Another more recent play around with audio production has led to the creation of a live performace I did mashing out some sounds, changing pace, alternating pitch, letting sound render solely from the image. First of my favourite constructions of sound are notably towards the end. I've noticed, especially with Worker bees and fragmented on the previous album, that having stronger amounts of contrast (amounts of strong black areas and strong white) create more variety in terms of what you hear, I've even edited photos by raising the contrast to the point where only white and black remains.
First image is from Fragmented whilst the second is from worker bees. Personally I find these works my favourites but they are also alot more harsher in terms of sound produced compared to the past creations which were alot more smoother and progressive, this doesn't mean I dislike them however as they create a whole different atmosphere.
Review:
1. Ink Bands
I hardly put any sort of composition into this and just simply let the process of Resynthesis (Image > Sound) take place. I did speed up the entire image inorder to actually make the progression of sound clearer for listeners. Points that I did learn from this was to see if other images would produce a similar sound and that If I wanted to make these audio works more interesting is to possible mix up imagery, then send it back through. Future example of this is Fragmented/Worker Bees.
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| Origins of 'Ink Bands' |
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| During the production of Ink Bands |
2. Collapse Of The Aorta
This was another full rendering of an image I created with Ink and water. A gem of water with ink swirling caught my eye as it collected at the base of my sketchbook, more so that I featured it in this piece of audio work. Sounds produced in this are very strong and repetitive and I was pretty impressed with the difference between this and Ink Bands since they were similarly composed images of Ink and water. I was really happy how much higher peaks of noise started to poke out of the thicker layers of deep noise. I'm still wondering how I can recreate these since they give the track so much more appeal than a continuous same sound.
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| Full Image of 'Collapse Of The Aorta' |
Only a partial render this image, I only used around 5-10% of the left had side as I attempted to transfer photography of real decay into music which did work and it produced some of those really nice slight twinkling sounds and a nice amount of static which I noticed around 1:33. I'm finding it really comical listening back over the speakers to find that this static is producing a little tune over the noise and then towards the end its almost like some sort of strange alien message being broadcast, which led me to name this what it is now. Now I have experimented with man-made thingy/items, I wonder what using biological, natural items would turn out like.
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| Railing is probably deceased due to a recent clean-up of this old building. This track now rests as a dedication to the safety this railing brought. (part of this image was used in Transition In Transmission). |
I found this track especially interesting to produce. After finding a rotten log in my travels, I took a photograph solely of the texture at 2pm as the sun hit it at an angle which created an assortment of shadows and highlights of this mangled piece of nature and this song holds a very space like feel, like robots singing to eachother. I feel this black hole start to emerge inside me. This track was yet another full rendering of the image and I couldn't say I didn't regret revisiting that idea although at the start I did try something new where I started the track at a higher pitch before dropping it back down. By playing with composition and pitch, I can create something alot more personal than just letting the image do all the work and hopefully this ideal will give birth to my next conjurations.
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| Wood texture used (No Sun) |
Just as the title suggests, I broke up the image used into segments and reassembled them, then when I ran it through the rendering process, it produced very sudden and hard drops into other segments like I had manually shifted some sort of dial. I also had a bit of fun adjusting some frequency and speed nodes again to see if I could transform the overall sound into something alot more cleaner and less like a jumble of chaotic noise, unfortunately it just made things even more grungy and even more chaotic but then again, I seem to like this very harsh noise and remains one of my favourites in the album. I am now looking forward to producing even more chaos within the musical genre of noise. This was also my first track where I used photoshop in order to increase contrast to its maximum in order to generate intense black/white imagery.
6. Worker Bees
I used a similar approach to Fragmented, was originally named 'Fragmented Part 2' but then I felt it didn't really capture the atmosphere the sounds were creating which to me, is a rapid horde of bees over a hive. Again, this was another one of my favourite productions I've made in the album due to the complex mashup of all these different transformations, slowing down, speeding up, rising, pausing, and cutting, all of these relating to my original intention of decay since, these are the processes of decay.
Decay Collection. 2- Airfield
1. Vespula Vulgaris Stomping
You would probably agree with me, this is a real mess but I do want to say in my defence, this track was a live performance on the spot using combinations of very frantic finger work. This was less about switch a few buttons and letting the noise be produced by software but actually including real human interaction, since decay is something we, as humans, also cause as we erode paths with our steps and wear away surfaces. I did have alot of fun also using FX, tweaking with Advanced settings and alternating pitchs with the added help of manipulating sound waves so when I press a key, the sound follows a set sequence of delay and rising in pitch as I plotted it down.
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| Only used the central 5% as a base for sounds for VVS track. |
