“Sound is Kind of Touch at a Distance”

Posted on August 26, 2009 by John CS Keston

I recently came across an episode of WNYC‘s Radio Lab with Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich delving into the making of their acclaimed program that melds science, philosophy, and psychology into a sonic mash-up of mind expanding fun. Somehow, even as an avid listener, this podcast “short” from November, 2007 slipped through the cracks for me until now.

One of the things that attracted me to Radio Lab in the first place was the emphasis on sound design. In every episode creative, and experimental audio production techniques are used to build soundscapes that color and pace the interviews and conversations in a musical fashion, transfixing the ear as the stories unfold.

In Making Radio Lab Jad and Robert discuss their approach to sound design on the program with some excellent examples of spoken phrases from interviews with and without the audio manipulation applied. The phrase “Sound is Kind of Touch at a Distance”, coined by Dr. Anne Fernald on the Musical Language episode, occurs as a theme throughout the program illustrating the importance of sound design to the production of the show.

Making Radio Lab

500 Million Years From Now

Posted on August 11, 2009 by John CS Keston

dots It was recently estimated by Edward Guinan at the XXVIIth General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union that our lonely planet is nearing the end of its habitability for life as we know. Albeit, on a cosmological timescale. Between .5 and 1 billion years from now, increases in the Sun’s temperature will cause the Earth’s oceans and atmosphere to evaporate.

Shortly after reading this article I opened up my Ableton Live set from Sunday night to listen to some of the loops I had captured with the GMS during the show. After opening the document I pressed play and heard a stark landscape of reverberation. I saw visions of a lifeless, peace 500 million years from now.

What had happened was that when saving the document I had left all my master effects in their last position. I decided to capture these sounds and vary them over time. The effect chain on the master track included a low pass filter, bit reduction, delay, and reverb with nine parameters mapped to knobs on a controller. Here’s what I ended up with on the second take.

500 Million Years From Now

Getting Reacquainted with the GMS

Posted on August 6, 2009 by John CS Keston

triquetra_rehearse I have had a number of problems migrating my Processing.org application known as the GMS from my old MacBook Pro running OS X 10.4.11 to my new one running 10.5.7. The first issue was alack of support for the IAC drivers in Java, next were some funky conflicts with the Java class I was using to load and save presets. With the help of Grant Muller I have solved these problems.

While I was at it I took on a couple of other issues as well in preparation for my performance on Sunday. All that’s left is for me to become reacquainted with the application in tandem with Ableton Suite 8.

This is actually the hard part because I have use the application effectively as an instrument and real-time visualizer. One problem is running out of hands and fingers while producing the visuals and capturing the MIDI clips. Another danger is the music becoming repetitive while making adjustments. Here’s a quick recording I made while practicing.

Reacquainting Myself with the GMS

iPod Touch Audio Glitch

Posted on July 18, 2009 by John CS Keston

touch_waveform Lately I’ve been experimenting with iPod Touch applications for recording sound. Generally it’s necessary to use a headset to make a recording, but my goal is to figure out a practical way to bypass the headset with an input for a high quality microphone. While unsuccessfully testing my Audio Technica AT822 stereo mic as an input for the iPod Touch I captured an interesting glitch within the application I was testing.

The low frequency waveform (shown in the image at the left) played at regular intervals while I had the microphone attached. Perhaps it’s some sort of communication protocol for headset controls. I removed the DC offset, but otherwise left it as it was. Perhaps I’ll try playing it back at some higher frequencies to see it’s useful for anything musically.

iPod Touch Glitch

More Precambrian Resonance Track Previews Available

Posted on July 11, 2009 by John CS Keston

film_strip As promised, Unearthed Music has made a few more tracks from my upcoming album, Precambrian Resonance, available as full-length 128kbps MP3 previews on the UEM website. The tracks with previews available include Illuminator Console, Three Phase Oscillator, Travel Glide, Filtered Synth Drums, Chlorobenzine Mistfall, Blitzen Machine, and Cuba Illinois. Please visit the Precambrian Resonance page on Unearthed Music to listen. Also, it looks like advance downloads are available and getting emailed immediately. Here’s Travel Glide.