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Sound a Day 010 – Korg Study 001 0:25 998 KB
For several years I’ve had the idea of doing a collection of ‘Korg Studies’ – short pieces that explore a particular sound or technique on the Korg MS-20 synth (and also the Korg mini-KP Kaoss Pad). Here is as good a place as any to start.
KS001 demonstrates my usual technique of using an external input to drive the control voltages. In this case it’s a random song playing on my iPhone. There are two square wave oscillators an octave apart, their pitches mapped to the mod wheel. One is modulated by the amplitude and the other by the frequency of the incoming signal. The low-pass filter is also being heavily modulated. When the incoming sound hits a certain level it triggers the envelope generators, which have a percussive shape. Continuous tweaking of parameters is done to shape the sound into something interesting.
These are techniques that I’ve developed and refined over the past few years of working with the Splinter Orchestra. I was also very impressed by Asmus Tietchens‘ performance at Liquid Architecture this year, and I think his approach to the synthesiser may have influenced me recently.
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SAD009 – Alternative Comedy 3:16 7.49 MB 90 BPM
Another Numerology piece. The voice is actually SAD003 played on Numerology’s built-in sampler, with lots of modulation going on. Strangely it sounds less like a computer and more like a real voice than before. The drums remind me of standup comedy, so I imagine this piece as a very odd comedy gig. I should add some audience sound fx, maybe the one I removed from SAD007. Anyway, some random piano, split into two tracks, rounds out the sound, adding some melodic interest and stereo movement.
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Sound a Day 008 – Faustian Blur 1:52 4.28 MB
This one’s a sketch of a nice little ambient electronica tune, reminiscent perhaps of early IDM, such as Black Dog. I used to make a lot of this stuff back when I was in Clan Aanalogue, but in recent years, not so much. Which is a pity as I enjoy making tunes as much as weird shit.
Faustian Blur was made in Ableton Live Suite using three of the built-in instruments: a double bass, 606 drum kit, and an analogue synth pad. Variety is added to the simple bass and synth melodies via MIDI plugins which randomise their octaves. The velocity of the bass is also randomised slightly.
The title, a play on the term Gaussian blur, is, if nothing else, a Googlewhack.
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SAD007 – Brain Hurts 0:05 187 KB
Samples tend to jump out and demand to be sampled, as happened while I was watching the Daily Show today. That’s Jon Stewart referring to Obama’s Nobel speech.
I edited out some audience laughter in the middle. It could use some atmos or music to mask the edit.
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SAD006 – TV Scrub 6:06 14.04MB
For several years my studio and lounge were the same room. The TV would be on most of the time, with the sound going through the computer, allowing me to process or capture it. It was often subjected to spectral/delay/FSU plugins for extended periods. TV’s more fun that way.
For today’s sound I decided to process some TV audio in a slightly different way, without plugins. I recorded a minute each of 11 different TV channels and brought them into Ableton Live as a series of loops. Follow actions in legato mode switch to the next clip every quarter note, so it’s effectively in 11/4 time.
Structurally it’s quite simple, going from 999 BPM down to 20, then back up to 999 again. The result is a kind of basic wavetable or granular synthesis. I’m annoyed that Live can’t loop clips without putting them in Warp mode, but the ‘Beats’ setting resulted in some interesting buffer effects.
I have to admit to having a thing for cutup and processed voices. They tickle my brain in ways that other sounds don’t. I’m sure there’ll be more of them in this series.
Nauru Elegies: a portrait in sound and hypsographic architecture
by Annie K. Kwon and Paul D. Miller (aka DJ Spooky)
Exhibition Dates | 19 December 2009 – 30 January 2010
Launch Date | Saturday 19 December 2009 @ 2pm | GET RHYTHM! Performances and Talks by Paul D. Miller and Annie K. Kwon with guests Andrew Johnston, Ben Marks, Jon Drummond, and Shannon O’Neill | Target Theatre | Level 2 | Powerhouse Museum, Sydney | RSVP ESSENTIAL to deborah@newmediacuration.com
Guest Curator | Deborah Turnbull | New Media Curation
Design Realisation | Interaction Consortium | Dr. Greg Turner | Aram Dulyan
As advertised in Museums & Galleries NSW and Ampersand Magazine
Available Publication: Rhythm Science, by Paul D. Miller (MIT Press, 2004)
PRESS RELEASE
I’ll be talking about my use of the web in recent sound works, including drawing from the Pool for Memory Flows, my new ‘Sound a Day’ project, and developments at Alias Frequencies. If there’s time, I may also do a short laptop performance.
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SAD005 – Cistern Crash 1:30 3.46MB
Recording storms is one of the most obvious things to do with a portable audio recorder – I’ve recorded plenty with my Edirol R-09. Listening back to a 30 minute recording that I’d made of an incredibly loud downpour outside my bathroom window, I noticed a section in the middle where the rain stops, and one can hear the sound of a cistern, then a loud thunderclap. It’s that moment that I’ve selected for today’s sound. A cistern? Well yes, I had just used the toilet. Cisterns can make amazing sounds – people should listen to them more closely.
Cistern Crash is best heard on headphones.
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SAD004 – Collapso 4:07 9.9MB 120BPM
Numerology is a program that should be much better known. Imagine Ableton Live in which the emphasis on audio looping is replaced by step sequencing and generative composition. I love its extensive modulation and randomisation options which encourage experimentation.
Collapso is a minimal, ever-changing rhythm. It’s made of just a kick, hi-hat, and the ‘SynthTom’ patch on the LinPlug Free Alpha synth plugin. The tom has a short melodic sequence in Mixolydian mode, but the parameters of the sequence, including note probability and octave, are being continually modulated – you can see it running in the screenshot above. The hi-hats also have some randomisation, while the relatively simple kick helps give it momentum, emphasising the syncopation and bounciness of the tom.
I could listen to this do its thing all day, but should probably try to turn it into a finished track, with a few more sounds.
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SAD003 – Ode to Tropical Skiing 1:32 1.8MB
This is a text-to-speech rendering of John Forbes‘ wonderful poem, Ode to Tropical Skiing, which I understand was John Watermann‘s favourite poem. I made this as an intro to a performance at a lovely night called ‘Warm Words, Music and Dirigibles‘, as I knew that the audience would be appreciative. That’s the only time I’ve used it, so I think it’s OK to include here.
To make it, I used a program called Vox Machina and one of the built-in Mac voices (‘Alex’) and did a lot of tweaking of punctuation to modify the rhythm and cadence. I’m not entirely happy with the result, though, so I’d love to get some suggestions of better speech synthesis tools.
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SAD002 – Fuck Right Off 0:24 963Kb
Some of my earliest sound experiments involved grabbing bits of dialogue, music and sound effects from television using my trusty VHS recorder and creating collages of these sounds via pause button cassette edits on a ‘ghetto blaster’.
For the first few years of Wake Up and Listen, Adrian Bertram and I would each prepare a cassette full of such collages for every broadcast. We called these our ‘samples’. Even after we bought actual samplers, we still kept making cassette collages for a few more years, as they had a unique sound.
SAD002 is the sort of ‘sample’ that could well have been on one of those old collages. It’s a grab from the 1999 Trailer Park Boys film, in which the character of Patrick Lewis (played by Patrick Roach, who went on to play Randy in the TV series) makes a strong statement about his lifestyle. A good ‘sample’ is texturally interesting and has an element of surprise. This has those.
Instead of a simple VHS to cassette dub, the process of making this file involved noting the timecode of the desired sample using Google Docs, importing the audio from the entire video file using Wave Editor, selecting the sample, then exporting it.
Btw, I’ve decided to change the format of these sounds to 320k MP3s as a compromise between quality and accessibility.
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