Shingle Creek on Webber Parkway

This recording of the falls located on Shingle creek at Webber parkway was made last weekend on the way back from the Surly Darkness Day festival. My friend Kevin and I stopped during our bike ride back from the Surly brewery in Brooklyn Center where the event was held to drink a beer by the falls before crossing the Mississippi river at Camden on our way back to Northeast Minneapolis for dinner before riding to a campfire party in the Seward neighborhood.

At the festival we tasted many fine beers brewed by the renowned Surly Brewing Company and heard three great bands, including Guzzlemug, God Came From Space and Powermad. It was a long day, but well worth it.

Shingle Creek Falls

Piano Sound Objects

This as yet untitled rough mix is made up of a few simple melodies recorded on my 1916 Raudenbush & Sons upright piano. Interspersed within the piece are a number of what I’m calling piano sound objects. I used a couple of different techniques to create these sounds.

To get some of the sound objects I tapped the strings with a variety of mallets. Another sound was created by rubbing a mallet along the string in a rhythmic pattern. I also created an interesting sound using a brush, intended for use on drums, to stroke the strings across the sound board.

The processing involved includes high quality reverberation, equalization, and compression, but I also took the liberty of applying pitch shifting a reverse in a few places. Although all of the sounds originate from the same acoustic piano, I would still call this an electronic piece because of the editing, treatments and processing used.

Untitled Piano Sound Objects

Untitled Processed Rhodes

I came across this old late night session of sleepy Rhodes melodies and decided to render about fifty eight seconds of it. It was originally recorded on November 3, 2006 at about 12:53am. I love electronic timestamps.

There are two separate tracks of Rhodes, each running through separate processing. I added auto-panning to each track in opposite phase as a quick final touch before bouncing it down. The tracks are also running through equalization, amp modeling, two separate delays, and reverberation.

Untitled Processed Rhodes

ACB September 2008 Sample Pack

Today, freesound.org approved my second sample pack, ACB September 2008. This sample pack is comprised of sounds found on AudioCookbook.org that were posted during the month of September, 2008 in the Share Remix Adapt category. I am packaging these sample packs on a monthly basis so that ACB readers have access to higher quality versions of the ACB sounds.

Each sound is uncompressed and available through freesound.org under the user keston in it’s original .wav format for free download and use in non-commercial works (I will most often grant permission for commercial use if you contact me in advance). If you make use of these samples please consider donating to AudioCookbook.org using the paypal link in the sidebar.

Night Sky Moon Painting

This spooky sound was created in Ableton Live using a variety of processing. The main device responsible is Pluggo’s Feedback Network. I ran a modulated synth pad into it, then removed all of the dry signal after automating several parameters. I re-sampled the results then pitched it all down two octaves being careful to filter out inaudible low frequencies. Finally, over the top I added a ping pong delay so the audio swirls around the stereo spectrum adding to the disturbing qualities of the sound.

Night Sky Moon Painting