Digital Album: Music of the Lake

In April of 2019 I was asked to collaborate on a video blog project with local artist Sybille Muschik. In addition to filming and editing, I was asked to write original music for the series. The initial brief was that it should be upbeat and interesting: nothing that would put people to sleep. As I spent more time at Sybille's lake-shore home, the lake itself became a focus of the music. Over a period of months, sounds that evoke water, and field recordings from the lake itself (and other bodies of water), were woven into instrumental songs that referenced aspects or experiences of the lake and surrounding watershed.

In the few weeks after our initial meeting I created a series of short musical sketches. These consisted of basic drum patterns, chord progressions on virtual Rhodes electric piano or synthesizer, synth or piano melodies, and bass guitar parts. I chose fifteen to present to Sybille, who then whittled them down to eight, including one that would become the theme song. I rejected a further two, finding them uninspiring in the end! Perhaps I'll share some of these sketches in the future.

After developing the initial six songs, I had a clearer idea of Sybille's tastes and the direction the music should go. I presented the remainder of the songs as finished pieces.

We never discussed how many songs there should be, but I tend to think in terms of albums (or EP's at the very least), and inspiration led me to eleven. Each one pushed me creatively in many ways. I played bass guitar on all but one track (the most I've ever used on an album). I strove to make sampled drum machines sound more like real drums: both sonically and in the way that they're programmed. I made synths sound like guitars, and played real guitar when it was within my abilities. I scoured my backlog of field recordings for water and nature sounds and collected more in the field. I even made an orchestral song without an orchestra! But perhaps the biggest challenge was to work in different styles and moods than I have before.

This is my first paying soundtrack job. The entire process has been fun and exciting. There's scope for a 'volume two' after a well-deserved break. The lake continues to inspire through the changing seasons and as my knowledge of its biodiversity expands.

Bandcamp Player:

Track by track commentary:

1. Sunbursts (Shoreline Theme)
Out of four sketches with potential for theme songs, this was the most energetic. The working title was simply 'theme 3, piano'. The twinkly arpeggio suggested the bright sunbursts reflecting off water on a sunny day. The short version of the theme is essentially what I would call the chorus. Coming up with a 'verse' to accompany it was a challenge.

2. Pond Skaters
This changed considerably from my sketch. The signature bubbly bell sound is based on a preset  from a virtual synth called Firebird. There is a random element to the patch, which means it sounds different every time the song plays live in my workstation or is rendered as a mixdown. In order to even come close to how a pivotal mixdown sounded, I had to 'print' multiple takes of the Firebird parts and choose the best passages. The title was inspired by a large swarm of whirligig beetles skating on the water.

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3. Blackbird Bend
In March, before I even started on this project, I spent an hour on a frosty morning in a wooded area by the lake, capturing the dawn chorus with my Tascam digital recorder. The principle songbirds I sought were the red-winged blackbirds. A snippet of that recording is the ambient backdrop for this song.

4. In the Rushes
This is the first song I came with up on my own initiative, as it were, having completed the first six Sybille had chosen from my sketches. After hearing Pan's Blessing she expressed a wish that there was more variation to the melody. Rather than rework that song, I wrote this instead. It's also the first piece written with a facet of the lake in mind: the rushes that grow along the shoreline, the water that laps between their stalks, the sound they make in the wind, and the insects and marine-life that live among them.

5. Spawning Beds
I was privileged to see (and film) trout spawning in the creek that runs out of the lake. This song is inspired by them, and the erratic way they swim in the fast-moving water above the weir. It was Sybille's idea to include a recording of the creek itself.

6. Surface Patterns
Since embarking on this project I couldn't help but write a laid-back piece evoking the swirling and undulating nature of water and the varied and mesmerizing patterns on the water's surface.

7. Pan's Blessing 
As it was spring when I started Music of the Lake, I took inspiration from the process of thawing, the return of plant and animal-life to the area, and the warm feeling of celebration it brings. The pan pipe sound was a last-minute addition inspired by the title.

8. Water Lilies (Yellow)
As the soundtrack was nearing completion, Sybille requested I write a piece about the water lilies found in the lake, of which there are two species. We went canoeing to photograph them (the yellow variety graces the album cover), and to check on their health. The yellow water lily is endemic to the lake, and in danger of being choked out by the white (or 'fragrant'), which is introduced. I chose an ethnic instrument akin to a kalimba, some soft Rhodes piano, and mellow synthesizer to represent the yellow species and its vulnerability.

9. Water Lilies (White)
For the white water lily, I chose a bolder palette: harps that evoke an air of royalty, strings that suggest the conquest of the lake by spreading leaves and rhizomes, and isolated twinkles from the synthesizer to represent white blooms breaking through the carpet of green. The chime tree that accompanies both water lily pieces represents motion, in this case the gentle undulation of lily pads upon the water.

10. Damselflies
At the peak of their hatching, you may see hundreds of brilliant blue damselflies hovering at lake's edge. This song is for them and their larger dragonfly cousins. If you detect a similarity in sound and style to 'In the Rushes' it's because both songs were made in tandem. With my Rhodes emulation running through a delay effect, several layers of rhythm and melody were built up to form the backbone of both songs.


11. Paddling
Sybille liked the idea of an orchestral piece, so I put my mind to it. Nothing came to me for about a week, and then I wrote and orchestrated this in about three hours flat (though it took longer to finesse and add finishing touches). The sounds of canoeing and loon calls were recorded on a camping trip with my band-mate, Gary Hartley.

Music of the Lake is available on bandcamp and all major digital distributors except G**gle.

Video - Shoreline Studio Video Blog Episode 1A:

You can check out the rest of Sybille Muschik's Shoreline Studio Video Blog here, and find out more about her work at www.sybillemuschik.com.

Digital EP: Atmospheres Part I

For some time now I've wanted to produce an album of ambient sound collages. Atmospheres Part I is the first step towards that goal. The soundscapes presented here are built from my ever-growing collection of field recordings, spiced up with minimal synthesizer sequences, circuit-bent sounds, and the occasional home-built instrument.

It's released under a Creative Commons license. The music may be used in non-commercial productions royalty free, on the condition that I'm credited.

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As usual, here is some track-by-track commentary:

1. Night Of The Cacti - In 2010 I was fortunate to visit a correspondent of mine, Jay Ellington Lee, at his home on the outskirts of Tucson, Arizona. Sadly, Jay passed away the following year. Among other things he was a composer for film, radio, and television, had a hand in designing the E-Mu modular synthesizer, and was an all-round creative boffin. I shall forever be grateful for his friendship, and the opportunity to see some of the Sonora Desert. This soundscape is based on recordings I made at his home, and is an attempt to capture my impressions of the desert, which is more alive than one might first imagine.

One evening Jay dug out some LED light boxes, which led to the both of us venturing out into the night to light and photograph cacti. Despite only having a digital point-and-shoot camera with me on the trip, I was pleased with the eerie and surreal results. I had those photographs in mind when I set about recording this track.

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2. Down In The Data Mines - 'Data mining' seems to be the gold rush of the new millenium, with companies like G**gle and FaceB**k collecting and storing data left, right, and centre. This track looks at the concept from the point of view of the virtual robots whizzing around the ethernet, doing the actual 'digging'. A lot of circuit-bent sounds, and a fridge, went into this one.

3. A Night In The Big Room - A restless night in an old asphalt testing lab in the industrial zone, marked by strange sounds and waking dreams, was the inspiration. Recordings from the actual location were used, along with some stand-ins and a few tape experiments to exaggerate the experience.

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4. Landwhales - A synthesizer sequence made with MS-20 Mini and the SQ-1 sequencer, rejected from an early version of 'Cacti', became the basis for this track.

5. Well Of Souls - The bulk of this track consists of sounds made by a faulty toilet flusher valve. It also features an out-of-tune piano a kind lady by the name of Cleo allowed me to sample. Incidentally, her wheezing dog makes an appearance on 'Landwhales.'

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New Track - Trans Earache Express

I spent a couple of days this week editing the backlog of train recordings I captured over the course of the year. This inspired me to do something creative with them, so I called upon the Korg Monotribe to create a sequence (recorded live) to accompany a particularly striking recording made from beside the train tracks in August. Everything came together quickly over two recording sessions, and here is the result: Trans Earache Express (a nod to Kraftwerk, in case you're wondering!).

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Other instruments used on this track include Korg MS-20 Mini, Roland HS-60, Freebird VST, and Shortcircuit sampler.

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Video: Microbes

An experiment to test some new hardware and software has yielded this cheerful little ditty about bacteria. I plan on releasing it as part of a three-track e.p. in the near future. I'd like to point out that it will not be on the forthcoming The Manitou album - that is an entirely different affair and will be far more accessible!

Featured gizmos include the Korg SQ-1 sequencer controlling the MS-20 (wobbly 'bassline,' panned left, and pink noise 'footsteps', panned center), the iVCS3 soft synth (bubbly swamp noises, panned center) Korg Monotribe (space drum-thing sequence, panned right), and Curtis for iPad granular synthesizer (Pterodactyl sounds). Some samples from an old educational film and a varied selection of my personal field recordings round it out. If you listen carefully you can hear one of the pebble-drop sounds I recorded at the City Pit, as described in this post.

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Field Recordings: City Junkyard Part 2

In May I returned to the junkyard behind the city gravel pit and made some more recordings. The huge petrol tanks I spoke of in my previous post weren't nearly as overgrown and I was able to investigate them further.

The petrol tanks, from the side.

In one end of the larger tank, I discovered a perforation that allowed me to slip the Zoom H1 digital recorder inside. The end of the tank being essentially a ten-foot sheet of metal, simply rapping on it with my knuckle was enough to set off an immense reverberation within. The microphones were able to capture the sound far more readily through the perforation. It also had the effect of filtering out some of the constant noise from the MDF plant. The plentiful birdsong, on the other hand, was accentuated.

Tech notes: upon reviewing my recordings, there was an exceptional amount of low frequency rumble from this tank. It was easily scrubbed by applying a High-Pass Filter at 129Hz. I kept some alternate takes with the HPF set at 96Hz, which sound much bigger but not as clean. A lot of the MDF plant's shenanigans is in that very low band.

The larger tank, you can just see the perforation in the shadow to the left.

By climbing on top of the 'smaller' tank I discovered an open hatch. The cover of this was still attached, and could be prised up slightly in order to clash against the lip and create more interesting reverberations. I was able to lower the Zoom right into the tank in this case. I did this free-hand at first, but quickly attached a strap in case of droppage. I wouldn't have been able to retrieve it if I'd let go!

The hatch. Apologies for the cropping - I was using my telephoto lens.

In the bottom of the tank is about a foot of liquid - I hesitate to call it water - organic matter that's fallen in, decayed and mixed with rainwater and whatever chemical residues remain from its petrol-holding days. Regardless, it was perfect for dropping small pebbles into and recording the results. I even recorded a couple of 'aaahs' into the bargain.

Tech notes: these recordings required some subtle noise-reduction as well as the HPF treatment. I found that the pebble drops leaned towards the higher end of the audio spectrum, so weren't negatively affected as much by the HPF as the other sounds.

The pipes. Most are metal, but you can see a couple of plastic/polymer ones in the upper left.

I also revisited the large pipes I recorded last time around. This time I placed the recorder inside and clapped my hands into them. It creates a much louder percussion and echo than my metal striker. I had better results if my hands were also inside the pipe.

The pipes are approx 18" in diameter, with walls an inch thick.

Tech notes: I recorded claps from both ends of the pipe: the one with the Zoom inside, and from the opposite. Those from the opposite end turned out more interesting. The plastic pipe had a richer sound, while the metal one had a more complex echo. Just the sound of my voice, annotating my recordings, came out sounding all 'muzzy' from the peculiar acoustic properties of the pipe interior. Some of it was low-frequency rumble, but I can't be sure how much was to do with the Zoom sitting in the pipe without something to dampen the vibration. These recordings all clipped, despite turning down the recording level, but a little cheating in post-production did wonders.

The view down one of the plastic pipes. Overexposed to show the interior walls.

A fun day out if ever there was one. No doubt you'll be hearing these sounds in future productions!

Field Recordings: City Junkyard

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I take a Zoom H1 digital recorder with me pretty much everywhere I go. My job often presents opportunities to record all sorts of interesting sounds. I also have an affinity for junkyards, and waste places where junk accumulates, and seek these out in my free time. They also offer up photo opportunities, and a lot of my album artwork is shot in these locations.

This summer I was able to visit a site that was new to me: the city junkyard, which is hidden from prying eyes behind the city gravel pit. This is home to anything the City Works dept. doesn't have room for in their yard: lengths of various sized pipe and culvert, pieces of machinery and equipment that are obsolete or 'in reserve,' temporary signage posts, old electrical boxes, pumps, dump-trucks in various states of disrepair, giant petrol tanks (the kind usually buried beneath petrol stations), and miscellaneous other odds and ends. It all adds up into junk heaven for someone like me.

One of many electrical boxes left to the elements.

I spent a couple of hours going from one end to the other with my camera, digital recorder, and my trusty striker: a valve rod from a car engine. I mostly concerned myself with the various lengths of pipe, many of them over a foot in diameter. One of the coolest sounds I captured was throwing pebbles into the largest of these. The giant petrol tanks were also a source of impressive sounds.

Pipes!

I found that placing the microphone in the mouth of the pipes yielded the most interesting results: it picked up the optimum amount of reverberation. The mic placed in front, a foot or so distant, gives a subtler effect, and above merely accentuates the sound of the striker.

More pipes!

Among the iron/steel pipes were some of comparable size made of thick plastic. These produced good pinging echoes. If you've ever tapped on an irrigation pipe you'll know what I mean. They're somewhat tricky to record at a decent volume, so more experimenting is in order!

The end of the larger petrol tank. Both were largely obscured by brush.

A little about the petrol tanks. There are two at this particular location, and both, as far as I could tell, were sealed - which is a shame, because there's one at another location I frequent that has a gaping hole in the side, turning it into an excellent reverb chamber. So, I wasn't sure if my recordings would pick up the tremendous reverb that results from hitting one. The sounds resulting from holding the mic near the end and striking it weren't all that impressive. I had better results micing the space between the two tanks, which are cylindrical and lie side by side. But the best sounds by far resulted from micing the 2" threaded pipe that leads into the tank (and lets the sound ouuut!).

Part of both tanks can be seen in this pic.

One downside to this location as a source of audio recordings is that it's situated next to an MDF plant, which produces a constant low rumble. Its frequency is such that when I scrub it from the audio it strips more of the lower frequencies away than is ideal. It's a constant battle to preserve as much of the original sound as possible while making it clean enough to be usable.

Field Recordings: Industrial Junk

A lot of inspiration for the electronic music I make comes from entropy. Specifically, the interaction between nature and man-made objects that have been left to decay, such as wrecked cars and industrial equipment. For example, several years ago I discovered some massive industrial 'Maloney transformers,' in a thicket of alders. I used them in the artwork for my album 'Circuit Zero':

Over the years I've collected field recordings of industrial junk being struck, scraped, kicked, etc... for use in my music. Unfortunately the Maloney transformers have long-since been scrapped, but they live on in photographs and some VHS-C footage.

I live in an area which used to be a gold-mining town, so it's rich with old relics lurking in the woods if you know where to look. There are also countless abandoned cars and pickup trucks that have been vandalised, crushed, or reduced to burnt-out shells.

Mid-June I discovered a long-abandoned industrial site. Not only was it littered with a collection of wrecked cars, but also remnants of industrial equipment of unknown purpose, concrete footings, and a shipping-container that had once been an operations shack. The site has yielded some interesting photographs and film, and a plethora of great sounds as well.

These striking objects appear to be furnace boxes. The bottom halves are lined with firebrick. The upper halves must have been used to heat some kind of liquid. Note the white material peeling away from the exterior: I'm fairly sure it's asbestos, so I didn't want to get too close to these things! The white marks on the lower-halves are paintball splatters.

This contraption is lying sideways. Inside is a cylindrical sieve-like contrivance, and just out of shot on the left is a large sprocket and chain assembly for rotating the cylinder. As you can see there are various openings through which reverb can be recorded. I expect I'll spend more time with this on future visits.

One of at least ten gutted cars dotted about the property. The charred remnants of anything flammable, including batteries, were found strewn about. These wrecks yield great sounds as well. The bonnet of this one still opens and closes (if not to factory spec!), and things like filler caps, leaf springs, loose bits of metal, etc... are always worth investigating. In the background you can see part of the truck container.

 Here's the interior of the container. Great reverb possibilities here too.

This is some kind of loading bay, set into the hillside. The opening in the top is at ground level beside a giant pile of white clay-like soil. It's wide enough to park a truck inside which I presume would have been loaded from the top. The alcove at the back is tall enough to stand up in, and produces nice shallow echoes. The sound varies depending where you stand within the structure. Hand-claps sound amazing. Lots of possibilities for this as well!

I have to wonder if this hopper used to stand on top of the loading bay. It's hollow and open at the wide end. In the lip of the part that touches the ground, one of the i-beams is partly severed at both ends. When struck, it produces a wonderful metallic ringing sound which reverberates inside the space.

I've shot some very basic HD footage here, which I hope to compile into a promo video for an upcoming single. More on that as things develop.

The Gentle Sound of Diesel Engines

I was shocked to realise I haven't made any field recordings since late November. But given that December and January are the coldest, meanest months of the year in this part of the world, it stands to reason that I'd want to shut myself away in the studio and not think about the outside world until said months have shoved off. As today was 8 degrees C, and promised a wealth of dripping sounds, I took my recorder with me on my walk.

I captured the sound of vehicles thundering across Johnston Bridge, which has a steel grid deck, and managed to capture the sound of the river lapping at ice on the pylon during a lull in traffic. I also captured a trio of idling diesel locomotives in the train yard. I'd heard them during the darker months and regretted not having a recording device at hand. I chanced to have the path to myself for ten minutes, with very little breeze or traffic, so the recordings turned out great. I've uploaded two of them to my account on Freesound.org, free to listen to or use however you wish.

Standing there recording locomotives through the chain-link fence, I got to pondering. Surely it must cost a lot in fuel to have these massive engines idling all day long (and possibly all night), not to mention the carbon emissions and noise pollution. They sit there chugging and hissing every day, and I haven't seen them moving for a while. Perhaps some learned reader can enlighten me as to why they aren't just fired up when needed rather than left running all hours of the workday.

In other news, I've mixed and mastered all the cues and sound effects for my soundtrack project. I'll be listening to them throughout the week for any last-minute changes and then they're done. What began as a side project turned into an all-consuming job. I'm immensely proud of the (almost) finished product, though. I challenged myself, achieved what I set out to do artistically, and the producer of the audio drama is delighted with my work. An extensive series of 'making of' essays will ensue once the show is released. The soundtrack itself will also be freely available, and interviews with cast and crew are also planned.

Field Recordings, Part 2

Here's part two of my article on field recordings - part one of which can be found in the archive. This will give you an idea how much work goes into preparing the sounds I've collected for use in audio projects.

Once I have the raw recordings transferred from the Zoom H1 to my hard drive, it's time to edit them. Because I record a lot of sounds these days, I've made it a habit to announce what I'm recording at the beginning of each file. Before I started doing this I had trouble keeping track - especially if I didn't get around to editing files right away.


Step 1: I load the raw file into Sound Forge, my audio-editor of choice. I then trim the ends a tiny bit to remove the click noises produced by the Zoom's record button. When recording, I take special care to make sure the audio doesn't 'peak' (a techy term for overloading the mic, resulting in a distorted recording). As a result, the raw recording is often very quiet. So I normalise (increase the volume of) the file to 98% (2% below 0db or maximum).

Step 2: I remove any rumble from the recording if it requires it. Some of the lower bass frequencies can muddy a recording, so as a rule of thumb I EQ out anything below 80hz, which is about as low as the human ear can hear. If there's traffic noise in the background or particularly troublesome bass frequencies I'll go as high as 225hz. Mild wind noise can sometimes be scrubbed out in this manner too.

Step 3: Dynamics/compression. Oftentimes with digital recording the sound you capture is but a shadow of what was heard at the time. Compression allows an increase in volume while preventing the high peaks (the parts of the sound that have hit the 98% volume ceiling) from distorting. It also lifts subtleties such as ringing sustains, reverb, etc... that are naturally present but too quiet to discern in the recording's raw state. The downside to this process is it makes the background noise louder as well. But luckily there's a secret weapon to deal with that in step 4. Compression works best for very loud sounds, such as metallic objects being struck. Softer sounds, such as birdsong and streams, etc... are usually left as-is.


Step 4: Noise reduction. Once I have my file optimised for volume, it's time to scrub out some of the annoying background noise. I use a program called Goldwave for this. Its noise reduction filter allows you to feed in a sample of the unwanted background noise and magically scrub those frequencies from the recording. It requires some restraint, though, because being heavy-handed with this feature can harm the recording rather than improve it. I listen carefully to each file and adjust the settings to reach a natural-sounding balance. In some cases I'll apply a preset called 'gentle hiss/rumble reduction' if noise reduction affects the sound too much. Unless the sound is too problematic to clean (in which case I fall back on some extra EQ or discard it) the end result is a nice clean-sounding file.

Step 5: The final step is to load the cleaned file back into Sound Forge for final editing. I cut out parts of the file that have microphone or wind noise, or other unwanted sounds that haven't been completely removed by the scrubbing process. This is also when I cut files containing multiple takes into single pieces or 'one-shots.' These can then be used as-is, or loaded into a sampler and played as an instrument.

I've worked with these techniques on and off over the years, but this is the first year I've combined them as an archival process. I'm learning things all the time about how certain sounds respond: how much compression to use here, and how much noise-reduction to use there. There's still no substitute for capturing the cleanest sound possible in the first place, but when you're at the mercy of a noise-polluted environment or a sudden gust of wind, a little software can do wonders.

Field Recordings, Part 1

Not a lot to report at the moment. I've been engaged in the tedious work of cleaning up the backlog of field recordings made over the spring and summer so that they're ready for use in the Tales Audio Drama, music, etc... So I thought I'd write a post about what that involves, what kind of sounds I've been collecting, and how I go about it.

I've made my own field recordings and collected 'found sounds' for years now, mainly for use in music. I started out capturing them with a mini-cassette recorder, which I still have floating around the studio somewhere - it's good for achieving a phone-like effect on spoken word samples. Eventually, though, I saw the need for stepping up the quality, so I switched to a Sony MZ-NH700 minidisc recorder. This served me well for many years, but many a recording was ruined by the sound of the motor on the thing, which kicked-in every few minutes to write data to the disc.

Now there are a host of pocket-sized digital recorders available that offer 16 to 24 bit stereo recording with no moving parts, and after much deliberation I settled on the Zoom H1. I've had it since the beginning of the year, and have found it to be invaluable. I use it with a specialised 'wind-screen' outdoors, and also have a custom-made hydrophone I use with it for underwater recordings.



I take the Zoom with me pretty much everywhere. My job as a renovator gives me access to some interesting places, such as industrial buildings, and I live in a semi-rural environment with plenty of hiking trails. Unfortunately said trails are not far from mill yards, the main highway, and the train station, so there's an ever-present layer of noise pollution in the background at varying degrees. Most of this can be scrubbed out, or at least dampened - something I'll cover in Part 2. But certain sounds are particularly stubborn. I've learned to avoid making any recordings if a lawnmower can be heard, for example. Another trick is finding natural noise dampeners, such as a hill or bank between you and the unwanted noise.

On my hikes, once or twice a week, I keep in mind some of the sounds I need for my production and make use of what I find at hand. I needed the sound of trees being destroyed, for instance, and was able to find several trees ranging from saplings to much larger ones that had blown over or fallen from the weight of last year's snow. These could be easily lifted and let drop to achieve the effect.

As well as these kinds of engineered sounds, I've recorded the likes of streams, birdsong, and squirrels. I've recorded extensive metallic sounds in a junk-yard in the middle of the woods (this was a very lucky find!), and rock and gravel noises in two different quarries. On one occasion I was even caught in a thunderstorm with the Zoom to hand. Bliss!

The one problem with this undertaking is that sounds are relatively easy to capture; they pile up, a bit like digital photographs, in no time at all. But editing and archiving them is a long and drawn-out process. I'll take you through the editing stage in Part 2.