It's 4am in the Amazon rainforest and the Rufous Motmots start calling. Soon thereafter the local Howler Monkey gang follows suit, accompanied by frogs and other birds. Not necessarily the most harmonious of dawn chourses but certainly something to remember. More sounds and stories available soon at https://mindful-audio.com.

Amazon basin - Dawn - Motmots And Howlers

Bamboo rats calling on a calm night deep in the Amazon rainforest. Recorded with unattended drop rig: Sony PCM D100, Clippy mics and WindBubbles. More sounds and stories at https://mindful-audio.com

Amazon Rainforest - Riverside - Calm Night Atmosphere With Bamboo Rat

Testing a small portable jecklin disk with a couple of Usi Pro's/mixpre 3.  The dawn chorus was very quiet but the neighbor's tractor, quantas jet and irrigation pumps.....not so much.  Not a very good recording but this is really only to check the stereo image using the disk.  I thought the stereo was excellent - better than I was expecting from a couple of omni's only a few inches apart.  I originally made a larger disc to place on a mic stand but wanted something more compact so I could fit the whole rig into one bag so I made this to fit into that bag I'm using.  While it's not round, I wonder if I could hear the difference if it was......

Jecklin Test 1

[Quarantine Soundscapes #14] A calm summer dusk near Lake Superior.  The Western Chorus frog in the foreground with two other amphibians occasionally joining in the background.

[#14] Western Chorus Frog

Whip-poor-will and Snipe

[Quarantine Soundscapes #24] A crisp late fall dawn chorus with several individuals and a woodpecker in the Keweenaw Peninsula. Being so far north, the chorus simplifies this time of the year. 
#fieldrecording

Listen:

[#24] Keweenaw Fall Dawn Chorus 01

[Quarantine Soundscapes #25] Lake Superior is more like an inland sea than a lake by its size and moods. It's shore ranges from hard rock outcroppings, sandy beaches, and cliff faces. Here are rough waters on an outcropping.
#fieldrecording
Listen:

[#25] Lake Superior Rough Waves

Dawn choros, with Tawny owls, Cuckoo, turtle dove etc

Dawn Chorus Maison Des Lis

Title:	Awaken
Composition, performance and artwork by Norman Freund 26-Apr-2020

BandCamp Purchase:
https://normanfreund.bandcamp.com/track/awaken

Description:
After listening to some polyrhythms from master Adam Neely [1] and a recent composition from 5 String Theory [2], I came up with the idea of a 7/8 time signature with beats on the 5th and 6th 1/8 notes superimposed on a bar of equal time duration in 4/4 time signature with the beats on every 1/4 note. Time to sketch some of these ideas in Ableton Live. The 7/8 combined with the 4/4 time signature produced an interesting rhythm and thought try adding a 3/4 time signature again of equal bar duration as the previous loops with beats coming in on the 1/4 notes. Some more experimenting with drum sets. What was missing? Some 1/16th notes in a 4/4 time signature — perfect. It gave the feel of life beginning in a cave. Next came the free improvisations for part one of the melody, some chimes with delay effects and melody played not to any regular grid but rather as an impression of the rhythm section, imagine trying to find a regular grid from a combined 7/8 4/4 and 3/4 polyrhythm.

Next came the bass line. For the second short section of the composition, an ominous awaking was needed. The “Burned Bass” from the Ableton Live library was perfect coupled with a fluctuating filter cutoff frequency, but some thing more was needed. The Ableton Live Swirl effect was added for some rotating stereo phase effects.

Finally the third section of the composition emerges from the cave as if beckoned by the ominous bass line. The bass track is now subdued by a low frequency cutoff filter. A second bass line is added with a G 4 7 arpeggio providing a brighter back-drop for the melody using the “Guitar Palm Legacy” instrument from Ableton Live. Now the electric violin enters, an NS Design Wave 4 string (not a VST), swaying from minor to major melodies. To add some spice the violin introduces some glissando and harmonics. The violin was plugged into a hardware amp simulator, a Line6 POD2.0, selecting an amp with just enough bite, this was then fed into Ableton Live where reverb was added using the Native Instruments Raum effect. The composition then finishes with a pizzicato from the violin.

Instruments:
	Ableton Live (Lite),
		Percussion:
		    Shake-Cabasa, Wood Block, Wood-Claves,
		    Shake-Shaker from the “percussion 1” instrument.
		Keyboards: Chimes and Bow
		Bass:
			Burned Bass
			Guitar Palm Legacy
	Electric Violin, NS Design Wave 4 String

Hardware:
	GoldStar GMK-49 Midi Keyboard
	Line6 POD2.0 Pre-amp and Amp Simulator
	Native Instruments Komplete Audio 2 - Audio to USB
	Apple iMac computer

Software:
	Ableton Live (Lite), Release 10 - DAW

References:
[1]	Adam Neely, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnkp4xDOwqqJD7sSM3xdUiQ (several polyrhythm examples)
[2]	5 String Theory, “COVID groove on 19/8 | 5 String Theory”, 9-Apr-2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naEIGlh6_To

Awaken

Title:	Sunset Cruise
Composition, performance and artwork by Norman Freund, 29-April-2020

Bandcamp purchase:
https://normanfreund.bandcamp.com/track/sunset-cruise

Description:
This composition started out with a percussion section assigning the same drum to more than one adjacent key on a midi keyboard to experiment with rapid beats or bursts of closely spaced beats typically not possible when the one drum is assigned to only one keyboard note. A rhythmic bass line riff then followed. In the mean time I heard that Björn Arlt from FullBucket had released a new virtual synthesiser, the Tricent Ref. [1], I dropped this on a track to experiment with the various preset program sounds to see what I liked. The Tricent was then used to develop a series of riffs using ten of it’s preset sounds with some modification. Ableton Live’s “EP Faceplant” an electric piano, was then used to improvise a melody on top of the Tricent riffs, bass line and percussion section. Some swirling stereo effects, modulated low pass frequency filters and a touch of reverb from the Native Instruments Raum completed the picture. Thanks Björn, great new synthesiser and the amusing names for the presets.

The artwork came from a sunset across the Canterbury Plains, South Island, New Zealand.

Instruments:
	Ableton Live,
	  Percussion:
	    A-Kick Remo 1 A, A-Sanre Cust N&C 1,
	    A-HitHat 1 Half Open A
	  Bass: Cathedral Wave Pipes
	  Keyboards - Melody:
	    EP Faceplant
	    (Classic electric piano with the Amp and Cabinet element)
	FullBucket Synthesizer: Tricent mk III Ref. [1]:
	  Synthe+String, Incidious Bass, Plinker Plang, Quak Quak,
	  Mery Pad, Ensemble Tweak,
	  Big Sweep, “This Is Not Right”, Cluster, Stargazer

Software:
	Ableton Live (Lite), Release 10

Hardware:
	GoldStar GMK-49 midi keyboard
	Apple iMac computer
	Native Instruments Komplete Audio 2 - Audio to USB interface

References:
[1]	“Tricent mk III”, Polyphonic Synthesizer Ensemble, Version 1.0,
        © 2020 by Björn Arlt,
	http://www.fullbucket.de/music

Sunset Cruise

Summer 2020 Ambient Field Recordings done during the age of continued COVID-19 pandemic social distancing and isolation. In and around Laramie, Wyoming, U.S.A.

Equipment: Zoom H4n Pro with LOM mikroUsi microphones.

Jecklin Test 1

quedecree

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