Disquiet Junto Project 0231: Field Complement
The Assignment: Compose a piece to align with, from memory, 60 seconds of everyday sound.


The field recording is a group of children at a local beach with occasional sounds of wind and traffic. I derived the timing notes back in my studio by putting the audio into Audacity and noting the time and shape of some particularly loud utterences as well as a car passing by.  

The composed piece is a tone recorded on a reel to reel tape recorder. I moved the tape by hand back and forth across the playback head while referring to the notes trying to catch specific moments and shapes and adding a bit of improvisation in between (sort of a human voltage follower). Some came out well, some not at all. The output of the recorder went through a voltage controlled delay modulated with a stepped random voltage that roughly grainularizes the sound. I aligned the tracks so the composed piece follows a bit behind the field recording. Sounds like electronic seagulls.

Equipment employed: iPad (for field recording), Ampex 601 tape deck, voltage controlled delay (Ray Wilson design), Wogglebug (for random, stepped modulation). Assembled in Audacity. 

Creative Commons license granted.

More on this 231st weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Compose a piece to align with, from memory, 60 seconds of everyday sound” — at: http://disquiet.com/0231/

More on the Disquiet Junto at: http://disquiet.com/junto/

Field Complement [disquiet0231]

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