Creepy

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I have had this sound so long that it’s difficult to trace where it came from and how is was originally processed. I think it dates back to early in the year 2000. So, how does one deduce what the sound is and how it’s processed just by listening? Let me start by forgoing paranormal techniques. Although it sounds “creepy”, I’m guessing that I didn’t accidentally record ghosts eight years ago.

First of all it is obvious to me that the sound is another example of reversed audio. It’s also likely that the sound was processed through a delay before it was reversed due to the repetitive nature of the fade in at the beginning. It also sounds like it includes a vocal element, but there are other textures and percussive layers to the sound suggesting that it it is made up of several tracks. I could investigate it further, but everyone loves a mystery.

Creepy

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About John CS Keston

John CS Keston is an award winning transdisciplinary artist reimagining how music, video art, and computer science intersect. His work both questions and embraces his backgrounds in music technology, software development, and improvisation leading him toward unconventional compositions that convey a spirit of discovery and exploration through the use of graphic scores, chance and generative techniques, analog and digital synthesis, experimental sound design, signal processing, and acoustic piano. Performers are empowered to use their phonomnesis, or sonic imaginations, while contributing to his collaborative work. Originally from the United Kingdom, John currently resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota where he is a professor of Digital Media Arts at the University of St Thomas. He founded the sound design resource, AudioCookbook.org, where you will find articles and documentation about his projects and research. John has spoken, performed, or exhibited original work at New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 2022), the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC 2022), the International Digital Media Arts Conference (iDMAa 2022), International Sound in Science Technology and the Arts (ISSTA 2017-2019), Northern Spark (2011-2017), the Weisman Art Museum, the Montreal Jazz Festival, the Walker Art Center, the Minnesota Institute of Art, the Eyeo Festival, INST-INT, Echofluxx (Prague), and Moogfest. He produced and performed in the piece Instant Cinema: Teleportation Platform X, a featured project at Northern Spark 2013. He composed and performed the music for In Habit: Life in Patterns (2012) and Words to Dead Lips (2011) in collaboration with the dance company Aniccha Arts. In 2017 he was commissioned by the Walker Art Center to compose music for former Merce Cunningham dancers during the Common Time performance series. His music appears in The Jeffrey Dahmer Files (2012) and he composed the music for the short Familiar Pavement (2015). He has appeared on more than a dozen albums including two solo albums on UnearthedMusic.com.

4 thoughts on “Creepy”

  1. hey, it’s no so hard to make creepy sounds.

    In h**p://deathball.net/notpron/stuff/mus1.mp3 (A internet game), the author tell us that he did that sound reversing an slowing an elvis sample!

    Anyway, it’d be good to have some kind of recipe to develop fast a complete range of creepy, horrible sounds.

    Love the site,

    Haj.-

  3. Congratulations on a very productive and useful blog. I’m digging through the older posts now. Just wanted to let you know; like Dr. Frasier Crane said: ‘I’m Listening’.

  4. IMHO your sample has 3 important elements to be termed ‘creepy’.
    a) The most obvious one is surely the vocal part near the end which sounds like a child or woman – whose voice ascends and slopes, kinda being surprised, almost painfully – reminds me to shouts from a rollercoaster.
    b) The vocal part (including its reverberation) seems to be reversed, which can be detected in the end, when the voice ends rather abruptly – without having reverb there. As we know, things played backwards tend to sound quite unnatural and strange.
    c) The leading 5 seconds are dominated by a low frequency machine-like sound of about 9 Hertz (perceivable by our awareness). A closer look via wav editor reveals ‘shadow-peaks’ between the 9 Hz peaks (presumably due to an applied reverb effect), which sums to an 18 Hz signal (perceivable at least by our subconscious). This infrasonic frequency range of 16…20 Hz is known as not only being displeasing for many people (e.g. me) but also as mystical range in old cultures and even contemporary paranormal science: accordingly such oscillations promote apparition or ghost phenomenons.
    The truth is probably our inherent fear of seismic dangers such as landslides or earthquakes.

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