Monthly Archives: October 2008

Piano Destruction

Posted on by
1

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.

Piano Destruction

Electric Drill Sounds

Posted on by
1

Here are the original electric drill sounds from the Power Tool Percussion post, which I am presenting without any processing by request. The recording was made with a Shure VP88 stereo condenser microphone. I ran the drill at several different speeds while holding it still, and moving it around the mic to simulation motion.

Toward the end you can hear the stress on the motor as I drilled a few holes in a piece of wood. Although I have done lots of strange things to produce sound in my past, for some reason it felt really weird drilling holes in wood for no reason other than capturing the sound it made.

Electric Drill Recording

 

Handlebar Blow Pipes

Posted on by
4

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.

Handlebar Wind

Power Tool Percussion

Posted on by
7

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.

Beat repeat has pitch decay setting that incrementally lowers the pitch of repeated slices, which you can hear in the piece. I also maximized the chance settings to increase the likelihood of repeats happening and the variation setting to vary the length of the slices used in the repetition.

Power Tool Percussion

Around the Fire

Posted on by
1

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.

What you hear is the fire crackling, a plane flying overhead, someone breaking sticks for the fire, someone crushing a can (we only bring cans and pack them all out when we leave, often including other cans that were there before we arrived), and a couple of my friends chatting about meteorites before the batteries gave out again. Before we left we made sure that the fire was completely out and no stray cans were left behind.

Around the Fire