someone who's doing some things
I don’t get as much time to do field recording these days, but I do love sounds and I’m fascinated by them.
It was quite interesting actually. I filled a lot of gaps in my knowledge about modulars. However, it still hasn’t made me really want one. I can understand the ideas behind them and I can understand why they are popular, but I still don’t want to commit to getting one. Perhaps it’s because I’ve never actually got my hands on one so I’m not hooked as yet. Who knows.
Still, it was interesting to watch and hear some of the views of a few artists I really respect.
I got sent this picture from the Beautiful Octopus Club. It’s pretty awesome, so I had to post it. Never knew I had wings for one thing!
This was a lovely little event, and when I say little I really do mean it. The audience was tiny in a tiny little basement bar at the Ace hotel in Shoreditch. It’s a nice venue though. The performance lasted a hour and was very interesting and used a lot but not all the equipment.
I find it interesting to watch a modular performance like this to see how the music is actually generated and sustained. It isn’t like normal performances at all of course. Quite different indeed.
The arrangements were lovely, with people’s names on their booked seats.
And on each seat was a thing called a “dream machine”, which was a strange light contraption sitting on a turntable. It made an interesting effect though.
So it was an enjoyable evening, good fun, interesting to watch and different environment too.
This is a great idea in my opinion. It is a collaboration between the British Library, the National Trust, the National Trust for Scotland and audioBoom Ltd to create an archive of recordings of the seaside. It’s a wonderful idea and I’m hoping to get to submit some stuff for it at some point this year.
I’ve been listening to Big Finish’s Survivors series one again and this time in a very quiet environment. One of the things that’s struck me is that the sound design on this audiobook is actually amazing. The attention to detail in it was something that I found amazing when I listened to it closely and without distraction, interruption or noise. From the reworking of the original soundtrack to the atmospheric incidental audio and music, to the sound effects and stereo field. It’s very impressive indeed.
Of course it does make me realise just how poor my normal listening environment is. It makes me realise just how much I’m missing from a lot of the audio I listen to, or rather, consume, as I think that it’s more like that than real listening, or deep listening.
I really like the Ototo board from Dentaku. It’s fun for trying things out and experimenting with ideas. I’ve just bought three new sensors for it, an additional light sensor, a pressure / force sensor, and a ribbon sensor. They’re all very nicely made and to the same high standard as the ones I already have, and, they’ve already been very useful.
But using the board has made me start to think about other aspects of the board. In the Dentaku faq about Ototo it mentions that they’re looking into a way of changing the sounds on the board itself. I think that this would be very useful indeed, as would being able to map the different sensor inputs on any given sound as well. I think it could be done with a simple app either for the desktop of mobile, but it would make the board a lot more useful.
I am Ashley Elsdon 