Sound Clip: Sweetness by Jaydea Lopez

Sweetness comes from a short series of sound-works exploring the relationship between text and sound. Here an altered field recording of a bee trapped in a spider-web responds to Sylvia Plath’s poem “Sting”:

Sweetness, sweetness …
Where has she been,
With her lion-red body, her wings of glass?
Now she is flying
More terrible than she ever was, red
Scar in the sky, red comet.

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Sound Clip: The Monastery Service/The Sound of the Wind by Margarita Zelenaia

In “The Monastery Service/The Sound of The Wind” actually the story of an eye-witness is the basis for this chant: “The liturgy in the summer cathedral astonished me with the unusual loftiness of the monastery service; the chants being sung were ancient, lingering, wind-like. At first, when you are trying to listening in, your hearing is almost insulted by the unusual rough monotony of the harmony, the strangeness of the rhythm. But then you are so absorbed by this truly monastic, passionless chanting that everything you hear is united into one harmonious whole, focusing your attention on the very spirit of the prayer.”

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Sound Clip: Memorabilia Collecting Sounds With by Mark Gergis

Memorabilia Collecting Sounds With is a new Ràdio Web MACBA radio series (http://rwm.macba.cat/) which seeks to break through to unearth and reveal private collections of music and sound memorabilia. It is a historiography of sound collecting that reveals the unseen and passionate work of the amateur collector while reconstructing multiple parallel histories such as the evolution of recording formats, archiving issues, the collecting market and the evolution of musical styles beyond the marketplace. Each episode in the series is accompanied by an additional programme featuring an exclusive music selection by each of the collectors.

The first episodes feature an insight of the collections of Mark Gergis (Sublime Frequencies collaborator), William Bennett (aka Whitehouse and Cut Hands) and dutch Broken Music collector Ed Veenstra.

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Sound Clip: Old Car Engine by Luís Antero

The sound of an old car engine, recorded in June 2011.

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Sound Clip: Harmonic Ambience by Johnathan Fargo

This work is designed to evoke an atmospheric realm through analog synthesizers and forest field recordings.

Sound Clip: SW13 by Thomas Park

This clip is a shortwave sample, lighly treated, but basically intact. It demonstrates the distorting effect sound between bands has on voice. The vocal sounds are of normal human speech, but because the shortwave radio used was not tuned properly, the voice sounds are oddly warped.

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Sound Clip: Counting Harmonium by Henry Lowengard

This is a drone with six independent voices (called reeds). Droneo can do up to eight, but the last two are off. Each voice has at its base, a kind of a warped triangle wave as a timbre (you can’t see that in this screenshot, but trust me. Each voice also has a ratio associated with it that relates it to the base frequency , here an A1. You can see the frequencies expressed visually in the tone spiral on the right:

reed 1 is a 2/3, which is a perfect 4th and octave down, (under the reed 6 in the diagram, actually, which is 2/3)
reed 2 is a 16/5, a minor 6th an octave above
reed 3 is a 4/5 (under reed 5 in the diagram, also a 4/5)
reed 4 is 1/2, an octave below.
reed 5 is a 4/5
reed 6 is a 2/3

If this weren’t a pattern mirror timbre, it would just play that chord: a kind of D minor with pitches from the just scale in A. But it’s more interesting than that. Because this is a Pattern Mirror timbre, each reed cycles through a pattern which tells it which harmonics to blend into the timbre it’s playing. It’s not really harmonics, though, it’s transposed copied of the original timbre. There’s an internal clock that advances each pattern one character at a time. When it gets to the end, it cycles back to the beginning. The patterns are rather crudely hacked into the system right now. It takes each character in the pattern and maps it onto a harmonic. ’0′ means add nothing – and the sound will fade out. the other characters map kind of straightforwardly as well:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

A lot of these higher harmonics are naturally pretty high in frequency, which is why most of these voices have ratios below the base frequency, which itself is 55 HZ, which is admirably low. Here are the patterns associated with each reed:

1 00040000
2 8900c00g
3 00600890
4 g00c009800
5 0980060000
6 00004000000

Putting this together, the first three reeds are in synch with each other, and repeat after 8 beats, and they actually play a kind of a scale. That is, the three reeds work together to play one note at a time, transposing the ratio by their harmonic choice. In fact, if the ratios on these reeds were 8/3, 1/1,8/5, i would play a harmonic minor scale.

This voice, in fact, was built out of another one that just played this scale, but I changed around the ratios until I liked how it sounded. Similarly, reeds 4 and 5 are in synch, but on a cycle of 10, so it phases with the first three reeds in such a way that five of the first three mix with four of the next two. Reeds 4 and five also don’t overlap their pitches The sixth reed is a bit of a wild card, since it has a cycle that repeats on elevens. So this high fourth appears from time to time.

When you write it all out, it’s pretty complicated, and yet, there’s really not much going on here. At most there are three intended pitches playing, and whatever the notes are transitioning to. Pattern MIrror 1 has a very slow clock, and the whole combination has a slow chorus effect on top to bring out comb filtering of these combined just frequencies. I would have to run 8*10*11 = 880 ticks to start repeating, which I don’t do in this recording.

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Sound Clip: Animals by Pearl Lee

This is a musical composition made entirely out of animal sounds.

Sound Clip: Sounding Site Tabacalera by Juan Cantizzani and Pablo Sanz Almoguera

Site-specific sound installation at the basement of the former tobacco factory known today as La Tabacalera de Lavapiés. The project is based on the exploration of its acoustics, architecture and the sounds present in the building. A forty minutes composition for a custom made system of eight exciters attached to diverse structures and objects activates the place. The intervention is an attempt to make audible the space itself, creating a heightened experience of the location.

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Sound Clip: Mad Scientist by Ryan Poole

Experimental narrative morphing into composition using field recordings.

Recording of the clock at the parish church of Sant Bartomeu del Grau (Barcelona, Spain): Midnight, 28th July 2011.

Visit the online soundmap of Sant Bartomeu del Grau

Sound Clip: Head in the Sand by Mike Rooke

A stereo version of the Hydrophonia hydrophone deployed under the sand listening to shells and rolling waves. Monte Gordo beach, Portugal.

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Sound Clip: Nightmare by Aaron Sanchez

This is an experiment at creating a mental film from sound. In this track, we hear through the mind of Andy as he falls asleep.

Sound Clip: Emotions by Michael Barron

This work is constructed entirely out of textural sound effects. The entire piece rejects the norms of classic music composition and conventional mixing techniques. Clipping sounds intentional.

Sound Clip: 1000 Ants by Luís Antero

The sound of thousands of ants.

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