christ2oooTM - HEMI-Powered Hear
Me!
On television during the beginning of the year
2004, an American pick-up truck company marketed
their products under the guise: 'man possessing
truck with turbo booster (HEMI) is more powerful,
more important than fellow man.' In the commercial,
the guy in the HEMI-powered pick-up drag races
two goofs in a muscle car from one stop light
to the next; the goofs try but just cannot keep
up. The fun ends with the announcer aggressively
asking, with the text jumping on the monitor,
"GOTTA HEMI!?" (The question leaves
the one pondering whether they have what it
takes to stay ahead of goofs.) I experienced
this commercial numerous times, during which
I became increasingly bothered by their reflection
of societies ill-ways toward product promotion
and also the sad state of masculinity in this
country. The more I pondered the decline of
civilization the more bothered I became, until
my perturbation erupted through me yelling through
my mini-digi-4track recorder. I found a vibrant
effect to run my voice through and I continued
singing, "Hey man, you gotta HEMI!?"
After playback I noticed how remarkably close
the recording sounds to, "Hey man, you
gotta hear me!" This unintentional interpretation
of what I was saying is pertinent as to why
I am yelling and why I express myself as an
artist in the first place. I reflected on how
this advertisement had reached me emotionally
and how I was reacting to being upset. I thought
of my inner-self, the voice I hear when I can
get myself into I very quiet and calm space.
The part of me that feels calm despite whatever
demise surrounds. I immediately added a second
vocal track, sent through an effect that accentuates
a calm, steady, inner-self sound, akin to a
slow heartbeat. I'll refer to this track as
the bass. The bass is opposite the treble verse
in many ways. A major contrast is that the bass
consists of only a couple simple sounds repeated,
"a bump-bump, a bump-bump." Even though
only a few words are repeated, they are often
pronounced in ways far from familiar or repetitious;
hence, they come across as much more than just
two sounds. The bass tracks calmness and narrowness
of tonal range contrasts the angst filled tone
of the treble verse, composed in a broad tonal
range, ending in near screech. The two voices
share compliments too, mostly tonal harmonies
that periodically occur between the voices.
All sounds are generated from my voice alone;
though, through two different digital effects
on two separate tracks. No editing was done
to the tracks; only the two tracks levels were
adjusted in relationship to one another as they
were mixed to mp3 format.
The Apartment - Electromusetic Sound
This Song, Electromusetic Sound, was
created using only fully electronic means. The
voices where created with the ATT Crystal Voice
TTS program online and then beat-matched with
Ableton live. All the melodies, bass-lines plus
the main drone and some of the bird sounds where
designed from scratch on my Roland SH-32 Synthesizer.
All beat creation was done on my Korg Electribe
drum machine. I provided extra sound effects
plus one violin-sounding part by patching an
old broken four track into itself (creating
feedback loops) and then adjusting the tone
and pitch of the feedback by turning the EQ
knobs on each channel, sampling the results,
and splicing it up on the computer. All final
sequencing and mixing was done on a P.C. running
Fruity Loops. Anyways I hope you enjoy.
Brion Kinne - Where Did All These Dust
Bunnies Come From?
An experiment with negative space in audio,
approaching composition from what might be similar
visually to cubism, where the perspective is
distorted. With most compositions and music,
there is a linear wall of sound without empty
or silent spaces. Live DJs demonstrate this
concept clearly by blending and weaving together
a continuous audio palette. In "Where
Did All These Dust Bunnies Come From?"
the composition is written so it sounds as if
it were stretched out like a slinky and slowed
down to reveal empty spaces - negative space
- between the notes, but without the effect
of slow-motion morphed audio. Almost all of
the notes and instruments are sounded out in
real time, with quiet moments between them.
The perspective of time and space has been stretched
and altered, like in cubism. In "Where
Did All These Dust Bunnies Come From?"
there is also no real beginning or end. The
recording is designed to be looped without a
discernible start or endpoint, and lack obvious
climaxes, resolutions or thematic developments
found in most compositions. The recording was
created using samples of actual instruments
and Digital Performer as the sequencer.
Toby Paddock - Magnambience_m3
Every electronic device has electrical currents
running around inside. And every current generates
a magnetic field. And some of these fields are
in the audio frequency band. And some of these
leak out and join with the electromagnetic soup
that surrounds us. And a very few passed through
the wires in some homemade pickup coils. And
induced currents in the wires. And these currents
flowed into the mic jack of an audio recorder.
And got recorded. This is a recording of the
stray audio frequency magnetic fields in an
electronics test lab. Pickup coils are waved
around the room, like Spock with a tricorder,
sniffing out normally unheard sounds from computers,
monitors, motors, test equipment, and a wall
thermostat with an unexpected beepy heartbeat.
The homemade pickup is two 5000 turn air-core
coils orientated 90 degrees from each other
for stereo. As recorded to minidisc, no effects,
processing, editing, or EQ.
Yann Novak - An End and a Beginning
Reconstruction of an audio tape from
3/8/52 of the Buslee family in their parlor.
All other sounds are synthesized.
Jeremy Winters - Baby Robot Nursery
The title track from my new CD, on
which I use primarily generative composition
and sound generation processes that I create
using custom software and modular synth patches.
Tamara Albaitis - Anticipate
This piece was made mostly with special
contact microphones that pick up electronic
currents. It's fascinating to me that there
isn't a single square inch of our environment
that isn't riddled with electronic signals of
some form. Anything that can be plugged in or
runs with batteries hums with energy. I walked
around my house collecting all the invisible,
electronic noises present in what was normally
my personal, seemingly quiet environment. With
my headphones on, the air around me became magnetically
charged, full and digital. Overwhelmed, I'd
pull the headphones off to resume the silence
I loved and depended on for recuperation. Coming
from a visual background, I find myself associating
texture and other tactile references to the
noises I collect. After downloading them into
my computer, I compose these sonic elements
to portray a situation or highlight an emotion.
I layered the electronic signals from within
my house with wind chimes from the outside of
my house. The electronic noises represent a
cold, mechanical feeling; one alienated from
a human's touch. The bamboo wind chimes portrayed
an organic feeling: round, alive and contingent
on wind - a life force. I took the organic wind
one step beyond and added recorded sounds of
me breathing. I felt an opposition developing
between the definitions of my space. It was
ironic that the inside of my house was densely
packed with angular, mathematical sounds - intrusive
and insistent - while outside the walls, the
wind, nature and my bamboo wind chimes made
the environment more inviting. The results of
this piece present a contradiction between the
evident, electronic lifestyle we have welcomed
into our homes, and the primal forces that compose
us. My interest lies in the way these two worlds
are apparently becoming more compatible.
Filastine - Figuig
Ghostly cutups of some railway station
ambiences layered over programmed beats in 7/8
time, enhanced by synthesized bass in the lower
realms of hertz. Composed chiefly in the dusty
Saharan frontier town of Figuig on a thin silver
laptop. Natural instruments erhu and cello added
in a recording session back in the Northwest.
Ffej - Modern Day Gavel
"Modern Day Gavel" is a selection
from Ffej's self-released CD Patterns in the
Storm Vol. I. The album consists of musical
pieces generated by a wide variety of techniques
in analog synthesis and random synchronization.
Mechanical polyrhythms are created by fine tuning
a number of time based factors in the music
such as oscillators, arpeggiators, trigger rates,
envelopes, sequencing and delay. Imagine music
made to the out of sync turn signals on cars
lined up in the turning lane. The results range
from that of an agitated frenzy to a full bodied
drone. This song has turned out among the few
that some may consider "danceable",
probably because it's the only one that incorporates
MIDI. And it is, indeed, a synthesizer making
that noise, not an angry chipmunk.
Chenard Walcker - Electricity
This tune was created from samples of songs
that contain the word "electricity"
in their title. I've used electric scissors
and electric glue to do the track, using the
same old cut and paste way. Here's below a complete
listing of the original tracks I've been wired
to:
Anathema - Electricity
Borknagar - Epic
chambers of electricity
Blood Axis - Electricity
Captain Beefheart
- Electricity
Drinking Electricity
- Breakout
London Elektricity
- Do you believe (dub mix)
Memory Boy - (there
is no) Elecricity
Mike Ladd - How
Electricity Really Works
Orchestral Manoeuvres
In The Dark - Electricity
Racebannon - Electricity
The Avalanches
- Electricity
The Shipping News
- All by Electricity
Whale - Electricity
Marcus Alessi Bittencourt - Rabo de
Arriya
Here, I thought of sharing with you
a little bit of the folk traditions of my beloved
Brazil. Rabo-de-Arraia (2004) comes from several
memories of watching Capoeira circles ("rodas
de capoeira"). With more than 400 years
of history, Capoeira is a true piece of Brazilian
culture. More than simply a martial art, it
is a dance, a sport, a game, a powerful musical
event. If I was ever to film a Capoeira circle,
with its dancer-fighters spinning around and
around against an ever-changing backdrop of
drummers and Berimbau players, I would most
likely use several cameras, so one's eye would
be everywhere: acrobatic eyes. But I only have
microphones. And computers! It is curious to
note that he whole ensemble of Capoeira musicians
in this piece was actually recreated by computer
algorithms programmed to improvise according
to traditional styles. It is an automatic Capoeira-loom,
perhaps?
inBOIL - I Invented Electricity (Dorkmix)
The main sound source for this piece
was a instrument cable that was not plugged
into any instrument. Different amounts of pressure
where applied to various areas of the exposed
end to alter the sound and a distortion effect
was used to greatly amplify the signal. I Invented
Electricity was originally created in 2002 for
a special CD to coincide with a tour of Japan
with Solid Eye, Speculum Fight and MSBR.
Christopher DeLaurenti - Attempting
Anthem
The source material from attempting Anthem is
me trying to sing my "Anthem" for
bass-baritone or tenor solo in my dining room.
An entirely different and separate piece, "Anthem",
intermingles and transposes various lyrics and
melodic fragments from several patriotic songs:
The Star Spangled Banner, My Country 'Tis of
Thee, Battle Hymn of the Republic, America the
Beautiful, and The Marines Hymn. Anthem's sheet
music at http://www.delaurenti.net/projects.htm
has most of the words to Attempting Anthem,
though effective pieces set their texts clearly
with no need of lyric sheets or crib notes.
Carl Lierman - Thuzwolf
My intention as an electronic sound
artist is to explore audio forms which are inspired
from areas outside of music. My process is driven
by the idea that sound can often create abstract
visual spaces and states of mind for the listener.
Thuzwolf is a short composition created from
manipulated microphone feedback, a single phonograph
skip, and analog/granular synthesis.
Jason Freeman - N.A.G. (Network Auralization
for Gnutella): Dorkbot Mix
N.A.G. (Network Auralization for Gnutella)
is interactive software art for Mac OS X and
Windows 2000/XP which turns the process of searching
for and downloading MP3 files into a chaotic
musical collage. Users type in search keywords,
and N.A.G. looks for matches on the Gnutella
peer-to-peer file sharing network. The software
then downloads MP3 files which match the search
keyword(s) and remixes these audio files in
real time based on the structure of the Gnutella
network itself. The piece on this CD, N.A.G.
(Network Auralization for Gnutella): Dorkbot
Mix, was created by searching for the words
"dork" and "bot" with the
N.A.G. software. The program's output was not
further edited or processed in any way. N.A.G.
is a 2003 commission of New Radio and Performing
Arts, Inc., (dba Ether-Ore), for its Turbulence
web site. It was made possible with funding
from the National Endowment for the Arts. The
software is available free of charge here.
Lucas Kuzma - AMBLE/ORTH/DERECON
Giving voice to encroaching insecurity,
the work's three movements paint a dismal picture
of things to come. Powerlessness as aleatoric
composition. Painstaking cutting and placing
as touching glimmers of hope. Romantic scenery,
cabaret cacophony, windy streets in the grey
dawn light. Serene harmonious vistas give way
to an atonal scourge, generative processes are
set loose and reined back in. The extended vocals
employed by singer Jesse Quattro lend a haunting
human air to fierce mechanical churning. Andrew
Kitchen's complex drum work is deconstructed
and reassembled amidst robotic pulses, guidance
systems, falling concrete. Custom Reaktor patches
were built for granular scattering and frequency-selective
delay processing. Generative MIDI processes
were set up to augment human composition. The
final project was mixed in Logic.
Joshua Herrala - Facade
Ambient/Illbient track produced using
both traditional synthesis and processed 'found
sounds'. The goal was to create a space, and
let the music disappear.
Martin McCavitt - Three Events
This is a self-generating real-time modular
synthesis network. LFO and envelopes are output
from Subtractor synthesizers + NN19 samplers.
These outputs are'virtual' control voltages.
The outputs are then patched into control voltage
inputs for pitch, amplifier, gate, envelope
and mod wheel depth, etc.. Control voltage values
can be changed on the front face of each module
(knobs such as LFO depth and rate, sample solo
toggle, etc). Changes in knob values are recorded
into the Reason sequencer. The sequencer now
becomes a kind of random access repository of
controller information. The sequencer does not
have to be in play mode. Instead, the playback
position wiper is dragged to various locations
within the sequence. These locations are meant
to represent points on a time line. However,
the sequencer now becomes more like a map -
one can see the whole picture simultaneously,
and can decide to jump from a point to any other
location. One can stay at the chosen sequencer
location as long as desired. The performing
is now interacting with a spatial interface
in time, but not bound by the time that is meant
to be represented by the sequence. When a location
is selected by positioning the play wiper, all
the controller values at that location are sent
to the synth and sampler modules, and the values
on the mudules change. Thereby, the performer
is able to instantly change the value of an
unlimited number of 'knobs' (insead of only
being able to turn 1 or 2 knobs at a time by
hand). The performer cen practice with the network
in order to be familiar with the sonic changes
that occur at different sequencer locations.
Mixer values are also recorded into a sequencer
track. So a location can also yield mutes, solos,
changes in volume,send and pan position, etc..
Matrix step sequencers are also employed. The
performer can press 'play' on an individual
Matrix, or the whole sequence can be put into
play mode (even for a few seconds), which will
cause the step sequencers to play from that
position, unless a control value has been programmed
at that point which tells the Matrix not to
play. Programmed in Reason 1.0.
Shaun Wilson - Statica
The philosopher P.F. Strawson who described,
in The Individuals, a universe called 'no space
world', influences this artwork. He created
the hypothetical world based on the idea it
had no form except sound, whereby living creatures
were audio signatures, coexisting through a
series of bips, noises and distortions. I created
the artwork using a series of manipulated recordings
of static electricity and blended it with other
noises to produce a universe not unlike Strawson's
description. The main part of my sound universe
comes from slowed down static noises that created
a sense of spatiality, defining up and down,
here and there, too and fro. The title of the
artwork, Statica, is derived from the words
'static' and 'galactica' (as in galaxy).
Carl Juarez - Interstellar Intercept
Interstellar Intercept (#23 in the Posthuman
Ethnography series) combines two recordings
made nearly 25 years apart using fundamentally
dissimilar technologies yet employing related
concepts of temporal manipulation. Sounds were
generated or transduced into patterns of magnetic
flux embodying analog or digital information;
once rendered malleable, they were then orchestrated
and mixed in the digital domain. Structurally
this composition, with its multiple overlays
of self-similar material, resembles fractal
(1/f) music and some Javanese gamelan. I began
with some of my first experimental musical recordings
from 1980, created from the autogenerative feedback
of a cassette recorder. These were time-stretched
by repeated use of analog tape speed manipulation,
then time-compressed to approximately two seconds
in length. No noise reduction was used in these
processes, the result being that the original
signal has been largely overwhelmed by noise
and at some points harmonics of the local electrical
grid¹s 60-cycle hum. These textures have
been supplemented with a location recording
made with a digital camera earlier this year,
which has been stretched several times in duration,
pitch-shifted into audible range, and further
processed. This material was assembled and mixed
with minimal processing in Pro Tools at Heurihermilab
in December 2004.
Roger Hayes - Untitled
My music is oriented toward various modes of
editing. I released a full length LP which was
of Musique Concrete edits done on ¼"
tape, the sound source being primarily guitar.
This track has been spliced by hand from reel
tape before being bumped to both DAT tape and
4-track cassette. Multi-tracks were mixed to
the computer, then further edited to change
the sequencing, and effects were added. This
was over a period of two years. The material
has been released on a CDR label in Poland.
Lullabelle - ?Somos Magneticos?
Lullabelle realized a little while ago that
all sound is converted to electricity when manipulated
by technology at the hands of humans... And,
in keeping with the spirit of the law, lest
the letter be betrayed, we've decided to do
some strange things with as disparate a group
of sounds as possible... In this song, we've
brought together voices trapped by hand-held
tape recorders, radio transmissions bounced
off distant planets, pure unspoiled sine waves,
the crackle of electrical fences, clumsy drunken
flamenco guitars, hums of different cycles,
chopped up themes to ancient video games, and
of course, beats. Aaaaah, the eternal beat,
who would we be without it? Lullabelle are beatwhores
to be sure, just as a human ain't a human without
a heart... We'd like to think of ourselves as
strange people doing things with electricity.
If it ain't catchy, why kiss it?
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