I extracted a single footstep sound, with a length of 10 ms. The entire composition is only based on this “grain”.

The source is acquired from BBC Sound Effects. [Link](https://sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk/search?q=07064200). 

Michael Norris’ [Soundmagic Spectral](https://www.michaelnorris.info/software/soundmagic-spectral) plugin set is powerful and effective for granular synthesis. I used his Spectral Granulation, Grain Streamer, Spectral Shuffle, Spectral Harmonizer, and Spectral DroneMaker plugins. 

Other effects are incorporated as well. For reverb, I relied on Waves’ IR-L Efficient and Logic Pro X’s ChromaReverb. For delay, I relied on Logic Pro X’s Delay Designer, to mimic a ball-dropping effect. For adding stereo effects, I relied on iZotope’s Ozone. “Imager” functionalities are implemented. 

I consider this composition as an etude: a practice and a revision on common electroacoustic music composition techniques.

Electroacoustic Étude, 01

A distant project being completed on December 14th, 2020. Discovered this old archive while I was cleaning my hard drive. Decide to incorporate this in my profile.

I was heavily inspired by a Swedish hiking Youtuber "Erik Normark" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gddo7aeR7Z8), whose video illustrates the harsh yet dreamy Northern Sweden landscape. Any artificial music never accompanies his videos (though sometimes some slight sound FX made by himself). Yet, the amazingly ambient sound from the gushing river, violent snow, and drizzling rain splendidly fulfilled the emotional state. The stoic and abstemious mind confronting the harsh environment makes me show my admiration for this reticent man. I started to wonder if his mind is filled with music, what would it be? That imagination instigates me to produce this little sampling etude. 

The whole sampler library was built by recording a wind chime. Two of the sound sample was from the wind chime itself, which has been recorded in a continuous or impulsive manner, and from the container of the wind chime, which is a hollow paper cylinder. I was delighted to discover that all of those sounds have pitch quality, as they can all be matched to a specific key on the keyboard. With the continuous wind chime sound being played as a prolonging ambient sound, the impulsive wind chime sound and the paper cylinder hitting sound are played as notes. The only non-sampling sound in this etude is a pink noise generated by the FM8 synthesizer.

Electroacoustic Étude, 02

Many thanks to Prof. Roger Dannenberg for his reading, recording, and mastering! This trumpet solo is composed to be dedicated to him for his tutelage and supervision.

Grandeur and Dedication. A trumpet solo.

The score is available from the composer. You can contact me via direct message or email.

Grandeur and Dedication

A WIP composition. I lost my thread to produce an apposite theme for the entire work, so I decided to publish this half-baked work for now.

Here was my initial intention.

*Circuit Hallucinations* is a work intended to be a server room nightmare. The intention of the work is to explore sounds created by malfunctioning or normally-functioning electronics. As most electronics components are making fundamental waveforms, using sound programming framework like Nyquist seems to be the most appropriate.

Electroacoustic Étude, 03

Graduate student majoring in music technology at Carnegie Mellon University.

int0thewind

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