stopGOstop: field recordings, sound collage, and sound art

Sometimes at lunch, I hear the organist practicing at the Spreckels Organ in Balboa Park. The organ is “the world’s largest outdoor instrument,” and has “more than 5,000 pipes” that are usually used to play a variety of show tunes and standard classical fare.

Episode 147 is an incantation to the great instrument, that has been underused these last months. Its pipes not adored by listeners, its tunes heard mostly by trees, buildings, and birds.

This episode features a stereo recording of working in the yard and slow meditative synths.

It starts with a flurry, a quickening, eventually slowing down. The strumming and pecking in the background start to become more pronounced as the anxieties lessen. The beat stops, and the feedback envelops. In the distance a melody is present, but the foreground disguises it. Sounds of a being back in public emerge, and the simple melody may have become a little out of tune.

Episode 145 of the podcast features a manipulated recording of a guitar, several midi interments, and a binaural field recording.

In mid-August, I spent about a week camping. The majority of the time I was at Mancos State Park. There was a no-burn order for the entire state, so most nights I would sit and read and write until my solar-powered lights grew dim, listen to music via my phone while watching the stars appear in the sky, and I also would sit, drink a beer, and listen to the sounds of the park. My campsite was about two miles from the edge of the Arapaho Forest, about ten miles from Mesa Verde National Park, and an hour in the car from Durango, CO.

There are two main aspects of this piece, a stereo recording from just outside my tent, and a series of midi files. The title is from one of the reviews of the campsites, a very apt description.

In the recording, you can hear the zipping of the tent, me walking away, opening a beer, the talking, coughing, of the family at the next campsite, pickup trucks slowly driving by, as well as the choir of crickets, cicadas, and other nighttime creatures waking up. The midi files were derived from bits of text I wrote while camping. The voice recording of the text was converted to midi files via a free online tool, and then edited and transformed to use with a variety of virtual instruments (flute, tuba, harp, piano, and a Viking synth emulation). The original audio was also used to trigger midi notes using the voices threshold to open/close a midi note.

This was all a very complicated way of creating a random, but a purposeful instrumental accompaniment to the sounds of camping at Mancos State Park (I might even call the musical sections sonification of text, that that just sounds too clever/academic).

If you liked episode 144 you may also enjoy these past episodes:

Episode 124: While Line Fever
The sounds and feelings of driving and driving and driving and driving and driving and driving and driving, while the mind wanders.

Episode 093: Field Notes
A collage of binaural and stereo field recordings: a walk in Mount Vernon, NY; a recording from my backyard as I trim a few trees; a recording alongside the a man-made lake near Highway 44 in suburban St. Louis; a recording of a walk back to work after lunch; among others. The tones are made through using a tone gate on the recordings, so when the wind creates a bit of mic noise, it is joined by tones and cords.

Episode 012: Central Park, Snow
A binaural field recording of walking in Central Park after a snow storm. I start at the edge of the park, so there is some traffic noise. Once I enter the park there are horses, families playing, people talking and eventually me walking in Strawberry Fields covered in 8 inches of snow. It was a windy day, so there is some wind noise.

The launch of Apollo 6, government stimulus, Angela Davis, colonies on Mars, Malcolm X, explorations of outer space, 1968, futurists, and a remix of suite I, Mars, from The Planets, Op.32, by Gustav Holst.

The seven suites of Holst’s The Planets were first played together in September of 1918, during a worldwide pandemic. Time goes slow, is the second in a series of audio collages that look back at the past 102 years, exploring the parallels and contradictions between science and culture.

Cosmic Background Radiation, Lenard Bernstein, Angela Davis, IBM Control Programs, Malcom X, DIY synth construction, 1968, James Baldwin and a remix of suite IV Jupiter, from The Planets, Op.32, by Gustav Holst.

The seven suites of Holst’s The Planets were first played together in September of 1918, during a worldwide pandemic. You know what you want, is the first in a series of audio collages that look back at the past 102 years, exploring the parallels and contradictions between science and culture.

The Structure of the Earth (part two of two) a new composition for speakers or headphones.

The Structure of the Earth (part one of two) a new composition for speakers or headphones.

New patterns! Spies! Alcohol! Orson Welles! Food! Mars! and much! much! more! stopGOstop is proud to present, The New Vegetable; or all of New Jersey is an Inferno, a new sound collage.

The economy! The economy! The economy! stopGOstop is proud to present Inventive Genius a new sound collage.