Stupid 70s PSA 2009

Stupid Riff Dub 2008

Stupid Riff 2007

Stupid Riff 2006

This year, I had no stupid riff to post, in part because I didn’t dwell on any failed attempts much this year, and in part because I was ruthless in deleting crap as I went along. So, I’ve decided to put an end to the stupid riffs effort. In its stead, I’m starting something new, and something probably too ambitious by far, but what the hell. I will be writing/recording/posting a new bit of music each day for the duration of 2011. I really enjoyed Marcus Fischer’s dustbreeding blog, in which he posted something creative each day of 2009, and Taylor Deupree’s One Sound Each Day project that same year, and have since been thinking about taking on a thing-a-day project of my own. Similarly, since the track I did for Analog Industries’ ten-minute challenge a few years ago, I’ve really liked the act of producing something quickly, without too much pre- or post-fussing. So, I’ve decided to start the SIGHUPyear project:

2011.sighup.ca

I threw the site layout together in a rush yesterday when I hatched the idea in an idle moment, so it might still require some finessing. Two entries have been posted already, as befits being two days into the new year, and one will be added each day until the year ends or I drop, whichever comes first. As I see it, both outcomes offer a certain degree of entertainment.

Update Aug 23, 2010: I’ve taken these tracks down to make room for others on Soundcloud, in keeping with the rapid publishing angle of what I’m doing there. I expect the best among these tracks will resurface as a full release.

I’ve been interested in the idea of rapid publishing for a few years. I used to do that sort of thing when posting to forums, finish a track and share it with the community. Many of my older releases – Low End of Wide Open, Machines, Coma – were done in that piecemeal way. One of the reasons I stopped doing that was my focus moved to larger projects, and forums are isolated, tucked away corners of the web for the specifically minded. Hopefully, Soundcloud proves to be more inviting to a broader range of listeners.

I believe the sound quality is better from Soundcloud’s site rather than through the embedded player if you want to make the jump. As it stands, I haven’t set these up for download. I likely will in the future, at least the one’s that pass muster during this prototyping stage.

The music that will be placed on Soundcloud will all be solo performances done on my shiny new modular synthesizer, similar to the approach I took on Held in Frame, although I’ll be a bit freer with post-processing, multitracking, etc. I’ve started recording tracks using only the modular primarily as way to learn how to play it. One of the things I love about a hardware modular synthesizer, especially in contrast to years of using software only, is that what sounds you make is less important than inventing ways of making them. The system I have is comprised of only a few modules, and each one can perform a whole variety of functions, so it’s invigorating working with the various trade-offs – i.e. if I use my envelope generator as an audio source, I’m now down one envelope and have to adjust the musical approach accordingly. I suppose in much the same way that the brain reroutes pathways after a stroke and the like. And I like that yanking a cable can itself be a musical act. I haven’t taken any photos of it, but through the miracle of the fantastic RackPlannner app, I have this mock-up:

I’ll be adding music there as I make it. Probably two more tracks will be added this weekend. On the first of these two tracks already posted, there’s clipping distortion in places, but I decided I liked the effect and kept it in. As always, I’m attracted to slow-moving music, full of minor noises and drones, so that’s mostly what folk can expect from these.

Update Aug 23, 2010: I’ve taken these tracks down to make room for others on Soundcloud, in keeping with the rapid publishing angle of what I’m doing there. I expect the best among these tracks will resurface as a full release.

This year’s entry gives me a certain “Um, Steve, are you feeling alright?” kind of vibe. I got M-Tron Pro early this year, became enchanted with a guitar loop, and struck upon this. I envision it as a soundtrack to an old PSA film reel, in mono no less, something they might have shown to kids in Health class in the 70s, something about poor Misty not feeling right down there, and there’s Johnny, obliviously spreading the clap to all the girls in Grade 11. A little like Larry Clark’s Kids, except with more soft focus. Here it is:

Stupid Riff 2009 – 70s PSA edition

And here are all past entries:

Stupid Riff Dub 2008

Stupid Riff 2007

Stupid Riff 2006

I’ll be collecting these patches and putting them up for anyone interested in picking them apart. There’s a dozen available now, more will be added as I make them.

Get them here: http://www.sighup.ca/mulch/

The new bits (three in all) were recorded in my yard, one in the rain in July and two from my backyard while I tired to get the omnipresent cicadas here in Toronto. Omnipresent that is until I’ve tried to record them, and then they seem to go silent. Took a few tries to get them proper.

Click here to get them, top three files in the list. Here’s a little clip of the loudest cicada bit I captured, isolated for your listening pleasure.

Cicada

http://soundsfound.sighup.ca

I’ve ported most content to its new home–the two recordings from Austin, Texas being the exception, primarily because they are big files and I was tired of waiting on the ftp upload to finish. I will put them back soon.

Now that it has a new home, I’m going to endeavour to revise the site. It needs to be moved to a database format as the list grows, and I’m considering adding some kind of efficient user submission system. Since the original project was really just meant to be stuff that I recorded and shared with the world, I hadn’t really ever given any proper attention to expanding it to other contributors. The other contributors on the project are friends and have all joined through me directly. But that might change. I’m investigating what software will suit my needs, so it will progress in the next few months. I’ve also just ordered a Zoom H2, making recording while out and about both easier and less conspicuous for me. Expect new Toronto content soon.

The project still also resides at its original home at Intelligent Machinery. I’m not sure what we’ll do yet with it. It might disappear, it might remain as a mirror, it might become a second and independent cell of the project. Too early to know which way it’ll play out.

Which brings us to the more ridiculous side: this is my most successful track.

It has been listened to 204 times in the past month. What some readers may not know is that I am the author of the “Drones for Beginners” tutorial in KVR’s WIKI. In the past year-and-a-half, that tutorial has been viewed a total 26,648 times, which equates to close to 1500 times a month. It would seem that roughly 14% of all viewers of the page listen to the final track. All things considered, that strikes me as fairly impressive for an anonymous track floating about the great Interweb ocean. Ultimately, I’m not sure what any of the listeners think of the track, they may all think it sucks, which would be a kind of success unto itself. I, on rare occasion, receive feedback about the tutorial, usually in the form of a question (i.e. where can a get a phase vocoder). Had I known it would be so well-listened to, I likely would have spent more than a half hour on it. Its origins are documented here and here.

If it were up to me, I’d hope for Edison Moon to be my most listened to music, but what can you do. Of course, I am now concocting ways in which I can write a tutorial based entirely around the creation of Edison Moon to shower the unsuspecting masses with its glory, perhaps “Sonic Archaeology for Beginners” {insert devious gesture here}.

So there you have one more piece of trivia to save for a rainy day. I’ve not benefited in any material sense from the volume of interest in the tutorial, as no one has presented me with any form of opportunity based on their familiarity with my work (wink wink, I’m always open to opportunity e.g. hey, Steve, we love what you’ve done here, have some free gear on us). But no matter, a desire for recognition is of course not why I do such things, even if I don’t always know why I do them. I’m hoping at least it hasn’t hindered my karma in any way. Judging from my recent neighbour woe on the home front, I suspect it hasn’t really improved my karma in the short-term, but perhaps eternal sunshine for me in the lives to come.

As for the project itself, there are now 20+ recordings free for the taking, in my esteem a good number to lend the whole thing a bit of momentum.

The basic idea is that I’ll be dropping miscellaneous field recordings I’ve captured with my trusty iRiver and Sony microphone into the public domain. I’ve been looking here and there on the web for audio sources for music projects, too often everything comes with the requirement for attribution. For instance, I’ve always liked the idea of the Freesound project, but it has become dominated by the idea that everyone deserves and expects credit, and that’s just not where my interests lie. So I’ve decided to put up instead of just griping about it, and all of these recordings come with absolutely zero strings attached. Sell them if you want, call them your own, it doesn’t matter to me.

I don’t have anything against acknowledging the efforts of others, but it can be a challenge to keep track of where audio originated, and frankly I think it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if people didn’t require credit for everything they do. Just do something for the joy of it and share once in a while, it’ll do you a world of good.

The recordings themselves are fairly rough, basically just me hitting record in a given place and letting it run for a few minutes. They are filled with buzzes and hums and bumps and pops and clicks. My hope is that they’ll be useful source material for some, and simply enjoyed as glimpses of places by others.

I’ve put five recordings up so far–two from yesterday, three from today–and I’ll be adding more on a regular, if not exactly daily, basis.

I’d like to eventually set it up so that others can add to the repository, but I’m sure that would require some kind of legal prep work to ensure everything goes effectively to the public domain. So for now it’ll just hold stuff that I’ve recorded.