I extracted this loop from a recording of my piano that I made with the specific intention of not using the keyboard to make sound. I used a metal mallet to gently strike the strings and got lucky with this short ascending melody. It’s a one bar loop in 4:4 time at 67 beats per minute. I’ve looped it four times at full volume and then faded it out during the last two loops. I’m also including this sample in the “Share Remix Adapt” category, so if anyone wants to have a go at making a track out of this, please post the results in a comment so we can all have a listen. As stated in this post, all the examples in the “Share Remix Adapt” category have been licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license.
Piano Mallet Loop
If you had a chance to hear Johannes Kreidler’s piece, 
As I have mentioned in previous articles, I love knobs. This includes the tuning knob on AM/FM radios. For today’s sound I decided to record my old Panasonic tuner. I took a mono direct signal into my M-Audio Firewire 410 and started tuning. What I was after is that static sound between stations, and the tiny chunks of speech and music that pop through as one spins the dial. I started with FM, switched to AM, and then back to FM recording close to ten minutes worth of audio. This particular tuner wasn’t much good for producing the gliding theremin like tones you sometimes hear, but I got some good static and random micro-clips of music and speech. Here’s a snapshot of one of the sections I’m satisfied with.
Nils Westdal and I recorded these bells for a percussive element in one of those tracks that have yet to see the light day. These beautiful solid brass bells have more than twenty seconds of decay. We recorded nineteen of those seconds. We used an AKG c4000b large diaphragm condenser microphone to capture the sound. The c4000b is one of the most versatile and sensitive mics I’ve used. It’s perfect for capturing all that sustain and high frequency goodness. Take a deep breath, cross your legs, close your eyes and press play. 