Volume, Threshold and Release

This trio of pieces is aimed at the conclusion of this course.

NB there are supposed to be 2 links in this text but WordPress, despite having coded them for me, is not showing them it seems, so I have posted them as text at the appropriate place. Working on it.

Volume

Currys is our high street conduit for the technology that brings the internet into our homes, enabling us to participate in the Great Conversation. Volume is the idea of celebrating what we often reject as noise. The cocktail party effect is when we focus on one conversation out of the many simultaneous happening in one place.

Volume@Currys

http://usurp.org.uk/events/volume_at_currys/

celebrates these conversations all together in one event by switching on every sound making electrical device in Currys and turning them all up together.

Threshold

is an sound-art exhibition held in The Usurp Art Gallery in West Harrow. Multiple audio streams form a variety of sources play off each other by a series of changeable thresholds on side chained noise gates.

Threshold@usurp

http://www.usurp.org.uk/exhibitions/threshold/index.php

offers the gallery visitor the opportunity to contribute to the conversation by connecting their own media player to the LAN, effecting and being effected by the running dialogue.

Release

The challenges presented by this idea have opened the discussion of digital media, mashup culture, ownership and originality, bringing in the subject of vinyl and the way sound recordings used to be distributed. In todays context of the digital media ocean, the aura of the object, as Walter Benjamin would regard it, is making something of a comeback. Pressing copies of a mashup containing every song released by the Beatles to a 7″ record has lead to discussions with pressing plants across the world, commercial, cottage industry and hobbyist, thriving, changing hands or closing down, but all with astonishing craftsmanship and diversity of technique, making the mass production of records over the years seem remarkable in ways beyond simple quantity. Release focusses on one piece entitled All Together Now. The b-side is the same piece, only inaudible. Pressing in the pipeline.

All Together Now – Everything the Beatles ever did. by ramjac

Filed under: Mashups, originals, Sounds, The Mashup, Words

Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations Mashup

Starting with the longest and ending all together.

Filed under: Mashups, Sounds, Uncategorized

Jazzup

its a mashup of all the below jazzups.

Filed under: JazzUps, Mashups, Sounds

Is you Marilyn or is you Monk?

Totally in time and it works. The original audio file below, is audibly not synchronised but works with a great dynamic energy and is more the exciting piece because of it. Playing it straight here is rewarding to a point, hence the brevity of the piece.

see below for more details.

Filed under: JazzUps, Mashups, Sounds, Videos

Is you Marilyn or is you Monk? Audio versions:

This one is close enough to put in time relatively easily, but why? It would make it adhere to convention and it would probably swing a treat. It would still be out of sync in terms of arrangement, and I would not want to change that. It is tempting to do it but there is something great about it being out of time. Might be worth doing it just to compare. I’ll let it sit in the wine cellar for a while.

I love the trumpet and sax soloing together. Makes me think of King Oliver era.

There we go, it really didn’t work in sync half as well as out of sync, but I edited it into shape, taking out much of the falafel and leaving the meat. I had some fun along the way, hinting at moves where I made some of the edits but really trying to keep a low profile at the same time. Again its the King Oliver vibe that gets me.

Now I have made a video version, posted above.

Filed under: JazzUps, Mashups, Sounds

Mash-up in Vermont

Betty carter vs Gerry Mulligan Quartet: Moonlight in Vermont. Maybe not so much a mash-up as a jazz-up.

Two versions of the same song, in the same key, by two different artists.

I like the way the harmonies seem to follow each other but you cant quite tell who is following who, it all just moves up and down with that great way jazz solists have of blurring the beat, stretching time before we knew how digitally. I didn’t need to and I certainly didn’t want to. Meanwhile, the rhythm sections, aided by the famous absence of the piano in the Mulligan Quartet, make that exciting double trouble bass player energy of the Garrison / Workman type combination, only much lighter here. Only one drummer is really audible, on brushes, giving a solid underlying groove for all the others to ping off.

The only audio editing was to almost accidentally place the start of the Gerry Mulligan file on the downbeat of the Betty Carter version. It sat nicely so i kept it. The other edit was in finding the right moment to stop the Mulligan file which runs much longer than the Carter version. Apart from that, the tracks are un-warped or stretched.

I reduced some of the HF noise from the Mulligan VHS and rolled off the bass a touch to settle it into the mix, then compressed and limited the summed frequencies from both tracks below 120hz by about 5-7db to tighten the basses up again, for a much clearer definition. I added a room reverb to the master bus to put the combined ensembles into a shared sonic space and limited the output a touch for a stronger, unified sound. Works for me.

Interestingly, the upload confirmation email from youtube said:

“Your video, Mash-up in Vermont, may have content that is owned or licensed by SME. No action is required on your part; however, if you’re interested in learning how this affects your video, please visit the Content ID Matches section of your account for more information.”

Following up, it appears that the video is not available to be viewed in Germany:

“Copyright Info: Mash-up in Vermont Your video, Mash-up in Vermont , may include content that is owned or administered by these entities:
Entity: Believe, The Orchard Music, SME, and SME Content Type: Sound Recording As a result, your video is blocked in these locations:
Germany What should I do? No action is required on your part. Your video is still available everywhere not listed above. In some cases ads may appear next to your video.”

An ad for what is probably the original Betty Carter track appears under the video.

Both videos in this jazz-up were sourced from existing youtube uploads by other users. The Betty Carter video has had over 40,000 views and displays the same ad. The Gerry Mulligan Quartet video has had almost 130,000 views.

I am quite impressed that YouTube’s copyright infringement software can decipher the audio of one tune as distinct from the other as they play simultaneously.

Also interesting to note that the SME license infringement is producing lots of hits in other peoples searches so my stats have jumped right up since posting!

Filed under: JazzUps, Mashups

tan as if appeny shun

Delighted with my acquisition of a Roland SDE 3000A digital delay, I decided to see what it could do. The only technology used here is the computer playing an audio file of various news readers talking at once, a mixing desk being muted and un-muted by hand, and the SDE 3000A into which the signal is sent, set to an infinite delay.

The audio file is in stereo but the delay is a mono unit. The introduction of each new sound is therefore in stereo and repeats thereafter only in mono, adding a particular dynamic and character to the unfolding dialogue.

Filed under: originals, Sounds

TMI

About an hours worth of mash-up, improvised, on a whim, live from the internet:

Charles Ives The Camp Meeting, Children’s Day, Stockhausen Telemusic parts one and two. Paul Robeson Old Black Joe, Debussy, Claire de Lune, Count Basie – Bundle of Funk, Richard Burton reads Gerard Manley Hopkins The Leaden Echo & The Golden Echo, Charles Ives The Unanswered Question by The Northern Sinfonia, Burle Ives I’ve swallowed a Fly, Xray Spex Oh Bondage up Yours, Conlon Nancarrow Study for Player Piano no. 5 Sonny Boy Williamson Keep it to Yourself, Bach Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, Various ads on Spotify, Dollar Brand live at The Beleayre music festival Nikhil Bannerjee live at the BBC, Theme from Love Story, C‪harles Ives Symphony No. 1 – I. Allegro‬ I‪ves: Three Places In New England, ‬‪Erik Satie Gymnopédie nº 3‬, ‪Albert Ayler Ghosts,‬ ‪Big Joe Williams Baby Please Don’t Go,‬ ‪Abdullah Ibrahim Ishmael, Dumbo Chorus Pink Elephants on Parade, Sun Ra Pink Elephants on Parade, ‪Ode To A Nightingale John Keats, read by Robert Donat‬, Raga Surdasi Malhar Alap – Nikhil Bannerjee, Ramjac-Feedback Control, The Beatles For You Blue ‪Ska Dub: Firebug Meets Strikkly Vikkly,‬ Sir Adrian Boult, Holst Planet Suite ‪Marvin Gaye Sexual Healing Acapella, ‬‪King Bee Back By Dope Demand,‬ ‪Doug Lazy Let it Roll‬, ‪Ravi Shankar on the Dick Cavett Show,‬ Eric B & Rakim I know you got Soul Acapella, Marx Brothers Hooray for Captain Spalding, Mon Ami Technosiko & Dandaradub IR

Filed under: Mashups, Sounds

All Together Now

All of the Beatles releases at once, starting with the longest first and ending all together now.

Filed under: Mashups, Sounds

Outside the Hackney Empire

From 2010. Found a few audio files I submitted as part of my first module but had not yet made it onto these pages.

Filed under: Mashups, Sounds