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B LLOON S

by Matthew M. Conroy

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1.
Pianno 02:06
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2.
Recurse 2 02:01
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3.
The Jungle of 37th Avenue 01:17
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4.
Recurse 4 04:14
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5.
Desperate 02:12
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6.
Recurse 1 01:23
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7.
Guittar 04:05
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8.
Enveloppe 05:45
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about

Recorded in February 2024 in Seattle.

Track commentary:

Pianno

Source sound was recorded inside a spinet piano I had access
to briefly in Gig Harbor, Washington.

I cut the recording into chunks, then assigned two
measures to each chunk (proxies for "pitch" and "loudness"),
thus mapping each chunk to a point in 2D space.
I then created a path connecting all of these points using
a greedy, nearest neighbor method.
The path then determined the sequence of the chunks in the output.
This was done with different chunk length, and possibly
different starting points, and the layers mixed together.

Recurse 2

Experiments with a recursive composition idea: each sound
event triggers more sound events. Made with Csound.

The Jungle of 37th Avenue

A mix of very slowed-down field recordings I've made
of birds in my neighborhood recently.
The roaring sound is Steller's jays, and the plaintive
sound heard twice is flicker.

Recurse 4

Similar technique to Recurse 2. Made with Csound.

Desperate

This started with a bit of code I wrote to generate quasi-chaotic
sounds, very noisy. I then mixed the results "by hand",
changing speed of playback, and doing other pretty standard
things to try to give the track as much variety as possible
(for a noise track).

Recurse 1

Similar technique to Recurse 2 and 4. Made with Csound.

Guittar

This uses the same technique as track 1 (Pianno).
The source sound is harmonics played on my acoustic guitar
tuned to E flat/A/E flat/G/B/E flat.

Enveloppe

I wanted to see what repeated bits with changing envelopes
would sound like. Lots of layers, a bunch of
pitches all at a ratio of 4/3 to their neighbors.

When it was done, I hacked it quite a bit to shorten it and
reduce monotony and then added reverb by convolving it with
a recording I made in a stairwell I know that has 4+ seconds
of reverberation. I used my umbrella, and recorded the reverb
when I hit the floor with it. You can hear the umbrella
hit a number of times in the track: I'm not sure why.

credits

released March 2, 2024

license

all rights reserved

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Matthew M. Conroy Seattle, Washington

Seattle math person making and modifying sounds using custom code, Csound, homemade electronics.

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