Classic MTA Closing Doors Chime

This recording from the New York City subway system includes the classic and familiar chimes to indicate that the sliding doors are about to close. Newer cars have a spoken message, “stand clear of the closing doors please”. The doors open and close at a couple of stops. There’s quite a bit of talking going on in the car along with the track noise, electric motor acceleration, and screeching brakes. If you listen carefully you can hear Ray telling an embarrassing story about how he once fell over onto another passenger as the car took off. Sorry, Ray!

Classic Subway

Foot Traffic and Street Vendors in Soho

Sunday afternoon on February 8, 2009 it was fifty-four degrees Fahrenheit in Manhattan, so we took a stroll through Soho en route to brunch with our gracious hosts Ray and his lovely wife Nicole. Street vendors were out in full force selling paintings, photographs, rugs, pottery, and all sorts of other sundries. Here’s thirty-four seconds of our walk illustrating a variety of activities going on in the area.

Soho Ambiance

Squeaky Toy

As I was editing this document two dogs came running into my studio. They were very attracted to the squeaky toy sound for obvious reasons. I only have one dog so it might seem a little strange that two dogs came into my studio.

The answer is that we have a friend staying with us for the month of February who has a charming female boxer named Georgia. Here’s the squeaky toy sound, recorded in stereo on the Sony PCM-D50, and a photo of Georgia in front of the Rhodes suitcase model.

Squeaky Toy

 

 

Weird Noisey Spark Shooting Guy

I got this strange plastic wind up toy at a work event several years ago. I wrapped a rubber band around his neck because he started falling apart and spilling his guts all over the place. A little glue would probably fix that, but after this experiment I suspect that he is likely to get forgotten in a drawer for another few years. He shoots sparks and walks in a not so straight line. His labor intensive stumbling gate also makes quite a racket as you will notice from the recording.

Weird Guy

 

 

Harsh Backwards Resonated Rhodes

A variety of processing went into this segment of backwards Rhodes electric piano. I started with a chunk from a loop recorded during a recent performance. I reversed the chunk and then slightly time compressed in Ableton Live to give it a bit of a stutter. This caught my attention, so I dropped it onto a track that I had been using to test some processing including gate, distortion, Live’s paragraphic eq, compression, and delay. But in between the eq and the compressor I had added MDA’s RezFilter. I had also programmed a MIDI controller for adjusting the speed of the LFO and the maximum frequency on the plugin, so this gave me the tools to have some fun by automating these parameters while recording. There are some particularly harsh frequencies here, so I recommend starting out at low volume.

Harsh Backwards Resonated Rhodes