fear of silence

november 27, 2004.

"Not one sound fears the silence that ex-tinguishes it," Cage writes in his 'Lecture on Something' [Silence, p. 135] ... || ... that seems so obvious ... But on the other hand: do we know all sounds? How could we? So suppose ... suppose ... that, sometime, somewhere, 1 sound will come to linger on the treshold of sounding, because it is afraid, and very much so, for the silence that next may arrive to ex-tinct it ... Would it have the power to come into being, to sound at all? And if so, what then would a such sound sound like?

[ Earlier related SB-entry: silence ]

tags: silence

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other, and good news!

november 24, 2004.

Michael Peter's My2k, a sound diary for the year 2000, with which the regular readers of the SoundBlog must be quite familiar (good! :-) ... [see my2k, more!!y2k]) is now available as part of the British 'Burning Shed' label's catalogue.

Because of my special interest for the year 2k 'record ten seconds a day' project, of course this is good news! And I do hope many of you will jump at the occasion, and order a copy. Absolutely worth every penny. You don't even have to take my word for it... Just tune in to Raudio, and listen: eleven tracks taken from Michael's My2k are part of Raudio's first episode, 'a pronunciation checklist exclusive' ... Ever since our first report Raudio's playlist has been steadily growing. New additions include plunderphonics by The Preconceived Notions, '45 lock grooves' by Erick Gallun, and several short tracks from Michael Peter's 'Cut-up Radio' CD, tracks that were "improvised live, using a radio as its only sound source," Michael writes in the liner notes. "Using digital looping devices, the radio stream - short wave noise, talking, classical or pop music, whatever happened to come along - was cut up in real time and immediately rearranged into rhythmic patterns, clouds of sound particles, or phaseshifting repetitions."
[added jan. 02, 2006: The complete 'Cut-up Radio' collection is now documented online and downloadable from Michael's cut-up radio page.]

Other new 'pure sounds' on Raudio #01 are all but one track from Seth Gordon's 'Din' collection, and a piece, divided into 5 parts, by Bill Jarboe. I came across this 'Recording' through a link in a message by Phil Thomson to the microsound mailing list. "I just downloaded the demo of Amadeus for OS X. I opened it and twiddled around with it for a while and then quit. Later I noticed [this file on my desktop]," Phil wrote mid october. "It's just a regular wave editor for OS X, which is why I'm so suprised that it did this without any intervention on my part..." But when I wrote to Phil asking him for permission to use this 'Amadeus ghost file', he replied some time later explaining that it all had been a mistake. The 'ghost track' in fact was made by Bill Jarboe. He had downloaded it to his desktop, and forgotten about it ... Thanks to Bill for allowing its 'Raudio use'.

And thanks to all that send in contributions. All of them are highly appreciated! Do keep them coming... I'm currently putting together Raudio's second episode ... due early december. Stay tuned.

[ Next related SB-entry: pure sound :: earlier related SB-entry: raudio launched ]

tags: raudio

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vicky's mosquitos : update #01

november 16, 2004.

Meanwhile, let me tell you all about the first contribution to the Vicky's Mosquitos project. It was DaveX who world-premiered a 'playing with Vicky'-event ... DaveX is hosting ITDE ("It's Too Damn Early"), a weekly radio broadcast featuring electroacoustic, ambient, noise, improvisational, free jazz, cut-ups, found sound, drone, turntablism, field recordings, odd, avant-garde, and all experimental recordings of a difficult nature, broadcasted from WDBX 91.1FM, a not-for-profit community radio station in Southern Illinois.

DaveX 'played' - and very literally so! - with Vicky during his "It's Too Damn Early" show of saturday october 23th.

"I had the idea that I would also like my version of the material to be 'sung' by the computer," he mailed me on october 19th, "but I was unsure of how to proceed. I had considered utilising portions of the original audio, and translating them into midi, but the results (although odd) were somewhat unimpressive.
I ended up making about 175 samples of the original audio, and using them to replace the audio files in a computer game (Carmageddon 2, a racing death match sort of game) so that the samples were triggered instead of the original crashes, shrieks, pleas of mercy, etc... It's sort of a Vicki cacophony, and definately a unique sound-- especially since the game is so well rendered as far as placement and dynamic of the sound-objects further away are reduced in volume, there is good panning, etc...
At any rate, the 'live performance' requirement will be satisfied by my playing the game on the air, and of course, I'll get you a copy for your own enjoyment..."

I indeed received a copy of Carmageddon 2, with a 'Vicky sounds' library. As I'm a 'Mac'-guy, and DaveX used the PC version of the game I haven't been able to install the game and 'play it-with-Vicky' myself, but as soon as I get hold of a PC, of course I will. The idea is great, don't you think so? Somewhat unfortunately, technical problems got in the way with DaveX's recording his 'on air' playing:

"I had some trouble with the recording of the actual show, but my obsessive nature has saved the remix somewhat. I'll explain.
While recording the show from the master board, the output to the recording deck failed in some fashion. The recording of the entire show is unusable. Fortunately, because I had to bring the sound source from my computer (for the actual remix of Vicki's Mosquito's itself) in through another mixing console, those sounds were preserved on the hard drive of our station computer, which also records.
Essentially, all I got recorded were the sound which had to go through that computer-- the remix of Vicki's Mosquito's, and a couple of mp3s which I played from the computer as well during the show.
The show itself went well, though. It's a two-hour show. The first half hour was a normal experimental set. The second half hour was a complete airing of Vicki's Mosquitos, and I read a bit about it from your website, to explain to listeners what they would be hearing. The third half hour started with my version of Vicki's Mosquitos, which lasted about five minutes. I named it "Vicki's Hands and the Master"..." [email, november 7th]

Needless to say that I'm very happy with DaveX's 'kick-off' ...

And - of course - all further contributions and propositions remain welcome: the project's still wide open! (See the call for contributions ... !)

[ Vicky's project site :: Listen to Vicky reciting 'Mosquitos' ... ]

[ next related SB-entry: sunday@Etay || Vicky: update #02 :: previous related SB entry: Vicky's Mosquitos ]

tags: vicky's mosquitos

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water, wind, zeilen

november 15, 2004.

For the 46th of '52Weeks', Splogman invited the site's visitors to send in their "own sound creations on the theme: 'Water, wind and sails'..." The result is available as a free downloadable collection of mp3's, and cover-art: a net-CD, which besides one of this year's '52Weeks' also is the 'first official release' of WM Recordings, a netlabel set up by Marco Kalnenek of Weirdomusic, and based in Heerlen, the Netherlands.

"Water, Wind, Sails" is an eclectic and refreshingly un-pretentious collection of many different musics: folky, poppy, rocky, phonographicy, classicy, plunderphonicy, ambient synthy ..., including a five-and-a-half minute ass-kickin' 'radio play' by the 14-year old Jelle Jan, who "plans on becoming an actor [and contributed] an episode of "The family", a series of plays featuring caricatures of people JJ really knows" ... My favorite "Water, Wind, Sails" tracks are Camille's Aquarium, a short 'n' sweet 'acoustic piano and tubular bells' rendition of Aquarium from Saint-Saën's 'Le Carnaval des Animaux' by 'De Zwervende Keien' (which of course is the proper Dutch translation of 'The Rolling Stones'), and the sonically intriguing Aguas in Espiral, by Lanark.

Together the 18 tracks on "Water, Wind, Sails" actually do add up ... to ... something... Which is a pleasant surprise. I very much enjoyed listening to this compilation. It's tasteful and fun ...! And do believe me: I am not writing this because - in the guise of DJ Harsman - I myself am one of the contributors ...

When I see the words 'Water, Wind, Sails', of course I hear ... Ameland.

I took the opportunity offered by Splogman's invitation to make a start with something which has been on my 'still to do'-list for quite a while now: a series of 'concrete' pieces, using exclusively the CDrom version of the 'Isle of Sounds' (which is finished, but still awaits official 'release'). Unlike the 'lo-fi' webversion of the island, where sounds are monophonic, and can be played back and listened to only one by one, the 'hi-fi' version permits the simultaneous playback of up to 8 of the recorded Ameland sounds, in 'full stereo'. The CDrom thus enables one to play the Island 'with your mouse', much like playing an instrument. Like an orgue concrète ...

The track I contributed to 'Water, Wind, Sails' is called oerdvlieg. It was composed using 5 hot-spots on the 'Isle of Sounds', corresponding to 5 different island recordings made on monday may 19th, 2003, on the eastern part of Ameland. I rehearsed the playing of oerdvlieg a couple of times, to get the timing and layering right; then recorded it onto hard disk, in one single take, without overdubs.

tags: heerlen, compilation

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