Here’s a short loop from one of our live sets. This clip is used in the piece Some Kind of Adhesive from One Day to Save All Life (Unearthed Music, 2008). I applied a little bit of knob turning on a few sends while laying down this segment, which is typical of how I use this clip during performances.
Pitched and Processed Loop
Now that the holidays are behind us I think it is safe to post the sound of this very odd musical lighter shaped like a snowman. It plays a high frequency medley of Christmas tunes that will drive you and your family and especially animals crazy.
In spite of this, for some reason I had a strange affection toward this bizarre instrument. Perhaps it was the cheap metal construction, or the glistening lead paint. In any case, instead of engaging in the conversation with my companions at the pub, I pulled out my PCM-D50 and proceeded to made a recording of the lighter’s despondent squealing.
Musical Snowman Lighter in the Pub
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
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
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