Wither Thou Goest

Wither Thou Goest


A big production, even for its time of reverbosity.
Had meant to post it. But a glitch in the one of its kind master recording inspired notions of digital fixing, which mostly happened and slightly didn't. Accelerating only the procrastinating process.

So now's it posted with the rest.

Meantime, mostly non-songs are continually going up in the less archival Tumblr version of audiokayness. Stuff of Berna, Gleetchlab and Monotron & so on.

24 July 2010 Tape Trio No 2

Probably this needs no explanation. Handheld tape recorders record oscillators & stuff, rewind and playback said stuff. Video of the rewind & playback, including disembodied hand that rides the pause switch on the er, um, lead tape recorder.

Died Laughing

Died Laughing


Provisional super full-length title: Died Laughing At the Fat Lady At Buckroe Beach.

But without lots of context (the sort that music hopes to obviate if only to get straight to the mood of things) that may seem cruel or unPC or whatever else. Needless to say, the shorter Died Laughing gives it a broader reading at least.

Piezo'd tiny toy instrument is played slide and later used in a feedback loop. Other such piezo fun with toy spring reverb mics, battery springs and the like.

Don't laugh too hard.

the James River and thereabouts

During a trip to Virginia to visit family and attend the Richmond Folk Festival, I did some field recording.

Having been by, but never to, Ragged Island WMA, I thought it'd be worth a try to record both the James River Bridge (longtime fixture in family history) and the river itself.


I started near the bridge. Which was fine for that objective. But later took the observation trail to further down river. Both places I used the highly kludged together Big Fluff windscreen made with fake fur on plastic cross stitch grid whatever.

James River at end of observation boardwalk trail, Ragged Island WMA, Carrollton VA, noon 8 October 2010


Roughly a 1/4 mile away, the bridge traffic is still a big part of the sound. Noontime sirens sound across the river in Newport News.


Birdsong at Tredegar Iron Works 9 October 2010


The next day at the Richmond Folk Festival, I barely had time to get out my lo-tek MP3 player to do a quick and dirty recording of this birdsong coming from a small tree near Tredegar Iron Works.

Train passing overhead on trestle near Tredegar Iron Works/James River, Richmond VA, 10 October 2010


That following day I took a break by the riverside and a train came over the trestle.

The last day there I went down to Chippokes Plantation State Park, where I hadn't been in over 3 years. Once there, I found a spot on the James I wanted to record.



Forgetting some essential adapter gizmo for mounting my recorder, the tripod was dead weight (on a very mosquito infested trail) and I had to improvise.



James River near end of James River trail, Chippokes Plantation State Park 13 October 2010


I recorded a couple of other spots on the beach, then switched to some DIY piezo mics for my first outdoor attempt at using them as hydrophones. Below is the sound of them dragging in shallow surf on sand and broken shells.

DIY piezo mics as hydrophones in the James River, Chippokes Plantation State Park 13 October 2010


Time allotted was running out. I went by the Visitor's Center to see if there was any last fast opportunity.



Near a picnic shelter I just fitted the recorder with the Lil' Fluff windscreen my wife had kindly fashioned from the aforementioned fake fur.



And pointed it down to the banks of the James roughly 100 feet below.



James River surf below Shelter 1 near Visitor's Center, Chippokes Plantation State Park 13 October 2010 A



James River surf below Shelter 1 near Visitor's Center, Chippokes Plantation State Park 13 October 2010 B

Last We Heard

Last We Heard


Is this the last title with the word "last" in it?

Somehow doubt it . . .

Crowd 4 Lot--video

Crowd 4 Lot is an odd hobbyhorse hybrid. Some audio from a museum opening was doctored a bit in Audacity and varispeeded and otherwise twisted in Berna.

But the original audio of these very slowed down bits of overlaid video are also part of what's going on.

Spoken Wave Stepdown

Spoken Wave Stepdown



Many of the usual suspects.

Solaris slow duplex approach

Very slowed down video with correspondingly slow ambient audio.

7 minutes in Berna

To operate a bit more sonically off the books and combine with the coolness of others, I recently created audiokayness (the phantom annex).

Lately, been having fun with Berna some more, using various recordings I've made played at varispeed to feed the Berna beast. Stuff like old 1950s tube intercom feedback. Stylophone and homemade zither run through the reverberant spring-loaded arm of a Luxo lamp via Nicholas Collins implementations of piezo contact mics/drivers.

To post the MP3s directly to the world o' Tumblr, I've kept these improvs [um, relatively] short. A mere 7 minutes each.

Runnymede Turn

Runnymede Turn



Stylophone through a Korg X-911, electric sitar strummed & ebowed.

Closed Circuit Treadle

Closed Circuit Treadle


Droney & slow with the ebowed beater acoustic, some Casio SK-1 and a touch of nuevo Stylophone.

Names are the devil. Esp. with instrumental music. I might give something a name for all sorts of reasons, but the impulse of many listeners (myself included, when on the other end) is to take the name literally. Or literally enough not to hear things outside of the context of the dread name.

I read somewhere that an action painter whose last name rhymes with Wallach started using numbers to name his stuff. Tempting.

And some folks (one who rhymes with "la tea") go with names so long & whimsical that folks would rather forgo reading them and just suss things out on their own.

But the digital age offers almost all indulgences except that of a ridiculously long file name. And whatever convenient distillation of the really long name that ends up as the file name will no doubt obviate the too-long-to-bother-reading gambit.

Tho' I will offer here the alternate overly long & oblique title of this humble stretch of soundlike music/music-ish sound: The Closed Circuit Treadle Entirely Unseen & Cast Iron & Heretofore Unspoken Of Except As Woven Into The Cold Air The Greenest Grass Conceals Via Those Unclasped Vectors Of The Lost AlChemist Who Sought Uni & Roy But Found Only The Cricket's Face. There, something to read while listening.

two owls, one owl

Two Owls Hooting 26 July 2010



One Owl Hooting 26 July 2010

15 Years Ago Redux

15 Years Ago Redux



One fun sideline has been playing working goofing with Berna, a virtual 1950s electronic music laboratory created in software.

I don't really use the sundry oscillators, tape decks etc. as the actual units would've been used back in the day. No assiduous sound building or manipulations of the patient lab coat variety.

Just a lot of real time toying with oscillators etc. to "tape" and fun with varispeed playback of the recordings with yet more of the above goofage.

For extra art points, this piece has some fractured versification I hatched out, read & recorded that's looping with the rest.

Daylily Fade

Daylily Fade



Your basic instrumental for acoustic guitar, bass and free range homebrew oscillators.

May someday post pics or other show & tell nonsense about the oscillators. An EE guru/compatriot sent me diagrams many years ago. Maybe his design or taken from data sheets or some of both. Meant as goofy LFOs but somewhat tweaked to allow for audio range play.

Btawak Toglflik--video

Music video of Btawak Toglflik.

Gone--video

Music video of Gone.

Btawak Toglflik

Btawak Toglflik



What happens when a really old beat up thrift store acoustic guitar and some DIY oscillators (built years ago and summarily forgotten) are pulled out of storage and into play? This happens. This.

I forget the chips & particulars of the oscillators, but one accepts something like amplitude and frequency modulation from the other two. With no fancy routing or modular outboard stuff, just riding the cheap on/off toggles on the modulators and various knobs to engender variation.

Gone

Gone



Songish & songlike, being songoid. Let's just call it a song. With very few lyrics. Not a chant. Tho' chantlike. No, a songlike song.

Like 33rd Floor, features the Kay acoustic guitar tuned to something resembling DADGAD except a semitone lower (C#G#C#F#G#C#). And voices, for that songlike song quality. And other usual suspects like feedback from the Dora the Exp. Karaoke Cassette Player and the Realistic Electronic Reverb. The Ashbory Bass. Oh, and a newcomer, the Stylophone.

(And now there's a music video.)

Herculoid Rumination

Herculoid Rumination



This time around it's all live and all hardware. A Realistic Electronic Reverb (aka cheesy PA delay) patched to feedback playing into a small old Realistic transistor amp miked by a Realistic mic into a Boss SE-50 set up for a looping delay into the oft aforementioned crappy karaoke machine with echo.

WatUSpace

WatUSpace, an instrumental hosted on DivShare.



Honestly, this is fun with faking. Depending on what you consider "fun" or "faking".

Or "real".

The synth heard herein is a plug-in called U-NO-60, a virtual version of the Roland Juno 60 polysynth.

Once upon a time anything electronically created, reproduced or enhanced would not be called real. Now circuits and hardware in the devoted service of analog sound creation have become things to be copied and rendered real by their replication. With a dead Juno 106 and no budget for its resurrection/replacement, I find far more fun in plug-ins than semantics.

And the tape delayish manipulations are thanks to the WatKat, a virtual version of the WEM Copicat tape delay. Of which I have a real one, just not patched into a computer & ready to roll yada yada.

Anyway, fun, remember?

Francis Bacon-video

Getting all glare-filled & artsy with the lack of depth of field and the feedback and the glaven. This time doing low rent Jodorowsky Holy Mtn. with the trippy symmetry and hoodie shroud.

Surfy Meditation

Surfy Meditation, an instrumental hosted on Box.



Some famous art dude wanted to have a robot likeness of himself to attend art openings in his stead. Some of us remaining humans wonder if passing the Turing Test is really a slam dunk. Or a thing desired in times to come.

While no one's making more real estate, virtual space has been building out and more or less improving. What was spring reverb is surplanted by digital reverbs which are obviated by software versions of all the above. A commonly available entry-level home studio software contained as it were the amp and the ambiance heard herein. Even this low rent bit of Any'verb USA sounds kinda cool.

33rd Floor-video

33rd Floor

Our Preschool Speakers

Our Preschool Speakers, an instrumental hosted on Box.



Kinda what it says. A spare speaker from an venerable Silvertone portable hi-fi joins a small stereo pair of speakers from my wife's old Realistic record player. As percussion/microphones. And in the case of the Realistics, as feedback microphones.

The transformative powers of both the Smokey Amp and the cheep no-name karaoke machines are invoked. Singing thru the Dora the Exp. Karaoke Cassette Player. Rhythmic feedback from the same. Ebowed beatup acoustic.

33rd Floor

33rd Floor by krseward

Also hosted on Box.

Yes, a song. But kind of trancelike . . .

Kay acoustic in DADGAD, toy bass drum, voice with & without Dora the Exp. Karaoke Cass. Player, toy echo feedback, ebowed homebrew steel-string instrument via contact mic into crummy no-name karaoke machine amplification with built in supah heterodyning echo, Ashbory bass. That mostly covers it.

33rd Floor video

Heading Back From The Colonial Store

Heading Back From The Colonial Store, another instrumental hosted on Box.



What does feedback and the phrygian mode have to do with an old grocery store chain?

Who can say?

But here it goes.

Chester Valley Brood

Chester Valley Brood, an instrumental hosted on Box.



Seems the Turing Chicken may have hatchlings. If so, they likely inhabit this piece.

Touch Nothing

Touch Nothing, a songlike instrumental hosted on Box.



A creaking ark of pet sounds, it could also called Touch Everything given the even more than more, supah-maximal approach.

Optigan drums as well as organ are in there. Home organ bass pedal, glockenspiel, feedback, sludgy distorted guitar, two melodicas, sleigh bells, egg shakers. Not quite enough, right? The Yamaha VSS-30 sampler will help . . .

Another older recording mixed to wondrous stereophonic sound.

Echo Location

Echo Location, hosted on Box.



Slide guitar, feedback, Ashbory bass and the venerable Yamaha VSS-30.

Parlor Apparition

Parlor Apparition, an instrumental hosted on Box.net.



Spooky ebow sustained notes with something snappier behind & beneath.

Drag Surge & Click

Drag Surge & Click, an instrumental hosted on Box.



Features slide guitar feedback on an electrified beater acoustic guitar (named "Dylan" by its former owners evidently because it was distributed by a company based in Beverly Hills CA), Salvation Army glockenspiel, kalimba, bass, and wood percussion.

A Sinking Down

(There Is) A Sinking Down, something songlike, hosted on Box.



Yet more mixing the old. Ohio Art Dynamike feedback, vocal through Dora the Exp. Karaoke gizmo, bass and Casio SK-1 organ.