#22

By the time each one of us is born, we’re already intimately aware of security. We sense our mother’s heartbeat while residing in the womb, which carries us through childbirth. As an infant, when we hear a familiar voice—frequently that of our mothers—we begin to develop the rudimentary physiological responses that correspond to feeling safe and protected.

The human brain is remarkably adept at processing complex information, which arguably is what separates us from other living creatures. Plants have no parents and thus no thoughts or feelings—or so we assume. Suss Müsik poses an interesting philosophical dilemma: it’s a crime to harm a human being, and there are strong moral arguments for treating animals with the same level of respect. And yet, the ethical argument against plucking a tomato from its vine is considered an exercise in absurdity.

Clearly, one must draw a line someplace. Any living creature—human, plant, or animal—can only express the information it receives and internalizes according to its cognitive capabilities. That said, it’s entirely possible that the concepts of timbre, pitch, rhythm, tone and context are untranslatable between species. And none of us can formally declare that a plant doesn’t verbalize danger in its own fashion. Wasn’t it Roald Dahl who wrote a short story about trees that scream?

For this soothing yet quietly unsettling piece, Suss Müsik sought to create a concept known as “evergreen noise.” A soothing synth wash was played for an amount of time in one channel (the “human” side), then pitched downward with a dollop of static added in the other (the “plant” side). In the background are sampled female voices coupled with heavily treated audio recordings of deciduous foliage fluttering in the breeze.

The piece is titled Tomatis and named after Dr. Alfred A. Tomatis, a French otolaryngologist who specialized in the way infants use sounds produced by their parents in order to develop cognitive and social skills. The image is an organic “herb wall” in Austin, TX.

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#23

Speaking from personal experience, it gets more fun as you get older: “Where are my glasses?” “Uh, you’re wearing them.”

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#24

I forgot to mention it in the description I put on soundclout, maybe it’s obvious, but the title pitter was influenced by the phrase “pitter-patter” and also the fact that parenting sounds like it might be the pits at times.

I read the prompt for this project and took it on myself to make a piece that could be described as “playful drone”. My visualization of this piece was something that could be played outdoors on a sunny day with kids playing (not that I have kids or plan to have them). It is not entirely background music nor is it super intrusive.

I also wanted to cover the entire frequency of sound, hence the bass and the higher keys/pads. However, when mixing, I cut out all frequencies around 3500 Hz, the resonant frequency for the human voice and especially higher-pitched voices like that of children. This was to better match the prompt of music that can be played while parenting – you wouldn’t want your music to drown out your kid(s)… probably.

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#25

Okay, here’s a thing I did. It is decidedly not baby music, however, contrary to the design of the project and my initial intention. I do like how it came out, though, and so am sharing it.

Some time ago, I got an idea for a Max project in which I built a bunch (turned out to be 14) simple sound generators that would bleat, croak, chirp, hoot, etc. when triggered. I then hooked these up to random trigger generators such that they would do their thing collectively in a way that they sounded (sort of) like a night in the jungle (that is, if you were in a jungle with exactly one each of 14 different noise making species). It was fun, but I didn’t have any further thought about its use.

It came to mind again in this project. I liked the idea of starting with sounds that covered the spectrum but not necessarily all at once; in the spirit of “new” colors, I also thought the sounds should not be immediately recognizable. Even though my artificial jungle crickets, etc., were far from perfect imitations, I decided to process the recording of my “Night in the Jungle” to reduce familiarity.

I took an eight minute clip of this, Paulstretched the daylights out of it (10x at 1 second resolution); this produced some really fun sounds, but they were also kinda creepy. So, I took this now 40+ minute clip, chopped it into nine minute chunks, stacked them, reversed several, added LFO-driven peak and notch filters and auto panning to each track. Still pretty creepy; maybe even more so than before, but also kinda cool. Resonators pulling a nice C Major chord out of this dark jungle attenuated the creepiness a bit (maybe?) and a bit of reverb made it feel fuller. But in the end creepy.

So, I would not play this for my baby (who is now a junior in college) and if yours likes it, I suggest introducing her to Edward Gorey, Caitlin Doughty, and Tim Burton at an early age. That said, I hope other listeners enjoy this as I did.

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#26

The color of the noise was taken from this video’s audio, washed out by tons of reverb https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCFnkouNYxg

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#27

I was going to pass on this week’s assignment–lots of chores to do! Then I was out mowing the lawn with my reel mower (the kind that doesn’t have a motor–you push it to cut the grass) and I realized it needed some adjustment. So I fetched a screwdriver, and immediately it was doing a much better job, but also making a really glorious and extremely loud metal-on-metal noise. I switched on my phone memo recorder and grabbed a sample. Later I pulled it into ChucK and created a simple chord from a short piece of it, overlaid on a drum patch I cooked up earlier this week.

As for our theme–what could be a more comforting noise than Dad mowing the lawn? Especially pitched down to half speed and morphed into a major triad?

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#28

Push/reel mowers are awesome. Good for you (and your lawn)!

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#29

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#30

cool sounds :slightly_smiling_face:

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#31

Thanks! I see now that I’m not the only one that ended up with a daemonic baby soundtrack… :smile:

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#33

Used a whole bunch of plugins on this one. Started with a noisy sample I generated in MaxMSP. C major is a pretty safe chord.

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#34

I was in Montreal this weekend and thought the Junto would be a great opportunity to launch a quick project with The Dim Projection. The central idea is to turn the distracting noise of the street into white noise so that - if deployed as a relaxation tool - any new contributions from the environment (cars driving by squealing tires) might blend in and be thus defused.

I filmed 3 minutes of a Montreal street on Friday night and manipulated the audio (with additional new-colored-noise from Phil - @The20Watt). Phil manipulated the video into the visual equivalent of new-colored-noise - with additional peaceful video footage of the rainy view off his front porch.

The finished result is here:

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#35

I love when you get down with a junto remix. Thanks

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#36

The journey is long but you are safe here

Boog model D generates some pink noise. That gets gated into Axon, and Axon drives Ripplemaker and Quanta. Binaural beat produced at 73 and 77 hz for some delta wave calmness.

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#37

As part of my day job I produce short radio broadcasts about agricultural commodity futures. Listing grain prices and the reasons why they’re moving one way or the other can be very dry to anyone who isn’t a farmer (or my mother), but when my kids were babies making up farm reports on the fly usually calmed them down and helped them sleep. My wife’s technique of singing German songs probably worked even better…

For this week’s project, I mashed up a recent radio show with Nana Mouskouri singing ‘Leise rieselt der Schnee’. That was then sliced/diced/stretched/altered/etc in Audacity - to be left with just the underlying calming noise.

My good friend and artistic co-conspirator Simon, @homeontheland, utilized some bits of this in the track he posted earlier - but the end results are different enough that I figured I’d send this out too.

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#38

Main sound source is a 90-second clip from a recording I made of a corridor at a residential centre where I work (the clip was a particularly quiet section - barely went above -25db - and when I normalized it, I realised there was a barely audible conversation from a nearby room buried in the white noise, which I quite liked even though it’s no longer discernable).
Sent this clip through a frequency splitter to get bass, mid-range and higher-range noise files, then sent each of these through Fabfilter Pro-Q with automated tuned filter sweeps loosely based on a C - F chord change (it’s been proven - by science - that a I-IV chord change is the most relaxing chord change that exists, which is good cos I like it a lot), along with various reverbs and distortion FX and more filtering. I then added pitch-shifted samples from Rast Sound’s Kemane String for the E - A ‘riff’ and faded each section in and out to form a loop: -

Not sure I’ve created any new colours, but I like it and I’m just glad to have managed to get a submission in after a few months of radio silence…

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#39

All done on iOS. Sampled violet noise from Sunvox, used Xynthesizr to generate random synth. Recorded in Cubasis and added K7D effects plus some internal effects. Experimental for me and another great challenge and learning experience. Thanks.

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#40

For this project, I created a random-note voice that used white noise to generate triggers, along with LFOs interacting in a circle to create chaotic (but very much tamed) modulation. There are also two noise-based voices, one with a modulated envelope shaping it, and the other with just a filter, but put through a panned delay and some phasing.
I recorded all of this onto my old and dirty Tascam 424 for 10 mins to add more noise, and then played that back on a slower tape setting through a little extra reverb into the computer.

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#41

used talktotransformer.com for inspiration:

What comes after white noise? This is one of those things that just never occurred to me before. It doesn’t have any real purpose, but it’s there nonetheless… and the result is that when I don’t hear it I think ‘Wow, this is nice’, when it gets into my head and I need to hear it for fun or something I find myself listening to it. I was listening to an album I listened to once… it was the track ‘Halloween’. I think this is what I was listening to… the ‘jazz’ theme which was like a sort of ambient ‘psychedelic’ thing I never got into before. But as it got older (like, 10-15 years ago… I guess it’s about then) and it started to evolve… this song came on and it was like ‘Wow I can hear this through my headphones. It’s all I need’. It just happened.

Do you have any other examples of you listening to music through headphones that you don’t know about? Is there anything else that you’ve done that you thought was pretty neat and did not sound the same in the first place?

I have to say the two most notable things is I know that I can

White noise

Directional noise

All of these were produced by an app named “Dynamo” (or in some cases, “M-Wave”). This was developed by German engineers for the Germans’ Navy. D-Wave software had to be modified to include both spatial and lateral filtering to make the product actually useable within a small range for the British Navy. The app also included noise shaping so that certain parts of the wave pattern could be smoothed without sacrificing the original pattern of the data.

For the German Navy, this produced one of the most precise and valuable data processing solutions available. The British had been making significant progress in data processing technology in the mid 20th century since the invention of the vacuum tube and then radar and then digital video decoders. This new technology required precise data processing, an almosery on scale and precision which had had to be accomplished with other devices. The Germans managed this task and the British could do it too, but not with the precision that needed to be achieved.

D-Wave is a commercial processor which uses a proprietary software called Ondesim, for “Object Detection Software” which is widely used in other areas such as the National Security
.
generated white noise in audacity then put that thru a midi file in live

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#42

For whatever reason, I read the prompt and thought “noise + lullaby”, which led me to googling “lullaby midi”, which led me to the first result, Brahm’s Lullaby. I then searched for “noise” in Ableton, and played around with a couple things. I ended up with a very dubby lullaby.

This has three tracks of “FX Noise Vinyl” chopped up haphazardly in Sampler, played by this Brahm’s lullaby midi track. Each track has a bit of MIDI randomization on it, and a resonator + filter delay combo (each track at different pitches & octaves) that I’ve been playing around with recently. FX are a Valhalla Delay (“Airy Vocal Reverb”) and a standard Ableton delay in series with default Valhalla Plate (which I put on there by accident, but it sounded alright). Master has some EQ by LTL Chop Shop and SPL Vitalizer. Kind of just playing around.

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