Field Recording: On a Ferry

This track was recorded and mixed in its entirety on a flight that I took from New Orleans to Salt Lake City.

Listen with headphones at the loudest possible volume, otherwise it won't be as enjoyable!

All the mixing was done using various Ableton Live software plugins. 

The recordings consist of a combination of airplane background noise, seat belt clicking, storage bin slamming, seat belt notification light blinking, etc.  You can also hear the pilot and flight attendants making various announcements throughout the track.  Takeoff occurs towards the end of the track, around the 16:00 mark. 

I used only one synthesized instrument for this track, the vibraphone line that comes back periodically.  Though I wasn't thinking of this at the time, the melody is definitely inspired by Brian Eno's "Music For Airports."  

Also, I did not use any time or pitch shifting to create these sounds. I literally sat there with my recorder for the 23:00 during the takeoff sequence.  All sounds were edited using reverb, harmonic delay, compression, distortion, and resonators. 

To achieve the grainy, noisy quality of the airplane "background" tracks (there were two of these), I ran each of them through a "resonator."  A resonator allows you to alter various harmonics of the fundamental frequency of the input signal (the background noise). I only used the resonator to boost the gain of certain resonant frequencies, which caused a pretty tasty distortion at those frequencies.  

I suppose the three distinct variants in the track are the pilot's announcements, the flight attendant's announcements, and the takeoff process.  I altered each of these in different ways, such as gradually increasing the Reverb plugin's mix %, decay time, and room size during the pilot's announcement at 2:38. 

Well, if you are still reading this, I hope you enjoy listening to this track. It was really fun to create, especially since I had to hide my recorder from the flight attendants during takeoff.  

If you have any questions about any of the jargon above, please send me an e-mail at aemarse [at] gmail [dot] com.

Thanks!

-alexmarse

ride the airplane (2011)

one (2011)

"Too Much Doubt" (2011) is a musique concrete piece for 2 channel tape about recent death penalty victim Troy Davis. Troy, who was accused of murdering a police officer in Savannah, GA in 1989, spent the majority of his adult life in prison. The charges that were brought up against him were based almost entirely on eyewitness testimony. Through the years, Troy was nearly executed three times, each execution order being withdrawn at the last minute due to new revelations brought forth by eyewitnesses. By the time of his execution, seven of the nine witnesses that provided testimonies in the trial had recanted their original positions, claiming that they had been coerced by Savannah police officers into pinning Troy for the murder. He was executed on September 21st, 2011, with just two shaky eyewitness testimonies and no physical evidence to prove his guilt. I will never understand why the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles and the United States Supreme Court chose not to delay his execution once more with so much lingering doubt.

The compositional material for this piece consists of sound samples that I collected while attending the protests for Troy Davis held in Atlanta, as well as sounds created using FM synthesis techniques in Max/MSP. I interviewed random protestors, cut their interviews into relevant sections, and grouped them with other interviews according to context. I used these different sections to form a unified train of thought that represents how I feel about the execution. It was written with the anticipation of an unfamiliar listener, so that even if you know nothing about the case before listening, you will understand how the events of this case progressed.

Too Much Doubt (2011)

These are a few of my compositions since the summer of 2011. It is a mixture of musique concrete works and works for small ensembles.

Bob-omb Squad (2012)

“Moon Minute” is an electronic work composed using the program Max Msp. The Max patch consists of several layers of self-built sine tone arpegiattors that play through various tone rows at different tempos. Additionally, the timbre of each sine tone changes gradually over the 60 seconds. The piece evolves from a simple patterned arpeggiation to a cacophonic mass of conflicting rhythms and tones.

Moon Minute (2012)

There was this car horn that was stuck for about an hour outside of my apt in Brooklyn, so I took a recording of it for a few minutes. This sound is the basis of the piece, and all effects were created using it.

I made this using Kyma. Pretty fun program.

a pleasant annoyance

This is me having fun with the Buchla 200e synthesizer. 

I set up a simple patch with three oscillators and some input port control for the timbre, oscillator cv in, and the attack time of the envelope generator. Then, I ran this stuff into Ableton, recorded a take dry, and processed the take with ping pong delay and a Broolklyn resonator and...voila.

Thanks for the listenings.

The Best Dream.

I made this piece along with Andrew Lection using Max Msp and a midi controller. The idea was to create a virtual "soundwalk" experience from different environmental recordings. All of the recordings were regular ol' stereo, so we processed them with a real-time Binaural panning patch in Max Msp to make the sounds sound more real, like they were coming from outside of the head - in, or vice versa. Hope all that gobble-d-gook made sense.

Thanks for the listens. 

imaginary soundwalk

This was a jam that me and some friends did in the Loyola recording studios circa....2010? Looong time ago. We basically just started with a drum beat and layered everything from there. I figured this should be out in the world.

Credits:
Alex Marse - vox, drums, piano, found objects
Mauricio LeSage - electric guitar
Alison Harrington - theremin, whistles
Josh Campbell - recording, mixing

alexmarse

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