Subprime by Beeple with Sound Design by Kyle Vande Slunt

Posted on April 29, 2009 by John C.S. Keston

Minneapolis based sound designer and Nobot band member Kyle Vande Slunt recently alerted me to an excellent animated short titled Subprime – “watch the american housing market spiral out of control”. The animation was produced by Beeple, otherwise known as graphic designer, short film and music video producer Mike Winkelmann.

The music was produced by Nobot and the sound design by Kyle Vande Slunt. Kyle is a talented musician and sound designer working actively in the industry. You can view his demo reel and hear examples of his work at standingwavesound.com. He has also offered to contribute to ACB, so keep a lookout for an article or two from him soon.

Subprime from Beeple on Vimeo.

Electrical Crackling Sound with the GMS

Posted on April 27, 2009 by John C.S. Keston

This electrical crackling sound was made with the GMS while the tempo was set quite high and the note duration probability distributions were set to favor two adjacent values. The speed that the notes were played made the frequency of playing the notes more audible than the pitch of the individual sounds themselves. The randomized durations at that speed created a sputtering quality that, to my ear, sounds very similar to high voltage electrical sparks. Interestingly it turns out that the GMS might be useful for sound design as well as a composition and performance tool.

Electrical Sound

Game of Life Recording Part II

Posted on April 25, 2009 by John C.S. Keston

Here’s another segment of some experimenting I did with Grant Muller’s GOL Sequencer Bank. One suggestion I would make if you are planning on have a look at his application is to try using some example patterns from John Conway’s original work. Also, when you come across new forms that survive well, document them so that you can recreate them for future sequences.

GOL Recording Part II

Mendota Springs Sparkling Water Can Being Opened

Posted on April 14, 2009 by grahamob

Hi, my name is Graham O’Brien and I’m a drummer, audio engineer, and composer living in St. Paul, MN. I play in some really fun bands around town (including Keston & Westdal!) and specialize in drumming and writing for sequenced music. And having gotten a recording degree, I do some work recording and mixing radio commercials at Marketing Architects ad agency in Mineeapolis. I also am building a drum recording studio in my basement that’s coming along really well and I’ll be posting plenty of really cool stuff from there. Now, for my first post to Audio Cookbook.

This is a short but pristine recording of me opening a can of Mendota Springs Sparkling Water (Lemon flavor). I recorded it at the radio production studio I work at, and the recording chain is amazing. First we tuned and sound-proofed the recording booth down to -32dB of isolation. Here’s the recording chain:

Neumann U87a (cardiod pattern, hi pass off)> Great River Electronics MP-2NV Mercenary Edition Class A Mic Pre > Langevin Electro/Optical Compressor/limiter > Pro Tools HD via 192 i/o interface

This recording was done at 44.1Khz, 16bit. The only processing I used is the Massey L2007 Limiter to make it louder: mendota-springs-can-loud

Screeching Letter G

Posted on March 28, 2009 by John C.S. Keston

To create this sound I used a large hollow letter G and slid it along a Formica table top. Grandpa-George has an expansive collection of letter Gs from old signs and other sources hanging on one of their walls.

The G that I used to make this sound had not been mounted yet. The material that the letter was made from made a resonant screech when the thin edges of the back side of it slid along the Formica table top.

Screeching Letter G