new release!

Hey - I have a new project and a new release. You can read all about it at prettylittlepaw. I like to think of it as pieces composed from field recordings of guitars. This particular one is called NEVER QUITE MADE IT TO THE OCEAN. Everything you hear (in this song and the whole project) came out of a guitar.

[5:50/8mb]
[mp3Link]

binaural hikin'

Shortly after I moved to NM I went out for a hike and as I was strolling down the path I had the thought that people who work in cubicles might appreciate being able to listen to a hike - maybe on the train or as a lunch break thing. Suddenly it's 9 years later and I finally got around to recording a hike. It's not really as weak as it seems though - I didn't have a field recorder when I got the idea and later, when I tried recording a hike it was all cable and pack noise. But now I've got the recorder and the mics that sit on my glasses so I decided to give it another try. This is a stereo recording made with binaural mics so headphones will give you the best listening experience. It's kinda like a 3D movie - you can watch it on your TV, but if you go to the theater and put on the dorky glasses - wow. Since I knew I was going to try making a recording I just went on a short ramble up the Atalaya Hills arroyo by St. John's [GoogleMaps] .

[16:25/23.2mb]
[mp3Link]

post for Tony

A little while ago my friend Tony started an online conversation (with mostly expatriates) about the record shops we all used to go to when we lived in the Twin Cities - which ones do you remember, which ones are still around . . . I took a trip there recently and was happy to see how many of the shops on the list are still making it. It always makes me sad to see a steakhouse where Northern Lights used to be, but there's a Cheapo in both Minneapolis and St. Paul, which is a good thing even if the original location has turned into a Now Sports. I'm happy to say that my favorite shop from the old hood is still kicking. Wearing my not-so-obvious binaural rig with the mics on my glasses and cables run through a croakie and down my back (someone once told me I look like an 80s dork wearing an iPod) I took a little walk down Lyndale Ave., into Treehouse Records (once upon a time it was Oarfolkjokeopus) and was very happy with what I found. I ended up coming back later and picking up the Folsom Prison record I mention in the clip as well as Invisible Hitchcock, Groovy Decay, Glenn Gould plays Bach and a pristine Peter Rowan disc from 1980 still in the plastic wrap. It's a real thing of beauty, which, while I have totally embraced digital music, is something I've never said about a CD.

[3:09/4.2mb]
[mp3Link]

mystery message

I'm betting that this is something everyone can identify with. Y'know when your phone rings and you pick it up and there's just this white noise intermittently broken by semi-intelligible syllables? That's the sound of someone who has accidently dialed your number, usually because they pressed speed-dial or redial by carrying their cell in a pocket. Either that or they sat on it and dialed with their butt. However it happens, it's kinda the modern equivalent of monkeys typing Shakespeare. The other day I got one of these calls (I think it was a butt-dial because it seems the call was made from a car) and it rolled over to my voicemail so naturally my first inclination was to record it into my PMD and share it with the world.

[4:22/5.1mb]
[mp3Link]

Saturday night Calle Andrew

Back in 2006 when I started this blog, the very first post I did was a recording out the door at my old place on W. San Francisco St. [link]. The other night I was sitting in the living room of my new place on the south side of Santa Fe and realized that the sound outside the door was kinda different and kinda the same. I still have crickets, but they're louder. I still have action in the distance, but it's there's more of it.

[1:00/1.1mb]
[mp3Link]

guitarFactory

I know this one is a little more composed than most of the other things I've put up but I just finished it, I like it a lot and I want other people to hear it. And it does fall under the broad definition I made for my blog content as being sound collected "in and around Santa Fe, NM." More specifically, it was composed of sound collected in and around my studio. I've been working for a little while on a group of pieces I'm going to call guitarLandscapes. All of the sounds in all of the pieces, as warped and modified as they may be from their original incarnation, were created on a guitar. I call this one "factory."

[10:17/11.9mb]
[mp3Link]

steamy

This is just plainly and simply a teakettle coming to a boil in slow motion. I set up a stereo pair of condenser mics, made a recording of the kettle and then slowed it down and dropped the pitch by a factor of 4. There is also some EQ going on and I like the way it sounds running through a reverb. It's really nice how slowly tones come and go - and the car that drives by adds a cool little something too. (By the way - I noticed that while this sounds good on my big speakers, headphones and computer speakers, the loud part kinda pushed the limits of my laptop speakers.)

[12:09/13.9mb]
[mp3Link]

tired buddha

The Buddha Machine is without question one of the coolest audio gizmos ever created. If you don't know what it is, you can check it out here. There's the droney loops, the old-transistor-radio aesthetic, the pretty colors, the mysterious FM3 logo, the "Brian Eno bought 9 of them" story . . . it's got it all.

I got mine from my friends Tony and Sara after I recorded their wedding. Having thought I had heard all of the cool sounds the Machine had to make, I was thrilled the other day when I switched it on and heard a brand new sound - the sound of the almost-dead Made-In-China Gaosheng batteries trying to drive the built-in speaker.

[0:33/0.6mb]
[mp3Link]

frigid air

I have a swamp cooler in my new apartment. This is a good thing, and not just because tomorrow is supposed to be 95 degrees. Unlike an air conditioner, with a swamp cooler you're supposed to leave a window open a little to allow for some air flow. This flow over the closed window blinds creates a nice rattley background ambience. For this recording I cranked up the mics and made the background very foreground. It's actually a mix of 2 recordings, one done at 4:30 pm and the other at 10 pm. I'm not usually the sort to say "listen to this on headphones" but in this case there are lots of low frequencies that will be lost on the average laptop speaker so whatever you can do to hear the low end would be good.

[4:54/5.6mb]
[mp3Link]