Post Heliotrope Bells

Posted on May 30, 2009 by John CS Keston

After checking out a few bands during the Heliotrope festival at the Ritz Theater in Northeast Minneapolis, I starting riding home as a light rain began to fall. It was about 1:07am. Halfway home I heard church bells. Loud, cacophonous, church bells. Not what you’d expect to hear at that time. I dug my recorder out of my bag and started cycling quickly toward the sound. There are churches (plural) on almost every block in my neighborhood, but it didn’t take long to find the one making all the racket. I stopped in the middle of the street and recorded the ringing for more than six minutes. There’s a lot more to this story, but for now, here’s one minute and sixteen seconds of what I captured.

Foot Falls Breaking Sticks in Wooded Area

Posted on May 25, 2009 by John CS Keston

Here’s a set of crunchy footsteps recorded in a wooded area. There’s a bit of wind noise, but it otherwise represents the sound of trailblazing through a thick, young forest.

Foot Falls in Woods

Breezy Cottonwood Ambiance

Posted on May 23, 2009 by John CS Keston

Cottonwood Leaves Plains cottonwood (Populus sargentii) grows near water, and tends to mimic water in several ways. Visually their leaves ripple in the wind like water rippling on a fairly still pond. The sound of the wind through their leaves also mimics water flowing in a stream. I recorded a gentle wind passing through a small grove of cottonwoods near a swamp full of cattails, birds, insects and amphibians. My wind sock for the PCM-D50 didn’t provide all the wind noise protection I would have liked, but I got a good few seconds out of it anyway.

Breezy Cottonwoods

Woody Synth Bass

Posted on May 21, 2009 by John CS Keston

Here’s a synth bass line with a nice woody tone, but a complete lack of accurate timing. Let’s call it atemporal.

Woody Bass Synth

Stop Motion Video: Leggy

Posted on May 20, 2009 by John CS Keston

I made this stop motion video using a tool developed in Max 5 by Ali Momeni. All the sounds effects and music were previously posted on ACB. The sound at the beginning is the wind up toy from Weird Noisey Spark Shooting Guy. The backyard ambiance is from Normalized Binaural Back Alley Ambiance. The cave sound is pitched down water dripping from Snow Melting into Lake Superior. Finally, the music at the end is from Processed Rhodes Pedal Noise.