I thought I had lost my friend (Vocoder & Modular dreamscape)

 Based on a dream.

 

 I thought I had lost my friend on Youtube

Mundane Music: Towel Rail

Another single source music concrete piece, "Towel Rail" is literally just that, a few hits on a metal towel rail, digitally processed. "Mundane Music" because I like creating works from common objects from house and garden and then taking those sounds as far as I can.

 

Towel Rail: Bandcamp Link 

 

 

Chimeras

All the sounds in Chimeras are natural sounds that have been combined to create hybrid sounds. I really did not know what I would end up in terms of sounds but when I came to do the arrangement of those sounds the piece took on a life of it's own.

 

Chimeras (Bandcamp link)

 

Daphnia & Cyclops (Electronic)

 A study of linear FM on the Wiard 300 series modular.

 Daphnia and Cyclops (Bandcamp link)

Two single source digitally manipulated pieces, Glass on Glass & Orpheus in Hades.

Another track created from sliding glass jars on a glass plate, then digitally manipulated. 

Glass on Glass (Bandcamp)

 

Orpheus in Hades takes a short sample of Windchimes.

Orpheus in Hades 

 

Three narratives.

I've got behind on the blog.These are three narrative tracks, all electronic but different in their origins.

"I thought I had lost my friend" Originally recorded a version of the track in 2008, the non vocoder parts created on the Wiard 300 Series and MXR Pitch transposer. I was always unhappy with the vocoded part so I finally re-recorded that in 2021 and re-mixed the synthesiser parts.

The original notes for the track read "The text for the track came from a dream recorded 30/6/2007. It is only a part that appears to deal with the fragmentation of the self into a number of personas, hero, scientist, servant and victim. It’s no co-incidence that the personas are within a graphic novel, they are literally “paper thin”

I thought I had lost my friend (Bandcamp link) 

 

"This house is like a Ship"  This track is about someone that becomes convinced that their house is a ship to the point that they stop looking out of the window to see that is not so. The words are their internal dialogue.

It’s an old track revised, originally based on thoughts about how easy it is to lose touch with reality and how isolation can lead to being trapped in your own thoughts. It seems perhaps appropriate at a time when many people have been isolated for weeks or months.

Narrative

"Sometimes this house is like a ship,
my room a ship's cabin,
with the creaking of the timbers and the ebb and flow of light it seems as if I am on some kind of immense sea.
I travel forever.
I hardly ever look out of the window these days, I know the sea is there...it's just waiting there, immense, impassive and primal.
Windblown or becalmed, I travel forever
Windblown, becalmed”

 

This House is like a Ship (Bandcamp link) 

 

 

"Feedback Occurs" Apart from the vocoded text all the sounds in the piece where generated or processed using feedback loops. This included Karplus Stong tones and runaway feedback on a MXR Pitchshifter.

 

Feedback Occurs (Bandcamp link) 

 

So just how malleable is sound?

 

Studio Noise Manipulated (Death of a Soundcard)

This is an experiment in how malleable sound is today with the use of digital processing. You hear the source content briefly at the start, noise and hum coming from a dying soundcard. That sound is split into narrow bands using a filter bank and each band is then processed differently. As there was a hum element in the original sound it was easy to derive a pitched sound and then further pitch and frequency shift the results.

Spotify https://open.spotify.com/album/2FLG6BH3G5xEM6rEXVxNiY?si=KJG90zY-ToizLslTtEi2GA

Bandcamp Free download https://markdaltongriffiths.bandcamp.com/track/death-of-a-soundcard