Here’s the piano from the last entry without the distortion applied. I left on all the other processing including limiting, stereo chorus and reverb. Now you can hear why I was not happy with the original recording. The recording is a bit noisey and although I used a nice mic (AKG c4000b large diaphragm condenser), the piano is quite old and suffers from a thin sound along with knocks and rattles that occur when using the keyboard and pedals. One might hear these features as the instruments character, but that rational only goes so far. I do like how limiting is manipulating the dynamics in the example. Adding the stereo chorus and reverb blends much of the rattling and knocks into the overall sound while the limiter expands the noise as the sound decays.
Piano with Limiter, Chorus and Reverb
I recorded these gentle piano chords on March 25, 2008 while working on a classically influenced piece of music. While re-listening to this today I had the idea of damaging the recording as much as possible with processing to see what I might end up with. The main reason I decided to do this was because I was dissatisfied with the sound of the original recording and thought, perhaps I could get something interesting by degrading the signal significantly. I tried a few different types of processing but settled with heavy limiting followed by a high shelf into monster distortion, topped off with almost 5 seconds of reverb. 
Here are the original electric drill sounds from the 
I commute by bicycle daily and cycle for fun often as well, so I have lots of bike parts lying around that I should probably throw away. About a month ago I was hit by a car in the bike lane, but came out relatively unscathed. A few days later I realized my handlebars were slightly bent in the accident. After replacing them I decided to record some sounds I was making with the old ones. I chopped out the best samples and put them into an instrument so I could play them with a controller. I messed about with that for a little while then, just for fun, ran it through a long reverb. Here are the preliminary results.
Today I decided to record my electric drill. It was on a list of “things i need to record”. Power tools make some great sounds with all sorts of textures and frequencies. I captured the sound of the drill in stereo at a variety of speeds. I also got the sound of switching the drill from forward to reverse. Afterward I chopped it up into a percussive loop and ran it through beat repeat to get a nice mechanical loop going. 
Last Friday I posted sounds created by rowers on the Mississippi river. Sadly, weak batteries prevented me from capturing much more, but I gave them a rest and had another go a bit later in the evening. This time my aim was to record the sound of the fire crackling. I wasn’t bothered about the general ambiance of the site, or the noise my mates were making as I made the recording. 
I created this piece today by starting with a few percussive micro samples from a recent field recording and using them as percussion. After programming a simple pattern I ran it through Pluggo’s Harmonic Filter and resampled the results to get two musical loops; one with a low frequency hit that forms the bass in the piece and another with a simple descending melody. 
One of the things I like to do with a few friends is ride bikes to a spot along the Mississippi river, light a fire, and have a few beers. It’s the best happy hour in town. At this particular spot it is not uncommon to catch the University of Minnesota row team practicing. Anticipating this possibility I decided to put a field recorder and microphone in my bag. 
Old monophonic synthesizers have had all sorts of ways to sequence notes; from fairly complex programmable sequencers to simple arpeggiation. Arpeggiators are nice because they sequence the notes that are played on the keyboard in realtime, allowing the performer to improvise while taking advantage of the capabilities of the machine at the same time. Based on the speed of the LFO, the arpeggiator on the Sequential Circuits Pro-One will sequence all the notes in a chord in either ascending order, descending order, or both. Other synths offer a feature to play the notes in a random sequence. In this example the notes are played in ascending order. I cranked up the LFO and added some delay so that the notes blend into each other so you can hear the harmony in the sequence. With this technique you can sort of simulate polyphony on a mono-synth. 
I programmed a couple of parameters in a VST synth to a controller, set a single note (C1) to play for three minutes and eleven seconds, then recorded the automation. The parameters I was manipulating in real time were the shape of the waveform and the frequency. After recording the automation I added a bit of compression, a nice slow chorus to give it a left to right sweep, and a short delay with a lot of feedback for some added atmosphere. The image is just a snapshot from my photos and has nothing to do with the sound, but you’ve gotta love stick figure warning messages.