Studio Version of Spring in December

I would like to share another track from One Day to Save All Life. This was one of the first pieces completed for the album and set the tone for the rest of the collection. The atmosphere at the beginning is created with water and wildlife ambiance mixed with a passage of backwards Rhodes electric piano. At around two minutes into it the main theme is introduced which is a combination of Rhodes along with two synthesized oscillators tuned to fifths done with one of my favorite workhorses, the Korg MS2000.

Spring in December

Filling and Draining the Sink

Tonight I’ve decided to share another of my first few Sony PCM-D50 test recordings. It is simply the sound of filling my bathroom sink partway with cold and then the rest of the way with hot water followed by the much quieter sound of the water draining down the plug hole. These sorts of mundane sounds are especially interesting to me once they have been recorded and taken out their context. Do we ever really listen to the sounds things make while we go about our daily lives? Probably not. And for good reason. If we were distracted by the qualities of the typical sounds in our environments we would never survive as a species. Our hearing is tuned to alert us when we hear irregular or unusual sounds. To my ears, ordinary sounds become extraordinary when I focus on listening to them.

Filling and Draining the Sink

Dub Delayed Atmospheric Bubbles

This atmospheric effect is a continuation of the experiment from yesterday involving the Flying Waves VST. This time I loaded up a sample of air bubbles being blown into a glass of water. The original sound can be heard here. I also ran the output through an analog modeling delay and then recorded the results as I manipulated the pitch and volume. The result is a wet, atmospheric, psychedelic texture of ambiance. The next step I might would be to sweep the panning or apply some processing to spread the stereo spectrum since the output at this stage is still in mono.

Dub Delayed Atmospheric Bubbles

Bubbles

Ever get yelled at by your parents for blowing bubbles through your straw? Well, now it’s my job to blow bubbles through a straw. For this recording I blew bubbles in a glass of water (not Guinness as the photo suggests) while recording the results. I used this sound to create the underwater atmosphere for Aaron Dabelow’s 3D animated short, “Drown”. You can hear the pitched and processed version in the post, Water Atmosphere. There’s also a link to the movie in the post.

Bubbles

 

Water Atmosphere

drown thumbRecently I had the pleasure of producing the audio for a short animated piece called “Drown” by Aaron Dabelow. I simply recorded myself blowing bubbles in water with a straw. I captured in it Ableton Live 6 with my AKG c4000b large diaphragm condenser at a distance of about 9 inches, being careful not to splash water on the mic. The processing included down pitching an octave or so, running it through a high pass filter, and then dousing the works with some massive reverb.

Water Atmosphere
– From “Drown”