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

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

Vg8s No.2

Korg MS10 and Dubmatix customised tobacco tin making the siren noises, which are interrupted by a Drawmer noise gate every time a drum pad is hit. MIDI notes go straight from the drum pads to a Yamaha TX7 playing pitched tone. The drum sounds go through a one-repeat delay before they sound, courtesy of a Midiverb II.

Filed under: originals, Sounds, Videos

Vg8s?

This piece is the first to illustrate my thoughts on the methodology behind mashing different source material, no matter what it may be. Using analogue synths and a Roland V-Drum kit fed into a series of Drawmer noise gates thru a mixing console, I was able to interrupt or introduce the various following sounds using the key inputs on the gate units, via the auxiliary sends on the mixer:

1. the repeating sound of the Korg MS10
2. a sinewave with added white noise from a Frontline X-2 Drum Synethsizer
3. the continual siren like sound of the Dubmatix sinewave generator (housed in an old Ogden’s Lanyard tobacco tin)

The Roland V-drum kit TD6 brain has only two audio outputs, so panning 4 of the 8 pads to the left and four to the right audio output channels, I was able to use the left to open a gate and the right to close a gate on the different sounds. Every time I hit a drum pad, a gate would close or open momentarily.

I added a delay to the MS10 sound from a Maplins Voice Vandal unit. My thinking here was to blur the edges a little of what was coming or going, to add another dimension to the piece. Perhaps I was seduced by the Dub. Well ok, I was.

Playing the piece was a process of discovery, calibrating my sensitivity as I went, listening to hear each beat and each cluster of notes played on the different drum pads and the outcome on the gated sounds.

I chose the Tabla kit to avoid drum kit sounds and I played from a standing position, though still able to use the footpedal. This also helped to avoid drumming cliches. Being seduced by playing the kit is another criticism I accept.

The Tabla kit also provided me with a variety of sounds both short and long, high pitched and low, giving me opportunities to open and close the gates for different periods of time, albeit all relatively short and percussive. The highest pitched sound is a star chime sample and the longest sound is a gong but it does not resonate for as long as hitting the real thing, another reason for adding the delay, although in this piece that did not trigger any other gate, it did add some ground for the shorter sounds to sit or figure on.

The setup process seems evolutionary. A series of building blocks. At some point it becomes important to record in advance of other possibilities. The piece opens up with me un-muting the sounds from the mixing console, one by one. The delay Is un-muted last.

Following posts will include similar ideas featuring a Roland TR909, SH101, TB303 and a Yamaha TX7.

Filed under: originals, Sounds