Final Project Part 2

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Final Project Part 1: The Autotune Rant

This rant was done on the topic of the use of Autotune in music, and it was spoken by Fernando Franco.

Click here for MP3 (01:14)
Click here for AIFF (01:14)

EQ Settings for the Track:

Frank Zappa: The Talking Asshole

The work of art I looked at to write about was Frank Zappa's reading of a section of William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch, entitled "The Talking Asshole".

Listen to the reading here. (MP3)

Unnamed Sound

Sound 1: Outdoor (:29)
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Sound 2: Indoor (:55)
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For my bus route, I took a short trip to Grant Park in South Milwaukee, and then took a walk around looking for sounds. I eventually recorded sound 1 outside of a factory I came across. I then took a stroll to the store where I work, where I went to the boiler room to record sound 2.

Field Recording

Click here for clip 1 (01:20 mp3)
Recorded 3/13/2011 at 4:50 PM

Click here for clip 2 (01:13 mp3)
Recorded 3/13/2011 at 5:45 PM

Click here for clip 3 (00:53 mp3)
Recorded 3/13/2011 at 4:12 PM

I am going to elaborate slightly on the second clip I have uploaded. Instead of simply describing the clip, I'm going to tell a story about the recording of it. I didn't want to do my drift alone, so I asked my friend Fernando to come along with me, to which he surprisingly agreed. Whilst doing the drift, we encountered a pond with a few ducks. We followed these ducks, trying to find a spot where we could possibly record them. However, every time we would set up, the ducks would calmly swim away the moment we would hit the record button; not making a sound.

Needless to say, we began to get frustrated.

Finally, we gave up on the ducks and moved to a spot to just record a few birds and the ambiance of the water, when two of the ducks came over and began to fight in the water, splashing and quacking like they were trying to make it up to us for leaving earlier. It was an amazing coincidence, and it was probably my favorite part of the experience.

My Drift Strategy

For a field recording project, I am required to do a drift, or a random walk. For my drift, I decided to take the process completely out of my hands. The ideas of using random decision making objects (IE: dice, cards, etc) to decide which path I take intrigued me, so I decided to go with that strategy. However, I did not want to be encumbered with having to pull out multiple objects and interact with them on every turn of my journey. I instead wanted to use an object I take with me everywhere anyways: my cell phone.

Being that I own an HTC Evo, a device that runs on the Android platform, I can develop and run my own software for it. For this project, I developed my own custom application in which I can input which directions are possible for me to turn. After I input this data the software chooses a random direction in which to travel.

I look forward to actually using this application in the "wild", and seeing how it helps my project.

Found Audio

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click here for .aiff (Mac)

total running time: 01:31

When I sat down to create this piece, I had trouble imagining what I wanted to do with it. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to set out to tell a story, paint a picture, or just try to evoke an emotion. When I started to play around with the sounds in Audacity, I began to picture in my mind a story much like Rush's 2112. In my piece, it slowly begins to build, and climaxes in a sudden sharp rise, then all is calm again. That climax, to me, is the main part of the piece, and to me, it represents most troubles in life. When you have a problem, everything starts out fine, then you start to get the hint that something's coming, then suddenly it appears, but before you know it, it's gone and all is as it once was.