SD101 Processing 9 Sep 2010, 1:08 am

This will just be a quick post, with a couple of examples of ways of processing sounds in the aid of sound design. Every so often I get an email from someone asking what plugins they need to be a sound designer (!?) so it is interesting and relevant to mention the two processes below are not new & don’t require any plugins – sound editors and designers have been using these techniques since the 1980s and earlier….

The first one was prompted by a question on SSD about creating monster breaths…. I had to do this for the film Black Sheep, which involved someone mutating into an 8ft tall sheep… We recorded breaths in ADR, with real time pitch shift so the actor could hear the pitch shift, then I took those and played them through my dbx subharmonic synth – I had to crank the gain going into the dbx but it totally nailed the scale & thickened up the breaths adding an octave lower and filling with subharmonics… I printed the sub processing to a new track so we had the original breath, the pitched breath & the sub-processed breath across 3 tracks & could then balance between them. The dbx 120 subharmonic synth has been around since the 1980s and while there are a few plugin that get close to the process (LowEnder, LoAir) there is something about the analogue nature of the dbx120 that is fantastic…

Subbybreaths by timprebble

The second example involves pitch shifting – in these examples I just used SoundMiners pitch control, but ever since the Nagra was invented sound editors have been recording at 15ips and then replaying at 7.5 or 3.75ips to get high quality pitch shift effects…

Pitchy Birds by timprebble

But if you ask me, the most important technique of sound design is selecting or recording interesting source material

New Sonic Terrain To Explore 8 Sep 2010, 9:59 pm

Sonic Terrain is a new site brought to you by the endlessly inspiring team who created Designing Sound. “Sonic Terrain will be a portal for the art, science, and craft of field recording. It will aggregate information and publish exclusive content focused on sounds recorded outside the studio. Topics will be cross-disciplinary and focused on the use of field recordings in a variety of contexts, including sound design for visual media, music, fine art, scientific research, phonography, and much more.”

Check out the first post by Nathan Moody, Portage I, discussing various scenarios for transporting and protecting your field recording equipment…. Its an interesting topic and would be great to see a series of photos of ‘whats in your recorder bag’ in the same way many photographers do on flickr – I’ve picked up many tips from seeing what other people use via that flickr collection (eg a spirit level that fits in the hot shoe of your DSLR, tiny but invaluable when shooting multiple photos for 360 VRs)

Congratulations Miguel, Nathan, Colin & Michael – I look forward to participtating!

SONIC TERRAIN

Field Recording Business Card 6 Sep 2010, 9:56 pm

You know how whenever you are out recording in public, sooner or later someone comes over & asks if they are going to be on television? Well apart from suppressing the desire to ask them where the invisible cameras are, I always think it would be handy to have a card to hand them and make a silent Shhhh! gesture… So they hopefully go away & stop ruining the recording…. A friend (& re-recording mixer) Gethins company is called “Quiet Please” and although he doesn’t do any field recording the idea appeals & I am overdue to get some updated business cards made. So what would you put on the back of a card to both explain what you are doing & deter further questions?

To barely touch… 6 Sep 2010, 10:26 am

“Sometimes it was enough to barely touch one of the recording or playback potentiometers….”

A Portrait of Eliane Radigue

EPIC EDIT CHOIR 6 Sep 2010, 2:44 am

via tatami.sushiadv.com

The Sum of Us 6 Sep 2010, 1:22 am

I’ve been following my own advice & finishing a few things I started quite some time ago… I’ve been wanting to get the next DUB45 release finished but for some reason I have let an overdue remix stall my progress! So first watch this video, its kinda cute stop motion but listen to the tune; it’s The Sum of Us by NZ band Minuit

Back in 2003 I quite liked the album The Guards Themselves that this song is from, so I emailed the band via their website & asked if there was any chance of remixing them, and specifically this track… I get an email back, “Sure – we’ll post you a DVD of the stems” which they do, I start messing with it, head in two totally different directions and eventually stall. Which one should I finish to send to them… The eventual answer: neither! For whatever reasons I just could not finish them and be happy with them… The band released an EP of 6 remixes (which is available at bandcamp here) and so I forget about it. But it keeps bugging me: unfinished! it’s unfinished! And irrespective of the EP release these versions could have been something, instead of nothing! I still like the original song but there wasn’t a remix on that EP I particularly liked… So my two versions remain as ableton LIVE sessions on my music drive, and every few months I boot them up & have a listen… & I inevitably do a few tweaks… but I still don’t finish either one of them…
Seven years later (SEVEN YEARS LATER!) I decide I MUST finish them – if only to be free of them. Be objective and do a final pass on them, mix them, output them, upload them to soundcloud, send the band the links, post them here and…. thats it! MOVE ON! So here is first the quiet version….. and then the noisy loud version!

The Sum of Us – a quiet remix v1.01 by timprebble

The Sum of Us – a loud remix v2.01 by timprebble

Better seven years late than never? Better never late! and better than nothing…

Detritus 54 5 Sep 2010, 3:11 am

> funny @0’33″

> This conversation with poet David Whyte is incredibly insightful!

> “Invisible Ink” – New ambientblog collage/mix inspired by a Laurie Anderson quote

> DIGITAL MYSTIKZ mix on the last Mary-Anne Hobbes show ever

> Just picked up a dead tree copy of William Gibsons new book ZERO HISTORY today…. Theres also an interesting article/thoughts by him on the phenomena otherwise known as Google in the New York TImes

kyoteizinc (video mix) / omodaka (far east recording) dir: hiroshi kizu (P.I.C.S.)
dancer: masako yasumoto

> The funniest tattoo ever!

15 Albums 4 Sep 2010, 11:27 pm

I got sent this meme thingy on Faecebook: 15 Albums in 15 Minutes
The rules: Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen albums you’ve heard that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag fifteen friends, including me, because I’m interested in seeing what albums my friends choose… ”

So I do it, go to post it and first it says: you are only allowed to tag six people in any post, so I remove a whole bunch of tags to “friends” then I hit post: “too many characters” which combined adds up to LAMEBOOK FAIL! Whoever started this meme is doing it on the wrong platform – I’m really not a fan of Facebook, its function or its terminology, for more reasons than I can actually express… But since I made the list, here it is – feel free to add yours in the comments. It is an interesting reflection on music through your life…. I was surprised how hard it was to think of a recent album that effected me as deeply as these….

The Velvet Underground & Nico
Can – Ege Bamyasi
Black Uhuru – Anthem
Augustus Pablo – King Tubby Meets The Rockers Uptown
Scientist – Scientific Dub
African Headcharge – Environmental Studies
David Byrne & Brian Eno – My Life In The Bush of Ghosts
Rhythm & Sound – w/ The Artists
Kit Clayton – Nek Sanalet
Monolake – Gobi
Valgeir Sigurdsson – Ekvilibrium
Burial – Burial
Deepchord Presents Echospace – The Coldest Season
So Percussion – Amid the Noise
Alva Noto & Ryuchi Sakamoto – Insen

And yours?

Stuff vs Stuff – Can vs Sprouts 3 Sep 2010, 8:22 am

Directed by Sumo Science for Aardman Animations

In Between The Notes 2 Sep 2010, 11:40 am

In Between The Notes: A Portrait of Pandit Pran Nath (1986)