ryan rapsys :: composer, producer, musician, filmmaker

I just completed the first Sonic Sculpture for the year 2008. Here it is:

2008: 53 Sonic Sculptures – 1. January I [2 min 9 sec, 2.1mb mp3]

I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired this morning as I constructed this. I’m not feeling the greatest today, and I’ve been writing a lot of “nice” music lately, so I think that’s where my desire to use more distorted sounds came in to play.

The static sound that is similar to a vacuum cleaner was derived from just recording the room ambience – I have a space heater running since it is winter in Duluth, Minnesota, and it is rather cold today.

The bell sound was taken out of a piece of music I had recently composed for Fox 21 News here in Duluth for the Sports Rewind (here is the track: Carol of the Bells – Rewind Mix). Obviously it was written with a little Christmas spirit, hence the bell sounds. The sample I used is actually derived from the entire work–I took the audio file and greatly sped it up, creating a short loop that begins with a sort of bell sound (you can hear it at the beginning, and it also makes a reappearance near the end).

The bouncing, synthy sounding material was derived from some improvisation I did on my keyboard with a synthesizer-type sample. I then layered it and EQed it a couple different ways, as well as added a phaser effect, and later stretched fragments of it (hence the bouncing type sound).

The distorted, louder, almost concert-band or orchestra sounding bit of sound that comes in toward the end rather suddenly is from an old recording of the UMD Symphony Orchestra rehearsing a piece of music I had composed many years ago. I distorted the recording considerably and gradually slowed it down, again creating a type of bouncing, jagged distorted sound…

Thoughts?