Tag Sprung, False Alarm

Tag Sprung


Elastic sproingyness sampled to a VSS-30, bells bowed & struck, distorted voice, more mic feedback, dead battery glitchyness and so on.

False Alarm



Fun with different sounds on a venerable Korg Poly-800 MkII.

21 May 2008 Improv

21 May 2008 Improv


Spacy improv fun with live mic feedback and a Yamaha VSS-30 sampler. Recorded open air with the trusty Zoom H4 Handy Recorder.

Long Gone Away redux

Long Gone Away





A largely identical, slightly different mix.

This song was playing in head most mornings late last month. (Now playing: a song I haven't written yet.)

Long Gone Away

Long Gone Away


The Marble Index is one of my favorite albums.

Still I had to laugh when I read (some damn place) how the professionals mixing the record did as much as they could as fast as they could. The songs, written and sung by Nico and arranged by John Cale, were simply making these guys suicidal.

One might cite Plato and Aristotle and argue than music and the broader swath of arts & culture may either invoke bad feelings or deliver us from them through catharsis. I'd guess it works either way, to the point that positive thinking and primal screams can by turns harm or help.

In any case, if a song or whatever really wants to be written and played and recorded--well, good luck doing otherwise. Tho' you may have to mix it yourself.

Tho' not the iced over river crossing that is The Marble Index, such was the story of the song above. At times couched in broad social terms, an elegy for & goodbye to what's behind.

WeaslThrum

WeaslThrum


Usual fun stuff. Toy piano. Kalimba flutter. Some 60 Hz hum sampled into a Yamaha VSS-30. Slide whistle and loon call. Lantern battery terminal springs sproinging, voices and such.

Kitchen Improv

Kitchen Improv


This starts out quietly then gets good and loud.

Just something cooked up one day with assorted kitchen items as percussion: a kitchen sink, an oven rack, a kettle partially filled with water, various lids and a porcelain bowl submerged in water by varying degrees (to create pitchbendy goodness), water sloshing in the sink and so on.

All the sorts of cool sounds one hears when washing dishes, but one is, well, too busy washing dishes to do much about other than listen.

Recorded with the Zoom H4 and mixed on Cubase LE.

wind it up

Last of the short sounds . . .

Tape Player Cue

keep it moving

A drive-by MemoMate recording on Tremont St. in Boston. A busker's drum beat blends into the roar of a bus.

Street Drummer



Now a couple of brief announcements . . .

chghere4theGreenLine



dwntownNewBedford

short nature clips

Some very short lo-fi field recordings made with the ever trusty MemoMate--just click on the titles or the icons to play:

Fairhaven Peepers



BirdSong@EgyptLane


Egypt Lane is a short road through woods and marsh. It was an inspiration for this song and this video (and this alternate version of the video).


TreeFrog?@UMASSDartmouth

of frogs & thunder

Faint recordings--for close listening, turn up the volume.

FrogsEtcFloodedBackyd11May07


After a particularly heavy downpour last May, the fields & backyard where I was visiting were flooded with more than rain. There were frogs near and far. Mostly you can hear the near ones.

FrogsInFloodedBkyard11May07



(BTW: not thunder exactly, but frogs & distant fireworks . . .)

You may find these thunderstorm recordings to be somewhat louder--please adjust volume accordingly.

Thunderstorm28July2007



These thunderstorms were all recorded in Massachusetts.

Thunderstorm21June2007-3



The one below is from earlier in the same storm, so the rain and runoff is louder. But the thunder gets close starting around 1:43.

Thunderstorm21June2007-2