One Synthesizer Sound Every Day Debut

It’s been more than fifteen months since I finished posting a self produced sound everyday for three hundred and sixty five consecutive days. This all happened in the One Sound Every Day category. As a result I produced my solo debut under my Ostraka moniker titled, Precambrian Resonance.

In the spirit of One Sound Every Day, I am starting a new project called One Synthesizer Sound Every Day. My plan is to use hardware synthesizers from my collection (and eventually soft-synths) to produce a sound, musical phrase, or microtrack to share here on ACB every day for a year. As well as my own sounds, I’ll be accepting select sounds from other artists and ACB readers to share on the site in the daily article.

My long term goal is produce a synthesizer album where I focus on inventing new sounds and allowing these textures to inspire the compositions. I’ve already got a good start on this by writing nine or so tracks in the few days since I conceived of the project (some of these tracks can be heard in the mix I shared here). I’m looking forward to sharing more of these sonic textures here as I discover them.

Let me start with a sub bass patch I made for my newly acquired Casio CZ-1000. I used to own a Casio CZ-101, which is virtually the same synth except that the CZ-1000 has a full sized keyboard compared to the mini-keys on the CZ-101. Years ago I misplaced my affectionately renamed Sleazy-101, probably in a move. Pining for the sound of this under-rated little instrument, I picked up a mint condition CZ-1000 on eBay recently for a steal. Here’s a bass line using my new patch.

Casio CZ-1000 Sub Bass

BMW Burnout in the snow

Hey all,

Boy Racer – Burnout in Carpark on snow – BMW exploding exhaust revving tyres squealing

photo credits Kemmish from sw-pc.com

This winter in the UK everything has been incredibly foggy and snow-bound. Awesome! I had some family relatives visit and one of the youngsters asked me what gadgets I had (as naturally all self respecting men should always be armed with several gadgets). The only thing I had on me (which I take everywhere) was my sound recording gear, so one dark night we went for a walk to the park to see what we could record.

From about a mile away we could hear some burnouts, so we ran through the park to find a highly tweaked BMW and driver having a fun time ripping it up in a snowy car park. Picture the scene, it was pitch black and extremely foggy, so the car cut through the silence of the night like a knife. We had to conceal ourselves from the driver, behind a hedge, and the car was sliding just metres away from us! The exhaust explosions sounded great, and the car lit up the snow with its headlights.

I recorded the following, and it’s unprocessed. Sounds RAW!!!

Boy Racer – Burnout in Carpark on snow – BMW exploding exhaust revving tyres squealing

tags: Boy Racer – Burnout in Carpark on snow – BMW exploding exhaust revving tyres squealing

An Exclusive Holiday Gift from Ostraka

Here’s a set I recorded live to Ableton during a performance at Nick and Eddie Thursday Funhouse hosted by Jon Davis, December 16, 2010. This is all new material that I’ve been working on, except for the last track, which is a remix of Illuminator Console from Precambrian Resonance (Unearthed Music 2009). Here’s the download link for the 37:28 minute set hosted on Unearthed Music. Expect to hear lots of Grain Machine, as well as synth sounds from the Casio CZ-1000, the Korg MS2000, the Roland D-50, my Sequential Circuits Pro-One, some old Hammond rhythm programs, and even a little bit of Rhodes electric piano.

Download Live Ostraka Set at Nick and Eddie Thursday Funhouse (89.9 MB)

Video by Jon Davis of an Ostracon Performance

I just came across this five minute video shot by Ghostband artist Jon Davis on his mobile phone of my duet project Ostracon performing at the Kitty Cat Klub in Minneapolis on July 17, 2010. I’ve been enjoying a lot of these lofi videos that Jon puts up on YouTube, and it reminds me of a quote I read recently from David Byrne in the liner notes for My Life in the Bush of Ghosts: “…we came to realize that high fidelity was a vastly over-rated convention that noboby had bothered to question…”. I can’t agree more, except that today, thankfully, it is being questioned more than ever.

Words to Dead Lips Documentation

WTDL9min from Aniccha Arts on Vimeo.

I just finished collaborating on a grant funded project titled Words to Dead Lips at Intermedia Arts last month. I did live electronic music and sound design, as well as build sound objects that the dancers used in the piece. The collaboration began with choreographer Pramila Vasudevan and visual artist Matt Wells with whom I joined to expand the project in December, 2009. Here’s more documentation including project notes, photos and press:

Words to Dead Lips on mnartists.org
Words to Dead Lips in intermediaarts.org
Closing night sound excerpt posted on AudioCookbook.org
Words to Dead Lips article on Twin Cities Daily Planet