Disquiet Junto Project 0632: Shear Wind
The Assignment: Make the most of the disturbance within a field recording.

Step 1: Consider how when making a field recording, there can be disturbances in it, such as a passing car or plane, or a noise you didn’t notice until you listened back, or a malfunction in the recording equipment. A common such problem is wind shear.

Step 2: Make a recording that has wind shear in it, perhaps by standing in the wind, or recording from a moving vehicle, or through some other technique. Or locate a pre-existing field recording with wind shear, perhaps on freesound.org 1.

Step 3: Make a piece of music employing the recording you made in Step 2, and make the wind shear a focus of the piece. That is, pay attention to, rather than avoid, this sound that you would likely in other circumstances identify as a shortcoming.

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Track notes:

I spent a couple of days in my hometown/homearea of Normanville on the western coastline of the Fleurieu Peninsula. It's Summer here at the moment, and the weather down south has been particular lovely and warm. I took a long late afternoon walk along the beach, heading south with the heritage protected dunes on one side and a very still ocean on the other. 

Aside from the serene, still conditions there was a nagging, turbulent breeze throughout the afternoon and evening.

I made a few recordings along the way, including one at the foot of the dunes (feat. cicadas) and another on a shallow bed of dried seaweed at the tide break. Though I documented moments of transparency in the recordings, the wind (even with a jammer on the handheld recorder) was prominent throughout.

Since coming home and listening back to the recordings, I thought it would be interesting not only to feature the sound of wind shear, but use its dynamic peaks to control aspects of the composition.

I recorded a sample from the tide recording to my Morphagene module and routed the CV output directly to the clock. The dry/wet mix was set to roughly 60/40, so 60% of the mix would be the dune recording played back in real time, whilst 40% is the tide sample playing back on the Morphagene. Whenever a wind shear event arose (either form the tide or dunes) this would manipulate the time stretching, 'Morph' and 'Slide' parameters of the Morphagene. 

I'm letting the Morphagene play itself for the first half of this track, then subtly manipulating some of the controls to transition parts of the sample and close out the track with just the dune recording.

[Disquiet_Junto_0632] Tidal Jamming

Tristan Louth-Robins is a South Australian artist working principally in the medium of sound art and field recording. Ideas of sound and its signification are key elements in Louth-Robins' practice, traversing the space between the visual and aural his work is realised through the mediums of recordings, installation, visual art and performance. He is interested in sound and its associative implications - including its relationship to objects, technology, urban space, memory and the natural world. 


Since 2005, Louth-Robins has presented work in Australia and internationally as a solo artist, whilst also collaborating with artists, writers, researchers, musicians and performers. 

Working across a vast array of activities encompassing composition, sound design, installation art, field recording and workshops, his work has been featured in events such as the Adelaide Festival of Arts (2006), The National Regional Arts Festival (2012), Mildura-Wentworth Arts Festival (2013), Fairfax Festival (2013) and Adelaide Fringe Festival (2014); and selected works exhibited at galleries including The Australian Experimental Art Foundation (2009), SASA Gallery (2012, 2015), Light Square Gallery (2012) and FELT Space (2015). His audio works have been broadcast on radio including Radio National, Classic FM, The BBC (UK), Acoustic Frontiers (USA) and RBB (Germany).