NetzingersFeaturing the soothing sounds of our own small stream, Music For Washing Dishes incorporates real kitchen sounds and melodic interludes. Generative sequences book end the piece with watery arpeggios. Just long enough to get through a good stack of dishes.
Space music for the aftermath of stellar destruction. Think of expanding clouds of cooling gas going from blue-hot to red.
Image: inner crab nebula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar_wind_nebula#/media/File:Chandra-crab.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_remnant
Wrote this a while ago and set it to music.
There once was a bot from SCHENECTADY,
Who was so wrecked that he
Trundled along,
Singing a song,
All the while losing his memory.
This is the first composition by me, inspired by the recent successful completion of the live test of the Orion capsule. See the results here.
The work is a mix of live audio from the December 11, 2022 splashdown, Csound synth patches along with some virtual instruments recorded in Studio One.
First off, I split up the audio from the YouTube livestream into chunks using the Rust noise_gate project. The audio was filtered to give it a 60’s Moon-mission feel. I felt some sort of fanfare was needed at the start, so I added some Copeland-esque percussion.
The first long section is Stratospheric Winds, what it might sound like encountering the Earth’s atmosphere from space. Yes, the stratosphere is not the top layer of the atmosphere, but it is the point where the re-entry is picked up.
Section Atmospherics represents the long fall after supersonic flight. It is made up of drones with a rhythmic accompaniment ticking off the time. The drone sounds were based off of Ian McCurdy’s Csound Haiku I with modified tones and additional evolution.
After the chutes deploy is Hang Time, where I use a Virt Vereor VST synth playing long chords to give the feeling of suspension. I skipped most of the dialog around the chute deployment after I found it detracted from the narrative flow.
As the capsule gets close to the sea, there is a surf sound based on a simulation in Csound. I had also developed a glissando sequencer bit coded in Csound based off of a phrase from Bach’s Tocatta and Fugue in D minor. It was intended for section Hang Time, but when I put in the clip about the recovery beacon, it clearly belonged with the section Waiting for Recovery.
There was a definite end to the mission, so I wanted to wind the piece slowly down to its conclusion. With the final note, the piece ends in Mission Accomplished (notably without any sense of irony in this case.)
In the end I think its moderately OK. I’m not too happy about the mix, and I have since learned a lot about Studio One that would help out in that regard. Finding my way through the creative process was very instructive. I find that I like to plan out my pieces, and gather the bits around the plan, even if things don’t work out the way I expected.
Watched a nice video on some remarkable free plugins here. All these are things I want to try so I am posting the list here for later. The presenter knows what he is talking about and doing and all these plugins seem worth looking into so I have reproduced the links below.
Beware the Jum-Jum,
Hiding in the trees.
It will sneak up behind you,
And poke you when you sneeze.
This is a $1+ download/limited cassette released on Dec. 2 of 20 vaporwave songs with a Christmas theme. I usually skew more ambient but this collection is pretty satisfying. This is an irresistible collection that is already part of my xmas rotation.
Tracks like “London Bells” have a good bit of glitch and gloomy lyrics, which is pretty different for holiday stuff but at the same time time very interesting. At the same time there are songs which punch all the cheery buttons (“Kimonos at Christmas”, “Kaiju Christmas”) or open up frozen landscapes (“Statues of Ice and Jade”, “Snowy Morning”)
More pop-ish tracks are represented (“So Cold”, “Fireside Wishes”, etc) featuring a distinct vaporwave twist. Traditional Christmas songs are given an updated treatment (“Chestnuts”, “O Holy Night”, ” Rising of the 🌞”). Then there are hardcore songs like “Fireside Wishes” or “Holidays on Molly” that loop aggressively and make you wonder how they even sound as good as they do.