a gallery full of clamor afterall, considering most art shows sonically have the same quality as funerals. It was exciting and envigorating to be so immersed in such an experience of sound, and to just walk around and hear the “mix” of sounds shift as you went.

The show runs through december (more details on the ICA site) so if you are near philly you should certainly go. If you are not and you can’t, you are in luck, as I recorded a walkthrough of the space for you to hear. I have to appologize for the sound quality as there is some hiss in the background… I was having problems with my MD that day. For the most part all of the talking has been cut out, so it is basically a theater of sound for you to sink in to. I like the recording very much, I hope you will too.

– Ensemble

Noise Removal Music

I have found through the course of my musical explorations, that one of my favorite musical experiences is the finding of music in unusual or almost non-musical places. Given the content of this blog that may sound like an understatement, however a good bit of the content of this blog involves modifying the perception to receive noise as music, and what i am talking about today is actually bending noise into something that comes closer to resembling music in the more agreed upon sense.

One of the ways this can be done is by applying modern technology in a process which in some way strips away layers (amplitude, time, pitch) of sound to leave other sounds and patterns which could not possibly have been heard previously. many devices are adept at this form of alchemy today with varying degrees of success. Reverb for example (as most prominently evidenced by Alvin Lucier in his piece “I am sitting in a Room…”) can be applied to mold sound in such a way as to exaggerate certain resonances and bestow as sort of “smoothing” effect that can make sounds appear to have a more “musical” quality. I find that it can be possible to apply very simple repetitive processes to almost any auditory content to distill from it sounds which are wholly alien, but very musical.

One such process in which I find endless enjoyment, is the application of the “Noise Removal” feature in the computer application, Audacity. Audacity is a simple sound recording program with very basic sound editing features. I find it mostly useful for compression and normalization, but having spent some time with it, I have experimented with many effects produced by “over tweaking” it’s various sound filters.

What is great about the noise removal feature in Audacity, is it requires you to define what you consider noise. Then using an algorithm, it dutifully chews through your chosen audio and removes it. While I have never used this tool for it’s prescribed purpose, I can say that it produces very interesting effects when applied to almost any component of any sound, specifically ones with a high quality of noise.

While editing the audio for my “Cymbal Ringer” post I rediscovered the noise removal featured and thought it could be interesting to apply it that the hailstorm of noise contained in that audio. After some tweaking of the noise definition and noise removal density features, I found that it was possible to pretty much zoom in on the shifting overtones in the rush of distorted cymbals I had created. The initial result sounded like a highly sped up chamber orchestra, so next I applied a time stretching function to give the notes produced in the audio more room to breathe. I went back and forth between those two filters, until I found what I was looking for.

The resulting audio sounds like a chance composed piece for Glass Harmonica. It has an arhythmic, lurching quality, that somehow seems to work perfectly with it’s odd but beautiful harmonic structure. When I first heard it I was floored. It took no effort on my part, no bending of the perception to accept this as music. It even sounded like something I would own! It’s a fantastic idea to think that there is such interesting music that could be hiding away in any sound. Just existing as if composed my nature itself.

Enjoy!

– Noise Removal Music

Four-Track Cassette Looping Part 3.

Actually I’m not quite sure what part this is, but we will continue on from three from now on, as I’m sure I’ll continue to have posts about this subject.

While lamenting the rather wimpy volume control on one of my varisped tape recorders and wishing I had another like my Marantz Field Recorder, with it’s many controls and mic input, I remembered my Fostex X-18. I hadn’t played with the Fostex much since I figured it would not end up making a great live looping tool, but it did have some characteristics that I thought would suit my work with latralmagog.

After setting it up and getting re-acclaimated to it’s controls, I began trying to figure out exactly how fast I could switch from record to play, thinking if I could get it pretty tight it might work in a live setting. So I began, and I was getting pretty good at fast switching, and I started to feel like I was discovering something that could revolutionize my live setup, especially since it works great with contact mics. Then I discovered something so amazingly logical and useful I feel like an idiot even listing it as a discovery.

When the machine is in play mode, all you have to do is push the record button down too.

Duh!

And to get out of record mode, you just hold down play and hit stop. This way only the record button pops back up.

Okay, so what have we learned here? READ YOUR FRICKIN MANUAL!!!!

Seriously though, I should have read that thing cover to cover, but hey, better late than never. So anyhow, now I have the ability to gradually build up loops without ever stopping the tape, and since four-tracks have those nice mixing capabilities, I can fine tune levels and bring parts in and out at will, something none of the expensive digital loopers will let you do. Plus it’s got that great shitty chewed up tape haze that makes everything sound like a transmission from another planet.

So of course I had to record a few loops using this method, and here they are…

Enjoy!

– Phin Feedback, Bowing, and Plucking
– Zither Knocks, Plucks, and Feedback
– Flute, Horn, Silver Platter, and Bells