Filed under: Abstract, Ambient, Art, Classical, Composition, Craig Blacklock, Electronic, Film & Video, Film Scoring, High Definition, Lake Superior, Minnesota, Music, Nature, North Shore, Organic, Photography, Public Television, Sound Sculpture, Soundscape, Spiritual, TPT, Television, Video, Water, Waves | Tags: Abstract, Ambient, Art, Classical, Composition, Craig Blacklock, Electronic, Film & Video, Film Scoring, High Definition, Lake Superior, Minnesota, Music, Nature, North Shore, Organic, Photography, Public Television, Sound Sculpture, Soundscape, Spiritual, Television, TPT, Video, Water, Waves
Segments of Craig Blacklock’s Minnesota’s North Shore (featuring an original score by Ryan Rapsys) will be airing in High Definition on Twin Cities Public Television on Sunday, March 2nd, at 5:30pm Central Time. Here is a link to that days television schedule: TPT Schedule – March 2nd, 2008.
And here is the trailer for the movie: Minnesota’s North Shore Trailer (41.3mb mov file)
Filed under: Abstract, Adobe Premiere, Avant-garde, Electronic, Electronica, Experimental, Film & Video, Music, Music Video, Short Film, Video, Video Editing | Tags: Abstract, Adobe Premiere, Avant-garde, Electronic, Electronica, Experimental, Film & Video, Music, Music Video, Short Film, Video, Video Editing
Copy & Paste, a short experimental video that I created, is now available at YouTube: Copy & Paste. Created entirely in Adobe Premiere Pro, including the music. Enjoy, and feel free to comment!
Filed under: 2008: 53 Sonic Sculptures, Abstract, Adobe Audition, Avant-garde, Classical, Composition, Concrete, Dripping Faucet, Electronic, Experimental, Mp3, Music, Music Composition, Sonar, Sound, Sound Sculpture, Soundscape, Variations, Water | Tags: 2008: 53 Sonic Sculptures, Abstract, Adobe Audition, Avant-garde, Classical, Composition, Concrete, Dripping Faucet, Electronic, Experimental, Mp3, Music, Music Composition, Sonar, Sound, Sound Sculpture, Soundscape, Variations, Water
Here’s the newest Sonic Scultpure, the third one for the month of February:
2008: 53 Sonic Sculptures – 7. February III [2 min 40 sec, 2.45mb mp3]
I was standing in my kitchen late one night having just filled a glass with some water to drink. As I stood in the kitchen and took a sip, I noticed the water that did not make it into the glass was still trickling its way through several dirty dishes that sat in the sink. Finally, it reached the drain and started to drip down, creating a unique dripping sound as it entered the drain. These droplets continued to fall down the drain, gradually slowing down and stopping. At that moment I had a very understated ‘Eureka’ moment, and decided I had to record that particular dripping sound. I pulled out my old mini-disc recorder, began recording, and ran the water for a moment again and recorded the sounds of the previously described moment. This gave me the source sounds for this week’s Sonic Sculpture.
I recorded the resulting sounds into my computer and pulled the sound file into Adobe Audition. I created eight variations of this sound, maintaining the length and spacing of attacks of the sounds. Effects used included various delays, distortions, phasers, noise reductions, etc.
Next, I took all these varying layers of the same length and ‘rhythmic’ character, and layered them in Sonar Producer. Simply by shifting gain levels between the layers, I had the different variations of the sound gradually come in and out, replacing the natural version gradually with the variations. I also gradually introduced some looping techniques with particularly unique sound moments, which eventually overtake the work toward the end. The final sounds in the composition are the opening natural sounds in reverse.
This demonstrates that even with a somewhat impromptu, anti-climactic recording of every day domestic sounds, a rather complex, unique composition can be created. Again, leave feedback, as it is greatly appreciated. Enjoy!
Filed under: Abstract, Avant-garde, Composition, Electronic, Electronica, Experimental, Film & Video, Film Festival, Film Scoring, Music, Music Video, Playground, Short Film, Short Shorts, Video, Video Editing | Tags: Abstract, Avant-garde, Composition, Electronic, Electronica, Experimental, Film & Video, Film Festival, Film Scoring, Music, Music Video, Playground, Short Film, Short Shorts, Video, Video Editing
A short experimental film I created entitled Copy & Paste will premiere at the 3rd Annual Duluth Short Shorts Film Festival in Duluth at the Playground tonight. The film is a type of experimental music video where all of the sounds are derived from the sounds in the video–I composed the entire work in the Adobe Premiere Pro editing software. The festival begins at 7pm (tickets go on sale at 6pm – $5) and promises to be highly entertaining. Check it out if you are available!
Filed under: 2008: 53 Sonic Sculptures, Abstract, Adobe Audition, Avant-garde, Classical, Composition, Craig Blacklock, Electronic, Experimental, Film & Video, Film & Video Creation, Film Scoring, Filter, Frequency, Hertz, Hz, Lake Superior, Minnesota, Mp3, Music, Music Composition, Nature, North Shore, Organic, Sound, Sound Sculpture, Soundscape, Spectrum, Static, Waves | Tags: 2008: 53 Sonic Sculptures, Abstract, Adobe Audition, Avant-garde, Classical, Composition, Craig Blacklock, Electronic, Experimental, Film & Video, Film & Video Creation, Film Scoring, Filter, Frequency, Hertz, Hz, Lake Superior, Minnesota, Mp3, Music, Music Composition, Nature, North Shore, Organic, Sound, Sound Sculpture, Soundscape, Spectrum, Static, Waves
Here’s the second Sonic Scultpure of February:
2008: 53 Sonic Sculptures – 6. February II [2 min 14 sec, 2.05mb mp3]
For this sculpture, I focused on an idea that I had come across while scoring Craig Blacklock’s Minnesota’s North Shore. In one of the sections of the film, I took the natural sounds of the video, which were waves running up on the rocks of the shore of Lake Superior. Now waves of course are a type of static sound–they contain elements from the entire audible frequency spectrum, which therefore makes it an unpitched sound (similar to percussion instruments like cymbals, etc.). This is similar to the visible color spectrum–when viewing something that is white, you are seeing elements of the entire visible spectrum. When light is filtered through a prism, you can discern the individual colors of the spectrum. So, with that explained, what I did was took the sounds of the waves and filtered them so that only elements around a certain pitch are heard while the other pitches are supressed. This can be most easily accomplished using the FFT Filter in Adobe Audition.
For this sonic sculpture, I did the same thing, but I used waves crashing into the shore as the base sound (which can be heard at the opening of the work). Gradually, the ‘pitched’ versions of the same source sound emerges from the static sounds. This pitched version of the natural sounds can then be transposed and essentially becomes a very organic, pitched ‘instrument.’ Of course, to create a bit of stereophonic presence, I also spatialized the audio of both the natural sounds and the emerging pitched sounds. Enjoy, and feel free to leave comments!
Filed under: 2008: 53 Sonic Sculptures, Abstract, Adobe Audition, Avant-garde, Classical, Composition, Electronic, Electronica, Experimental, Lion's Roar, Mp3, Music, Music Composition, Percussion, Resample, Sound, Sound Sculpture, Soundscape | Tags: 2008: 53 Sonic Sculptures, Abstract, Adobe Audition, Avant-garde, Classical, Composition, Electronic, Electronica, Experimental, Lion's Roar, Mp3, Music, Music Composition, Percussion, Resample, Sound, Sound Sculpture, Soundscape
And now it’s time for the first Sonic Scultpure of February:
2008: 53 Sonic Sculptures – 5. February I [1 min 36 sec, 1.47mb mp3]
For this sculpture, the only software I used was Adobe Audition. I took a 15 minute raw recording of a percussionist taking a large variety of different percussion instruments and playing different patterns on them. I resampled this to a length of 45 seconds, which of course brought the pitch up considerably and sped up the attacks. Then I took that texture and took fragments from the left and right speaker orientation and reversed them, making the texture much more stereophonic. Next, I copied and pasted the 45 second texture again, creating the minute and a half or so base for the scultpure.
Next, I wanted to create a complimentary texture to go along with this frantic percussive texture. I went back to the raw recording of all the percussion instruments and pulled out the sounds of the Lion’s Roar. I resampled to sounds to a length of about 45 seconds, which of course lowered the pitch and stretched out the sounds. Next, I stretched the sound (without changing the pitch) to a length of about a minute and a half. The last thing I did was add a long reverb, thus creating a ‘melodic’ segment similar in sound to perhaps whale sounds.
Finally, I mix-pasted the two textures together. I added a little fade in at the beginning and a fade out at the end. What is unique about this sonic sculpture is that it contains a lot of musical elements that are accidental. This is due to the fact that I used a rather complex, long raw recording as my source sound, then manipulated parts of it in different ways. The layering of the two textures (the ’slow/melodic’ and the ‘fast/percussive’) ‘accidentaly’ created a variety of musical moments, with little manipulation by me directly. Comments?
