I found this short loop of loose keyboard playing in an Ableton Live set. I had played it and live looped the phrase during a performance. Most of these little clips are never heard again, but every so often I save the set with the clips intact. Even more rarely I go back and listen to these archives. Here’s one that had been sitting in a folder of collected files for a while, so I decided to loop it and add some reverb for a finishing touch.
Forest Floor
Here’s a segment from a single track out of the piece Sunset on Keston and Westdal’s first album, Super Structure Baby (2002, Unearthed Music). Sunset was the final piece on the album until Kinon’s Path was added as a bonus track for the reissue.
Sunset was the first track that I wrote after buying my Korg MS2000 in 2000, so I was still learning the instrument but enjoying myself fully in the process. The knob turning goes on for the whole seven minutes and two seconds of the piece, but I have edited it down to the first minute and six seconds.
Sunset Noises
Listening on monitors or good quality phones will allow you to hear the deep tone created when I smacked my palm against the side of the rigid front fork from my Surly 1×1 single speed mountain bike. I captured this sound with my PCM-D50 using the built in mics. This was a quiet sound so I needed to record in a quiet space.
This time I used my bedroom. The first step was to turn down the heat and wait for the fan to stop on the forced air heating system. Secondly I put the recorder on a stable surface (i.e. the bedside table) held the fork with my left hand while smacking it with my right palm.
Surly 1×1 Rigid Front Fork
Santa brought me a wonderful little Kodak Zi6 HD video camera this year. I spent a couple hours on a meditative down tempo track just to inspire me to create a short film. I have no name for the young audio piece but I do have a fragment of it to share. I was experimenting with the macro setting and got some nice lens flare action.
Meditation Station (QuickTime Video 11.2mb)
During a recent family dinner at my brother’s house I was innocently admiring the ornaments in his home when came across a collection of musical snow globes. I could not resist winding up these devices for some concurrent chaotic music box sound. Fortunately I had my PCM-D50 on hand, so while no one was looking I gathered the snow globes and tried to find a quiet place in the house to make a recording. With the family event fully underway, this was not an easy proposition, but after wandering around for a few minutes I settled on recording them in the bathroom. Despite an odd look from my brother’s wife as I exited the bathroom the recording went well.
Three Snow Globes