#7

Hello everyone, I’m taking a word and being very literal with it here. In Canto 5 of Dante’s Inferno, the lustful Francesca is summoned from a vortex of souls who are swirling like starlings in the winter wind. Dante, still naive at this point in his journey, is overcome with emotion upon hearing Francesca’s story - which itself is a web of half-truths, silences, and bad faith concerning her lover Paulo - and faints. Unseen by Dante, Francesca’s soul returns to the vortex.

This track has four levels:

(i) creative commons sample of starlings = the constant background whirlwind

(ii) self-oscillating pedals = Dante’s trepidation, confusion

(iii) nylon string Yamaha guitalele = Francesca’s seductive but heart-breaking story, its omissions (silence in the solo) and references to / quotes from other cultural figures (echoes emerging in the lead guitalele near the end)

(iv) second swelling layer of starlings = Francesca’s return to the storm

Have a great weekend!!

7 Likes
#8

And the playlist is rolling:

3 Likes
#9

Seven tracks of different whales chanting, singing and making their noises.
3 synthesizer tracks performed by DD, Paris, Friday July 19th 2019, in the morning.

5 Likes
#10

Cicadas, frogs and birds recorded in various places. They are collaged together with some electronic tracks I played to accompany them.

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#11

Soft knee usually works best…:laughing:

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#12

Greetings! This track was created with audio extracted from a video my partner had made of our cat, Neko snoozing in the afternoon. Her snore is supringly musical. I looped the recording in Max with a fzero~ object employed to detect the fundamental frequency of Neko’s snore. The fzero~ is then delayed and used to provide the frequency for a triangle wave; in effect, creating a call and response to Neko’s snore. In addition to this, each time a fundamental frequency is detected by fzero~, this triggers a snapshot~ with the output controlling the waveband of a noise filter. A couple of signal buses are also set up with tapout~ feedback set to near-infinity, creating a consistent sonic texture. Panning of the channels is controlled with cycle~ objects, whose respective phases are constantly shifting.

The title of this track is taken from a quote I came across recently by Japanese sound artist, Toshiya Tsunoda: “If you think about it carefully, the activity of an actual space always moves. […] Place is always moving, like a sleeping cat.” [1]

[1] www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/essay…_toshiya-tsunoda

5 Likes
#13

AKA piggy theme tune
AKA jeez they didnt use to be so demanding

when our guinea pigs, fudge and treacle, sense that breakfast is coming they squeak really loudly. they knew something was different when they were being recorded this morning so were a lot more quiet and wary. still, i managed to get some squeaks and a grumble.

i played along in zebra cm and had the midi running through protoplasm with some random variation, repeated with a bit more fx

3 Likes
#14

My daughter sent me a video of our smallest, fiercest dog, our 15-pound Chihuahua named Denver. Denver will bark at anything and everything, terrorizes visitors, steals food and toys from the other dogs–like a diminutive, really adorable Hell’s Angel.

On the original audio Denver is making a variety of barking, growling and snuffling sounds, vaguely reminiscent of a young Robert Plant. I cut them up into separate samples, then formed a major chord from them (the 3rd and 5th drop in and out), and ran it through a soft knee compressor (thanks for the tip @pineyb!), stereo delay, glitch processor, limiter (he gets loud), glued in a bunch of loops and samples and voila! It gets unreasonably loud and out of control at points, just like the vocalist.

6 Likes
#15

the sound of gulls and crows from my bedroom window

I recorded and deleted numerous attempts for this - non seemed quite ‘alien’ enough or to be truly playing with the birds as opposed to just imposing my nonsense upon them. I’ve no idea if I’ve achieved it with this but at least it seems in roughly the right direction.

5 Likes
#16

Ducks!

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#17

My cats are always hungry. Just stay with me, It doesn’t stop.

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#18

I recorded some cicadas out North Zulch, TX, last evening. I knew the rhythm wold be a bear, but I think I got everything tucked in pretty well. I also included a weird voicemail I got, and when I dropped it into Ableton it went nuts and really made the track.

4 Likes
#19

The Tsunoda cat quote made me recall some lines of T. S. Eliot, which also seemed to be perfectly expressed by your composition:

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

3 Likes
#20

I’ve used a recording of a frog that was outside my house earlier this year.

5 Likes
#21

Ah, that’s lovely - thanks! :slightly_smiling_face:

2 Likes
#22

This is my ferocious beast, Nira, terrorising a goat’s horn :slight_smile:

I was also fascinated by how melodic her chewing was, particularly when slowed! So I decided to accompany her on percussion.

Layer 1: Teeth on goat horn, slowed by ~3200%
Layer 2: Nira breathing
Layer 3: Original recording of Nira chewing a goat horn
Layer 4: Percussion played by me

Here is a non-ferocious photo of her:

IMG_20190708_211519_513
IMG_20190708_211519_513.jpg1908×2385 1.05 MB

4 Likes
#23

Two samples have been used:

  1. A free whale recording.
  2. Myself saying “space time continuum”.

I edited both Samples heavyly, mostly granular synthesis via ambient_v3 and microgranny. I mixed resulting textures in Reaper with some fx fine-tuning.

Both sound sources (whale and man) are represented equally.

(Credits in the Soundcloud description.)

5 Likes
#24

I have this field recording of starlings, and unfortunately have no idea where it came from, but it sounds like a virtuoso synth jam. I accompanied it with the break from “Hihache” by the Lafayette Afro-Rock Band, samples of the bass stem from “Strawberry Letter 23” by The Brothers Johnson, and a Wavetable part I improvised on my QWERTY keyboard.

7 Likes
#25

Alright, here’s my take on this week. I didn’t have time to record anything myself, but I came up with the idea to play with cicadas and go noisy with them. Which worked out great, because the cicadas always seem to come through the mix really well. I found a Canadian cicada, and I paired it with a dog-day cicada for that powerfully shrill sound it makes. Was pretty fun.

5 Likes
#26

It wouldn’t be the dog days of summer without the sound of cicadas… However, I don’t think these are the Dog day cicada (Neotibicen canicularis), but rather the Scissor-grinder cicada (Neotibicen pruinosus).

The likely cicada in question:

I made field recordings of the cicadas in my back yard with my trusty DR-05. Some parts were looped, others just mixed in straight. Tempo was synced to the pulsating of the cicadas’ call.

There are a few other noises of summer in the background of the field recordings: Birds, cars, aircraft, etc.

I added drum machine (with BOOM plugin on ProTools) and a few synth tracks (Prophet Rev2).

2 Likes