Sampling Is Sexy

Listen to the world, then shape your own.

[samplingissexy]

When In Costa Rica...

As it turns out, monkeys are often loudest at dawn. Earlier this month I brought my new toy (Zoom H6 - highly recommended) to Costa Rica. It was during this short trip that I captured some of my favorite sounds since beginning Sampling Is Sexy a year and a half ago. You will hear for yourself, but suffice it to say that many forms of wildlife crowded the pre-dawn airwaves in Playa Hermosa, Guanacaste. 

I look forward to hearing YOUR tracks made out of these recordings! A few of my own are underway.

[samplingissexy]

Garages

Some may see a garage as an asset to a home. Innocuous and ugly, but functional. Some see it as a space in which to make music. Where else should one rehearse noise rock when the rest of the house is off-limits? This natural overflow became so common in the 1960's that an entire genre bearing the name 'Garage Rock' was formed. The fact that raw and aggressive music flourished in these spaces was likely a matter of pragmatism first, but also a bit of acoustical serendipity. The bright reflective cement contributes a beautiful messiness to loud sounds, yet the reverb time is not usually long enough to obscure the melodies and rhythms. Exciting music can be made when musicians are interacting with the spaces they inhabit. 

I recently visited Nashville to make music in a quiet house equipped with a garage. In addition to immediately setting up instruments and playing loudly, I also captured a few samples. There were many objects waiting patiently to be recorded: iron poles, wooden sticks, copper pipes, etc. Here are a few of my favorites for you to check out.  

[samplingissexy]

notes from the field

Earlier this summer, I found myself on a late night walk along the east side of Manhattan. I came across the Tudor City Place overpass at 42nd St and 1st Avenue. Given the lack of traffic at such an indecent hour, I took the opportunity to sing, clap and make loud noises. As it turns out, the area underneath the overpass had a beautiful inherent multi-echo delay. I captured the sound with the only recording device on my person at the time (the lowly iPhone microphone), but vowed to return at a later date with a proper recording setup. Last week, I finally did - this time with three friends.

Our little scene drew many a glance from passersby - one of us was operating Pro Tools, one clapping in the middle of the street, one blowing up balloons, and one holding a makeshift panty hose windscreen in front of a microphone. Despite the traffic and one suspicious police officer, we managed to capture some decent recordings with an M/S stereo pair (Miktek C5 and AKG 414 through an Apogee Duet). A few of the recordings can be found here. If you like them and/or find them useful, send me what you make! 

I am curious about the idea of working with naturally occurring echoes. I recall hearing in a music history class once upon a time that hundreds of years ago, some Monks composed music based on the natural delay times presented by the dimensions in their places of worship. I would have liked to meet those people, whomever they were. Does anyone have exciting examples of artists that are adapting their content to specific physical spaces? 

A quick explanation for those befuddled by my fascination with recording the underside of a bridge:

Once we have recorded an impulse response (such as our claps and balloon pops) of a given space, it is possible to use the sound of the space as a custom reverb that will adapt to whatever information we feed it. The idea in principle is that by mapping the characteristics of the bridge impulse to a source signal - let's say a guitar, for example - that it will sound something like playing the guitar underneath the bridge. This is a process called convolution. The reality is that re-creating the reverb digitally with the clap impulse will not sound nearly as nuanced as actually playing the guitar underneath the bridge. This is because the natural acoustics would respond much differently to the range of frequencies produced by the guitar, whereas the artificially modeled reverb is using only the frequencies of the clap as a guide. Nonetheless, it can still be a fun technique to employ.

[samplingissexy]

Exactly one year ago, I decided to record one sound from my environment every day for the next ten years. This felt rather distant at the time, given that I am usually unsure of my plans next Thursday evening. Commitment issues notwithstanding, thus far my quest has been successful; 365 sounds out of 3,650.

Why am I doing this? At first my motivation was to manipulate these sounds into musical compositions. As a composer and producer, I am obsessed with using digital signal processing to turn innocuous objects and naturally occurring phenomena into instruments that have personality and enigma. For example, I might record the sound of a miter saw growling to stretch into an aggressive textural drone. Or if it starts raining, I might build a song around the percussive pitter patter of drops on a window-mounted air conditioner.

An unexpected side effect has come from this daily documentation. I am becoming more aware. Not to wax overly poetic about all that the earth has to say to us, but I believe there is something to be said for paying attention. After one year of this routine, I have met new people, drawn crazy looks from strangers, and discovered pieces of wildlife I would not have otherwise.  

Now I am here on the internet to share. I intend for this project to become an open forum that will bring other nerds together who love to record and make sounds. I will start by posting a short, simple track that I made exclusively using these samples as well as a suite of individual sounds for anyone to use! If you would like to share something that you have recorded, send it to me at [email protected] and I will post on the blog. By shaping our own sonic worlds through listening and recording, perhaps we might inspire each other to make something great.

Here are some of my mystery samples.

Here is the track: