2012

This is an audio excerpt from the Ouroboros set at XFest (119 Gallery, Lowell, MA) on Feb. 26 2012, right up to the point at which Steve Norton, Marc Bisson and Dei Xhrist came on and we morphed into a Grau Garten set (they very kindly allowed me to stay and play with them). Greg Kowalsky, who is a member of both groups, provided live visuals throughout. Bill Bacon, the other sound maker in Ouroboros, was unable to join us for this one.

I used a setup that I refer to as "no-input mixer without the mixer." It uses an Audible Disease Rupture pedal instead of a mixer, with a signal loop consisting of a Heavy Metal distortion pedal, a Moogerfooger ring modulator, and a Deluxe Memory Man with Hazarai. The output of the Rupture goes though a Holy Grail Plus reverb. No sound sources, just modulated feedback, a snake swallowing its tail.

Image: Spindle whorl from <a href="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_2/January_1873/Art_in_the_Stone_Age">Arts in the Stone Age.</a>.

Ouroboros: Whorl - at XFest (2012-Feb-26)

A live improvisation recorded  March 24, 2012 at 119 Gallery in Lowell, MA. The performers were Laurie Amat (voice, processing, whistle, noisemakers), Michael F. Dailey Jr. (drums, voice), Gregory Kowalski (visuals) and Dave Seidel (electronics). It was the first time that this group of people had played together. There was no rehearsal or preparation, except for the fact that we had spent the day together (along with some other folks) participating in a voice/improvisation workshop conducted by Laurie. Greg's work is apparent in this recording only by implication, but it was an integral part of the experience; a video recording was made and may eventually be made available. Dave is responsible for the title (ex post facto). Special thanks for Walter Wright for the space and the support.

Photo: "1909 Newcastle Train Tunnel" by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/aresauburnphotos/2699269321/">Nick Ares</a>, licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en">Creative Commons</a>.

The Bullet Train of Lost Souls (Amat/Dailey/Kowalski/Seidel)

Live improvisation for the Danger Blossoms radio show (hosted by Felix the Cataclysm, aka my son). Recorded in the studios of <a href="http://wknh.org">WKNH</a> at Keene State College. This was made without any synths; all sounds were the result of feedback loops. Inspired by the work of David Tudor and dedicated to his memory.

Gear: Audible Disease Rupture RP-1, Boss Heavy Metal HM-2 distortion pedal, Moogerfooger Ring Modulator, Boss PH-3 Phaser, E-H Deluxe Memory Man, Digitech Grunge distortion pedal, Roland RC-2 Loop Station, E-H Holy Grail Plus, Roland D-BASS 210 amp.

Image: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Humpback_anglerfish.png">Humpback anglerfish</a>

Bathypelagic Congress - Danger Blossoms (2012-Apr-18)

This is an excerpt of a performance given on the front steps of the Peterborough Town House (1 Main St., Peterborough, NH) between approximately 10pm and 10:40pm on June 8, 2012 as part of The Thing In The Spring 2012. I made the sound as <a href="http://gregorykowalski.com">Greg Kowalski</a> projected his visuals on the side of the building across the street. It was an intermittently rainy (sometimes stormy) day, and we weren't sure we would be able to play outside. But the rain stopped about half an hour before we set up so we decided to take a chance. The rain started up again about five minutes after we had gotten our equipment back into our cars after playing.

I played Monotron Delay, Drone Lab and prerecorded cricket/cicada sounds, with a short effects chain consisting of a phase shifter and a Deluxe Memory Man. No looping; stuff that sounds looped was achieved in other ways. I recorded it on a Zoom H4 digital recorder at 96KHz/24-bit. Post-production was minimal: reduce the amplitude by 2 dB, add fade-in and fade-out to the selection, and convert to a 48K 320mbps MP3.

Image: "storm breathing dragon" by McBeth - see http://www.flickr.com/photos/mcbeth/3766612842/ - licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

Ouroboros: Unsettled Night (excerpt)

I played this at Sharon Arts Gallery (Peterborough, NH) on June 21, 2012 as part of a show that also included Banjo Assault and <a href="http://dreamteamensemble.tumblr.com/">The Dream Team</a>. We performed in the midst of a phantasmagorical exhibit of wondrous cardboard plants, beasts and beast-plants called "A Garden of the Imagination". I don't have pictures of the exhibit, but you can read more about it <a href="http://www.sharonarts.org/garden-of-the-imagination-2.html">here</a>.

The only sound source in this piece is the carrier oscillator output from an MF-102 Ring Modulator, passed through a Grunge distortion pedal and then split into separate signals, one through a phase shifter and one through a flanger, which went to separate mixer inputs. The mixer's effects loop was routed through a Rupture RP-1, which in turn formed a feedback loop that consisted of a Deluxe Memory Man and a Holy Grail Plus reverb.

Picture by Micah Seidel, used by kind permission of the artist.

Imaginary Garden (Sharon Arts, 2012-Jun-21)

Playing with the Gristleizer et al.

The same patch as the previous track (which was a quickie recorded on my phone).This is not a loop, it is a drone passing through several layers of live processing.

For this piece, I made a higher-quality recording using the Zoom H4. Then I took a 2:52 excerpt, cleaned up the endpoints with fade-in/fade-out, time-stretched it (using <a href="http://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch/">Paul's Extreme Stretch</a>) at a ratio of 1.618:1. and then took the stretched version and stretched it again at the same ratio. Finally I combined all three versions (original, stretched and re-stretched) in Audacity, lining them up at their ends. So the longest version starts first, the next longest joins in at 2.52 and the original joins in at about 4:40.

Signal chain: self-oscillating Grunge distortion pedal -> HM-2 distortion pedal -> MF-102 ring modulator -> Gristleizer -> E-H Pulsar.

Effects chain: Deluxe Memory Man -> Holy Grail Plus.

Pulsing

The instructions for this piece were as follows: "Please copy the instructions to this project and save them as a text file. You will then open that file in one or more pieces of audio-processing software. The resulting sound will serve as the foundation of your track. You can only use the sounds resulting from the text file in the process of making your track. You can manipulate the sounds, and you can use multiple versions that result from different pieces of software, but you cannot add any other sounds."

My process (all in Audacity unless otherwise indicated):
- Saved the text to a file and opened it as raw data in Audacity, treating it as a stereo 16-bit 44.1K WAV file. This yielded a track 0.01s long.
- Normalized it.
- Clipped the ends at zero crossings.
- Appended copies of the data to itself until it was about 1.7s long.
- Time-stretched it 180x in Paul's Extreme Stretch.
- Lowered the pitch to about 60Hz
- Applied three generations of reverb.
- Time-contracted it to make it about 3 minutes long.
- Converted to MP3.

More details on the Disquiet Junto at http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info.

Image credit: "chair monotony" by Verleihnix on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/d-workx/1021837992/), used under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

Instructional Monotony [disquiet0027-texting]

Learning to use some new tools. Best listened to loud on actual speakers.

Layer 1 (stereo): Grunge, Heavy Metal, FreqBox, Cluster Flux (Phaser in the feedback insert*)
Layer 2 (stereo): Drone Lab, Ring Modulator (carrier oscillator through Pulsar), MuRF
Reverb: Ekdahl Moisturizer

*Falling tones between 0:57 and 4:54.

No loops or delays. All analog except for the recording.

Recorded direct to Zoom H4N. Fade-in was added later, fade-out was live. No EQ or other treatments.

I was just thinking

The inspiration for this track came from the opening of chapter 17 of William Gibson's 1986 novel Count Zero. More on the 29th Disquiet Junto project at http://disquiet.com/2012/07/19/disquiet0029-countzero/. More details on the Disquiet Junto at http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info.

Process:
- take a 30-second excerpt from a field recording I made of the Contoocook River in Peterborough, NH
- time-stretch it 7x in Paul's Extreme Stretch
- in Csound:
-- derive the spectral centroid[1] of each stereo track
-- use the centroid to control the pitch of a pair of sinewave oscillators
-- pass the oscillator tones through some reverb
-- combine the tones with the streatched water sound, crossfading so that the tones increase in amplitude as the water sound decreases
- convert to MP3 in Audacity

Image: "Animated loop of simulated hydrogen line spectra centroid jitter." found at http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/powerfrq.html, no copyright declared.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_centroid

Subsurface Tension [disquiet0029-countzero]

Performance from Wednesday, July 25, 2012 at The Elevens (Northampton, MA). Recorded directly from my mixer, normalized and some reverb added later to make up for the lack of room sound.

Signal chain: Drone Lab -> Freq Box -> Ring Modulator -> Cluster Flux -> Deluxe Memory Man. The ring modulator's carrier oscillator was routed through a Gristleizer (in VCA mode). A phase shifter was inserted into the feedback  loop of the Cluster Flux. The mixer's effects loop contained a Pulsar.

Image found at http://www-solar.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/~few2007/, no copyright declared.

Spectral Flux (at The Elevens, 2012-July-25)

"This week’s project deals with the concept of silence — specifically recorded silence. We will take a segment of audio that is intended to signify silence, and then from it make an original piece of music."

Process (all steps executed in Audacity):
1. Took a 1.138s snippet from Led Zeppelin's "Heartbreaker", starting right after the end of the guitar solo and ending just before the band reenters.
2. Cleaned up the beginning and ending to make a clean loop.
3. Made a second version of the clip as if it was a 33.3 RPM LP being played back at 45 RPM.
4. Made a third version of the clip as if it was being played back at 78 RPM.
5. Looped the original version until it was about 3 minutes long.
6. Looped the "45 RPM" and "78 RPM" versions as well, starting them after the original loop had repeated eight times.
7. Mixed the three loops together.
8. Boosted the bass.
9. Added reverb.
10. Adjusted amplitude.
11. Rendered to MP3.

More on the 30th Disquiet Junto project at:

http://disquiet.com/2012/07/26/disquiet0030-nonsilent/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info/

The Heartbreak Of Lacunae [disquiet0030-nonsilent]

This was my set at the <a href="http://disquiet.com/2012/07/24/disquiet-junto-denver-walnut-20120819/">Disquiet Junto concert</a> at The Walnut Room in Denver, Colorado on Sunday August 19, 2012.

The first four minutes or so comprises my take on the Disquiet Junto <a href="http://disquiet.com/2012/01/30/disquiet0003-glass">"Expanded Glass Harp"</a> project, and features an amplified wine glass. It then segues into a second section where the primary sound source was a cell phone played with an E-Bow. More about this below.

My equipment consisted of:
- wine glass (partially filled with water) to which a transducer was taped
- Vibe It (transducer and driver)
- contact mic (of <a href="http://cranksturgeon.com">Crank Sturgeon</a> vintage)
- Grunge distortion pedal
- Heavy Metal distortion pedal
- Drone Lab
- Moogerfooger FreqBox
- 3x3 passive matrix mixer (made by <a href="http://hellospiral.tumblr.com/">Repeater Electronics</a>)
- Deluxe Memory Man
- E-Bow
- Motorola DroidX running the GaussWave app

In Section One, the sound was produced by a feedback loop driven through the wine glass by the Vibe It (taped to one side of the glass) and picked up by a contact mic (held and rubbed against the other side of the glass). I also at times "played" the glass in the usual fashion (by rubbing the moistened tip of my index finder around the rim).

In Section Two, I unplugged the contact mic and replaced it with a cable coming from my mobile. I was running the GaussWave app, which graphs and sonifies the data being picked up by the phone's internal magnetometer (a sensor that "sees" magnetic fields and is sensitive to changes in those fields). I provoked the magnetometer with an E-Bow, a small hand-held device designed for creating infinite sustain with a guitar string by emitting a pulsating magnetic field.

Many thanks to C. Reider who helped me home in on the piece, to Marc Weidenbaum for creating the Disquiet Junto project and emceeing (in the old sense) the concert, and to C. Reider and Carl Ritger for doing the work of making it all happen. (Is it really just a coincidence that they have the same initials?)

Update: <a href="http://disquiet.com/2012/08/21/dave-seidel-mysterybear-junto-denver-2012/">a nice mention on disquiet.com</a>.

The image is called "resonance cascade" by neonarcade on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/neonarcade/16453557/ and is available under a Creative Commons license.

Resonance Cascade [disquiet0003-glass+] (at Disquiet Junto Denver)

The source audio for this track is the jingle, or sound logo, for the Radius broadcast series, based in Chicago. More info at:
http://theradius.us/
 
More on this 34th Disquiet Junto project at:
http://disquiet.com/2012/08/23/disquiet0034-theradius/
 
More details on the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info

My process: I used this sample as a loop in four simultaneous layers. The first layer simply repeats the loop without change. The second loop repeats the loop, but stretches it out 0.5% longer for each repetition after the first. The third layer does the same, but stretches by %1 increments, the fourth layer by 1.5%. So all four layers start together but after the first cycle they begin to diverge, similarly to Steve Reich's phase pieces but at a very different (much less gradual) pace. I made the piece in Audacity over the course of an hour or so.

Image by AnonMoos at en.wikipedia (Transferred from en.wikipedia) [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFlower-of-Life-small.png

Only a phase [disquiet0034-theradius]

Live set at Chailey Mansion (Newburyport, MA), Sep. 1, 2012, the night after a blue sturgeon moon. Recorded straight off my mixer onto a Zoom H4N at 96K/24-bit, and very minimally processed after that. There are no edits.

The piece consists of a combination of an analog semi-autonomous feedback loop and a analog-derived but digitally-processed drone.

The feedback circuit consisted of an Ekdahl Moisturizer, a Gristleizer, a MuRF, and a ClusterFlux in the effects loop of my mixer (i.e., the FX out feeds into the Moisturizer, and the ClusterFlux stereo outs and one of the MurF outs fed into three channels of the mixer). All four devices were also getting control voltages for various parameters from the noise-driven sample/hold outputs of a Moogerfooger CP-251. I think of this sort of patch as "semi-autonomous" because it perpetuates itself as a feedback loop and because there are several different randomized elements that result in constant, never-quite-repeating change. I was constantly tweaking settings to impose another level of change (which is why the circuit is only semi-autonomous). This layer of the piece is entirely analog and is responsible for the glitchy parts of the texture.

The drone part of the piece comes from a NovaDrone which is processed through an E-H Pulsar, the stereo output of which is in turned processed by a Deluxe Memory Man and then into two more mixer channels. This layer of the piece is more continuous and has a digital coloration thanks to the Memory Man. It enters at about 1:28.

The two layers are mostly isolated. Sometimes the drone is deliberately leaked into the feedback loop in order to "tune" it. In the end the feedback is subsumed into the drone.

Speaking of sturgeons: a shout out the my friend and colleague Crank Sturgeon for no other reason except a temporarily-shared piscine noun.

The starling image is called "Murmuration in Brighton" by Seabeak on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/chimpasaurus/6795736668/), licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. 

Blue Sturgeon Moon (at Chailey Mansion, 2012-Sep-01)

This track is a transformation, in honor of painter Clyfford Still, of a sample of J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, II. Andante, culled from this recording: http://archive.org/details/J.S.BachBrandenburgConcertoNo2

More on the Clyfford Still Museum at clyffordstillmuseum.org.

More on this 36th Disquiet Junto project at: http://disquiet.com/2012/09/06/disquiet0036-cstillconcerto/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at: http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info/

-----

My process:
1.  I took an eight-second snippet of the source recording, starting at 4:33 (happy birthday, John Cage!) and going to the end of the track, then resampled it from 22.05K to 96K.
2. I stretched it to its current length using the Paulstretch effect in Audacity.
3. I duplicated the track and transposed it a minor seventh higher.
4. I duplicated the track again and transposed it a major seventh higher.

That's it other than normalization and transcoding to MP3. All steps performed in Audacity. Elapsed time: about 90 minutes.

I chose the intervals of major and minor seventh because these "dissonant" intervals are characteristic of much of the modernist music that was being written during the Abstract Expressionist period in visual art.

The image is the spectrum of a mono version of this piece. You can see the full image at http://www.flickr.com/photos/seidel/7949114640

Stillness [disquiet0036-cstillconcerto]

Just playing around with a new performance patch. More or less what's in the photo, with a couple of changes. Recorded live direct from mixer to Zoom H4N. Added a small fade-in at the beginning, otherwise unedited.

Gear (starting top center and moving counter-clockwise):  Ekdahl Moisturizer, Gristleizer, Moogerfooger FreqBox, Woftone Chaos, Moogerfooger Ring Modulator, Moogerfooger MuRF, Moogerfooger ClusterFlux, Koma Kommander, Deluxe Memory Man. The thing with nine knobs is a 3x3 matrix mixer made by Repeater Electronics. Also used, but not pictured: a four-key tunable CV controller also by Repeater Electronics.

The photo is also at http://daveseidel.tumblr.com/post/31372576308

Sketch (2012-09-12)

The source audio for this track is part three of the Kenneth Kirschner album June 5, 2012, which features Kirschner on piano and Tawnya Popoff on viola. The album was released in September 2012 on the shskh.com netlabel, where it is available for free download.

More on this 40th Disquiet Junto project at:

http://disquiet.com/2012/10/04/disquiet0040-kirschnerplus1/

More on Kenneth Kirschner at:

http://www.kennethkirschner.com/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info/

-----

I wrote a Csound program to read in the original track and generate a "double" using a waveshaping process based on Csound's "chebyshevpoly" opcode. This opcode allows control over individual harmonics, and I used prime harmonics 2, 3, 7, 11, 13, 17. Each generated harmonic is controlled by an LFO whose frequency is inversely proportional to the  number of the harmonic; e.g., the second harmonic's LFO has a frequency of 1/2, or .5 Hz; the fifth harmonic used 1/5 or .2 Hz, etc. The shape of the waveform I used for the LFOs, combined with the very slow frequencies, results in an envelope that can sound percussive or plucked. This track also has a bit of reverb to help it somewhat match the ambience of the source track. Finally, I took the "double" and combined it with the original track in Audacity, and this piece is the result. The elapsed time of the project (including writing these notes) was about three hours.

The intent was to add new timbres with a contrasting texture (striated in comparison with the smoother surface of the source material), but to try to do it in such a way that the subtle and delicate beauty of Kirschner's piece was not obscured. I hope that the end result can be heard as an organic extension of the original piece.

The image is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hor and is a statue of the ancient Egyptian king Hor. On his head is the symbol "ka", an Eqyptian word that denotes vital essence, soul, or double.

Ka [disquiet0040-kirschnerplus1]

Unedited improvisation recorded directly to Zoom H4N. Made with Drone Lab, Digitech Grunge, 4ms/Repeater Noise Swash, Malekko Wolftone Chaos, Repeater matrix mixer, Behringer mixer, Ekdahl Moisturizer. Thanks to Martin Freeman who made the Noise Swash (built from a 4ms PCB with some additional mods) and who took the picture.

There is now a <a href="http://disquiet.com/2012/11/14/dave-seidel-noise-swash/">very nice writeup</a> on this piece at Disquiet. Thanks, Marc!

Unsubtle Body

This is an unedited, unprocessed live recording, direct to Zoom H4N off the mixer. From a performance at 119 Gallery (Lowell, MA), November 17, 2012.

I used a large (14") Tibetan bowl with two SM57 mics. The signal was processed by an effects chain consisting of (in order) Moogerfooger Ring Modulator, Moogerfooger Cluster Flux, Deluxe Memory Man and Ekdahl Moisturizer. I also used the ring modulator's carrier oscillator as a drone, through a 4ms/Repeater Noise Swash and a Moogerfooger Freq Box -- this was a separate signal, but it was also routed through the effects chain.

I struck the bowl with a typical felt-covered wooden beater and bowed it with a violin bow (these are the high-pitched notes heard periodically). In a couple of spots, I used an EBow resting directly on the exposed springs of the Moisturizer. Feedback was employed at several levels throughout.

Image: "Suspended from Afar, Mountainville, NY" by Grufnik (http://www.flickr.com/photos/grufnik/1411375138/). Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Suspended (at 119 Gallery, 2012-Nov-17)

Experimental electronic music, mostly in the drone category. This is where I put live sets, one-offs, experiments, and excerpts from longer releases.

CD: "~60 Hz" on Irritable Hedgehog - http://recordings.irritablehedgehog.com/album/dave-seidel-60-hz

All releases, including netlabel items: 
http://mysterybear.net/music

https://mysterybear.bandcamp.com/

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