Results for sounds

Some interesting things I found on August 6th, 2008:

# Free audio recordings from the Berlin S-Bahn. – Oliver Chesler writes:

Yesterday I took a trip to Ikea in Berlin. To get from Prenzlauer Berg to Spandau takes about thirty minutes on the S-Bahn. I had my camera with me which also takes decent video. However, it wasn’t visual imagery I was after. I hit record but left the camera’s lens cap on. I was only after audio recordings.

There are a myriad of hot flash recorders on the market but I used what I had with me and I think the recordings sound great. Another advantage of recording this way is people aren’t really aware of what your doing. If I had a Sony PCM-D1 in my hand people may not speak naturally. I’m planning on using some of these recordings on my next album but your free to use them too. Remember it’s not the sounds, it’s how you use them!

Check wire to the ear for links to download the recordings (24bit wavs) released under a Creative Commons license.

# Critter and Guitari – Here are some pictures showing how to construct a felt top enclosure for the Pocket Piano Kit. The enclosure uses felt for the top, and wood on the sides.

# Noise.io, “First” Synth for iPhone/iPod Touch, Will Bring Gestural FM Synthesis Control – Peter Kirn writes:

The iPhone and iPod Touch are getting their share of metronomes, guitar tuners, sonic toys, and even one fairly full-featured sample-based drum machine / arrangement tool (BeatMaker). But what about live synthesis? Noise.io (short for Noise for iPhone) claims to be the “first” synth. (I believe, technically, that honor goes to Einar Andersson’s iPhone synth, but that isn’t yet an official iTunes app, and it’s relatively basic by comparison.)

More info on Noise.io here.

# Paul Rubenstein kids – Paul Rubenstein, known as "Mr.R." by his students, teaches high school and middle school kids how to make electric guitars and amplifiers.

# Mobile Apps: MeTeoR, Micro-DAW for Windows Mobile PDAs, Phones – CDM reports on MeTeoR, a pocket-able miniature DAW, boasting:

• 12 tracks of audio with stereo mixdown.
• Audio waveform editing with cut, copy, paste, and processing (fade, normalize, reverse, etc.).
• Various effects (delay, chorus, reverb, phaser, filters, pitch shift, noise gate, graphic EQ, and more), with routable aux sends.
• Metronome with live recording.
• A mixer with full automation envelopes for each tracks (for the mixer lanes and effects).

More info on multi-track recorder MeTeoR @ 4pockets.com

# Image scanning sequencer – This sequencer by Gijs Gieskes scans images, and plays the image as midi notes.

Ever wondered what sound a wobbling jelly makes?

The Daily Telegraph reports about sound artist Douglas Murphy, who recorded the oscillations of jellies wobbled in an anechoic chamber at University College London.

Douglas Murphy says:

It is refreshing to explore the sonority of a much neglected physical property: the wobble factor. Jelly entices us into a strange but compelling world of organic sounds. The sonic wobble is captured in two ways: by carefully recording the results of gentle coaxing and by expressing the wobble frequency as physically powerful base tones.

The captured sounds will be presented in a soundtrack that will be used Friday night at the London Festival of Architecture where leading firms of architects will compete for recognition of their creative skills with this unusual medium. Link via Boing Boing

Some interesting things I found on July 11th, 2008:

# wire to the ear » » Listen to some pure Roland SH3 audio files. – Oliver Chesler has some Roland SH3 samples up for download.

He has been following a thread over at the Vintage Synth Explorer forum discussing the Roland SH-3.

Oliver writes:

Forum members have been contributing audio samples to see if there is a real difference between the 3 and 3A so I decided to upload a set for of my SH3 for everyone to check out. Each same is pure Roland SH3, no compressor or any effects. Recorded directly into a Motu 828 using Ableton Live.

You can download 24bit Wav files in a .zip (Creative Commons license) or listen to the 320kpbs MP3s at wire to the ear.

# Big Updates for Handheld Homebrew Music: NitroTracker 0.4, PSPSeq 3, PSP Rhythm 8 – Peter Kirn rounds up the latest and greatest for your Nintendo DS and Sony PSP handhelds.

# Lego Record Player – And yes, it works!

# Junk Kalimba – Made from a wall plug casing and various other pieces that were discarded on the drive of a demolished house. Piezo and 1/4" jack added.

# Hockey Organ – Graeme Patterson's sweet hocky organ project. The keys of the Casio SK1 control the players.

# DIY IRF610 MOSFET Class A Headphone Amplifier Project

Giovanni Militano writes:

Not thrilled with how a computer soundcard drove my 32 ohm Grado SR80 headphones, I decided to build myself a desktop headphone amplifier for the office.

# R2-D2 2.0 – Ben Burtt, the man who gave WALL-E a voice – Interview with Academy Award-winning sound designer Ben Burtt, who has created some of the most iconic sounds in film history, including the light saber's hum and crackle, and Darth Vader's asthmatic murmur.

Loop Cache has released 8 Bit Beats, a sample collection geared towards 8 bit sounds.

A mix of old and new school sounds, 8 Bit Beats takes the machines and sounds of yesteryear and blends them into something altogether new.

8 Bit Beats features

• 700+ single hits (Kicks, Bass, Cyms, Claps, FX, etc) and over 500 Drum, Percussion & Synth loops in both Wav and Rex2 formats. (Over 1700 samples in total)
• Contains samples and loops created using sounds from the Gameboy, Elektron SID Station and a host of Retro 8 Bit emulators.
• All recorded at 24bit quality, normalised and edited for minimum hiss.

8 Bit Beats is available for $70 USD. A small demo pack with 22 wavs is available for download.

Visit Loop Cache for more information.

Some interesting things I found on June 9th, 2008:

# Intua BeatMaker

The first music creation studio for the iPhone and iPod Touch

BeatMaker introduces a new generation of mobile instruments and music creation software. Inspired by hardware beatboxes, loop samplers and software sequencers, it combines them to turn the iPod into a unique, inspirational software instrument.

# Playing the Building | An Installation by David Byrne – a 9,000-square-foot, interactive, site-specific installation by renowned artist David Byrne. The artist transforms the interior of the landmark Battery Maritime Building in Lower Manhattan into a massive sound sculpture that all visitors are invited to sit and “play.”

# Radiohead Nude remix on Sinclair ZX Spectrum – A remix of Radiohead's Nude played by a Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer, Epson dot matrix printer, HP Scanjet scanner, and an array of hard drives.

# Roland TB-303 # Roland TR-808 # Roland TR-909 – Pattern Library – Erik Zimmermann's "very happy" acid website

# Nine Inch Nails – New band, new tour sampler – I am proud to announce the final personnel lineup of nine inch nails for the foreseeable future. We’ve added, we’ve subtracted and we’ve wound up with unquestionably the strongest lineup I’ve EVER had.

# Music Thing: Chimera BC16 mini synth review – Tom Whitwell shares what he's thinking after a week with the Chimera BC16.

# A short review of the Tascam DR-1 – Brad Linder's friend and colleague Eugene Sonn recently purchased a Tascam DR-1 handheld digital audio recorder. He wanted to put it through the paces before deciding whether this low-cost recorder was a keeper.

# The Gerbil’s Revenge – Sasha Frere-Jones on Auto-Tune

Sacha writes:

No one has used Auto-Tune’s zero speed setting more consistently and successfully than the R. & B. singer T-Pain. Born Faheem Najm, in Tallahassee, he has become such a common guest on pop records that in a single week last year he was featured on four singles in the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, including the No. 1 song, Chris Brown’s “Kiss Kiss.” In the same way that the dry, flat drum sounds in Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” will forever say “mid-seventies,” T-Pain and Auto-Tune will forever remind people of the late aughts.

Some interesting things I found on May 16th, 2008:

# Speaker Synth – A five-speaker array with no external audio input, created by Lesley Flanigan. The only components in the system are the instrument's speakers, piezoelectric microphones, amplifying circuits, and the hands of the performer.

Lesley Flanigan with Speaker Synth in performance at Monkey Town, New York City, January 2008

From the project page:

Speaker Synth is played by positioning individual piezo microphones with their corresponding speakers and manipulating their associated on/off and volume controls to induce a variation of feedback effects. During the performance, samples from both Speaker Synth and a vocalist are captured and sequenced to build a dense sonic pallet of rhythms and melodies. The performance explores music making through structuring noise, highlighting relationships between analog and digital sound synthesis and between human voice and the voice of an instrument.

Check Lesley’s website for audio and video performances and more cool projects.

# Tonefloat – A bit of a mutant mobile milkbottle xylophone. Each bottle has a small electrical hammer behind it, which is 'played' by a midi keyboard or drum machine, and a few strings of wire 'n chips.

# Plague Bearer – designed to infect, corrupt and pervert a signal beyond recognition. It contains four Voltage-Controlled Resonant Bandpass filters that were designed with the goals of maximum signal alteration and maximum parameter controllability.

# Steppers – Steppers were designed to get kids up on their feet, moving, and playing with sound and music. An external sensor sandal is worn over a child’s shoes, noting each footstep, and, in real time, playing back sound effects/music to compliment their movement.

# MIDI Glockenspiel – Using an Arduino make a computer controller MIDI Glockenspiel.

# Mozart from Scrap-Made Mechanical Glockenspiel – A weight-driven automatic glockenspiel made from assorted recovered materials.

# Toriton plus prototype: first look – A more complex version of the Toriton musical instrument. It involves using five lasers instead of just the one.