Signature Rhodes Chords: Part 1

It’s no secret that I’m a lifelong Rhodes electric piano fanatic. I could come up with a laundry list of reasons why this is the case, but one of the main reasons is how well the instrument responds harmonically. Therefore, I have decided to briefly forgo articles about sound design, processing, and field recording in order to present a few of my favored chord voicings on my suitcase model studio Rhodes.

The first example is a poly chord. It’s basically an E major triad over a D major triad, except I’m playing the D as a tenth with the fifth in the middle in the left hand and the third inversion of an E major triad in the right. You’ll need a wide reach in your left hand to play this voicing. The nice thing about it is the deep, open, and complex sound created by the thirteen and the flat five.

Rhodes Chord D7 (13 flat 5) Poly E over D

Processed Noise Extracted from 1972 Dialogue

What you hear in this clip is all of the processed noise extracted from 1972 Social Commentary Degraded with a Halftone Pattern pasted together. I ran the lot through a short ping pong delay to give give it some stereo processing. Secondly, I decided to leave this file in its 48kHz 24bit state before rendering the MP3. This way you can tell whether or not you have the latest Flash plugin. I just played it on a computer with an older version of Flash Player 10 and got some horrible crackling in the playback, however, if I play it in QuickTime by clicking the link it sounds fine. If you get the same problem, try upgrading your Flash plugin in the browser to fix it.

Processed Noise from 1972 Dialogue

1972 Social Commentary Degraded with a Halftone Pattern

Here is another recently produced example of processing sound with Photoshop via Photosounder. In this instance I applied the Halftone Pattern filter under the Distort sub menu.

With this particular effect I find the sound of the noise in between the phrases of dialogue more interesting than the dialogue itself. It has an odd digital scrambling sort of quality that I can imagine using in a audio project for one reason or another.

1972 Dialogue with Distort Halftone Pattern

Snow Melting Rapidly into a Storm Drain

Signs of Spring are making themselves heard in Minneapolis. For example, I recorded the sound of snow quickly melting into a storm drain near the Mississippi river in Minneapolis last night. The temperature was approaching fifty degrees Fahrenheit (ten Centigrade) creating a steady stream of water pouring into a grate adjacent to a cobble stone street. The sound was loud enough to capture my attention as I cycled past it, and nearly drowned (no pun intended) out the ambient noise of traffic and a nearby power plant.

Snow Melting into Storm Drain

Audio Harvested from the Sound Garden

The Sound Garden project by Norbert Herber was recently installed at the 2009 Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts. By good fortune I was in the right place at the right time and had the opportunity to discuss the work with the artist at the event.

The installation includes multiple channels of speakers and a variety of sensors where the installation is installed. It is also linked to a web application where sound files are “planted” and “pruned” by site visitors. Visitors to the physical location for the installation influence the audio processing by interacting with various sensors in the space.

A more thorough explanation of Norbert’s piece is available on his site. Norbert gave me permission to capture a segment from the audio stream for the purpose of this article. Before doing so I planted one of my own files from Audio Cookbook to influence the output.

Segment from Sound Garden