June 9, 2012
In Search Of Hidden Sounds...
by Chris Randall
After bagging the completely procedural algorithmic album idea (which turned out to be a lot more fun to think about than to actually create, as it happens) I started pondering my next release in earnest a couple weeks ago.
And we'll leave aside for now the concept of earnestly pondering.
What I decided to do was an EP with vocals (which is unusual for me in the September of my years), where the music itself, while heavily programmed and produced, would be sourced entirely from found sounds and home-made musical instruments. To that end, I purchased this book to get me started. As it turns out, the word "ultimate" might be mis-applied, as roughly 2/3 of the book is concerned with cigar-box guitars. There are, however, some interesting ideas in it, provided you look beyond the author's fascination with all things jug band. Virtually everything in the book can easily be done with various tutorials and pictorials on-line, but it's kind of handy to not have to drag my laptop out to the garage.
Anyhow, the first instrument I built was what my brain has decided is called a Dookie Stick for some strange reason, but what is actually a Diddly Bow, the simplest home-made stringed instrument. Turned out pretty cool, although his directions differ rather greatly from the ones I built when I was a kid.
The music itself, despite starting from the simplest home-made electro-acoustic instruments, will follow my normal abstract techno production techniques. I've been thinking about attempting a combination of the ultra-spare and dirty early Chess blues sound and modern IDM for a couple years now, and this will be my first stab at it. We'll see how it turns out, I guess.
What's your favorite home-made electro-acoustic instrument? If you use found sounds in your music, what sources do you gravitate towards? Do you mic things or use a transducer? Do you have any production tricks for this sort of thing?
And we'll leave aside for now the concept of earnestly pondering.
What I decided to do was an EP with vocals (which is unusual for me in the September of my years), where the music itself, while heavily programmed and produced, would be sourced entirely from found sounds and home-made musical instruments. To that end, I purchased this book to get me started. As it turns out, the word "ultimate" might be mis-applied, as roughly 2/3 of the book is concerned with cigar-box guitars. There are, however, some interesting ideas in it, provided you look beyond the author's fascination with all things jug band. Virtually everything in the book can easily be done with various tutorials and pictorials on-line, but it's kind of handy to not have to drag my laptop out to the garage.
Anyhow, the first instrument I built was what my brain has decided is called a Dookie Stick for some strange reason, but what is actually a Diddly Bow, the simplest home-made stringed instrument. Turned out pretty cool, although his directions differ rather greatly from the ones I built when I was a kid.
The music itself, despite starting from the simplest home-made electro-acoustic instruments, will follow my normal abstract techno production techniques. I've been thinking about attempting a combination of the ultra-spare and dirty early Chess blues sound and modern IDM for a couple years now, and this will be my first stab at it. We'll see how it turns out, I guess.
What's your favorite home-made electro-acoustic instrument? If you use found sounds in your music, what sources do you gravitate towards? Do you mic things or use a transducer? Do you have any production tricks for this sort of thing?
34 comments:
I'm not much of a string player. But I am a woodwind player. This summers project is making all sorts of alternate tuned transverse flutes using PVC pipe.. I may even try a PVC "clarinet" for S+G. I have a whole gaggle of world and folk woodwinds, so it'll be interesting to see how well they stay in tune with themselves compared to the world instruments.
sounds cool. i applaud the combining of the things that might seem disparate. sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't but there is only one way to find out.
a friend of mine is a guitar player and makes some killer electronic stuff and slowly (years) he has worked the guitar into 1/10 of what he does with his electronic productions and it's usually pretty awesome and sometimes is damn incredible and sometimes is just a big miss.. but it's the thing that he's strived for for a long long time and by forcing himself to have a go at it it's improved his process and the results even when no guitar is in the mix. i guess he just thinks differently about it all.
doing that kind of thing w/found sounds and home made instruments is another kettle fo fish of course but i think it's a similar kind of magic and steadfast determination to get it to work.
i don't have a fav electroacoustic instrument but do have a field recorder and walk around the house recording stuff now and then or take it on a bike ride and keep my ears open.. i do like the random sheets of metal and HVAC duct metal work for dinging around to make sounds. my only production trick is try and capture the sound well at the source and some times use mallets. plates and pots and pans with a bit of water in them make some weird sounds some times..
a friend of mine is a guitar player and makes some killer electronic stuff and slowly (years) he has worked the guitar into 1/10 of what he does with his electronic productions and it's usually pretty awesome and sometimes is damn incredible and sometimes is just a big miss.. but it's the thing that he's strived for for a long long time and by forcing himself to have a go at it it's improved his process and the results even when no guitar is in the mix. i guess he just thinks differently about it all.
doing that kind of thing w/found sounds and home made instruments is another kettle fo fish of course but i think it's a similar kind of magic and steadfast determination to get it to work.
i don't have a fav electroacoustic instrument but do have a field recorder and walk around the house recording stuff now and then or take it on a bike ride and keep my ears open.. i do like the random sheets of metal and HVAC duct metal work for dinging around to make sounds. my only production trick is try and capture the sound well at the source and some times use mallets. plates and pots and pans with a bit of water in them make some weird sounds some times..
I quite like the Diddly Bow (Seasick Steve does some pretty wicked work on that particular instrument), but I absolutely love the sound of the mbira. I don't know what it is, but to my ears it's one of the most beautiful sounds humans have come up with. I have one I made out of street sweeper bristles, and another I made from an old rake. I've got a big plastic water-cooler bottle that I want to use as the body for another one. Sort of a double-bass mbira.
Vocals! It has been too long. Color me excited.
"Color me". Huh. Is that one of those mildy-racist sayings that we have in common usage?
"Color me". Huh. Is that one of those mildy-racist sayings that we have in common usage?
Now I know why you were after some good contact mics...
I think a combination of contact mic and a nice omni mic right in close is a great way of capturing electro-acoustic instruments. The contact mic gives you the full resonant sound of the body and the omni gives you the detail and intimacy, specially when the instrument is played delicately...
For me the fun begins when you layer two instruments together in a sampler. Using a sampler also means you can get away with a poorly made instrument... it only has to play single notes and tuning doesn't have to be spot on...
My next little project is dismantling a cheap kids accordion to get to the metal reeds and pluck them like a kalimba. Mix that with some kind of mallet hitting wood sound...
One day I'd love to create a large resonant box with various tuned pieces of metal, tensioned wire, glass, nails, anything and every thing that vibrates sonically. Played with mallets, drum sticks, violin bow. With a couple of contact mics inside. An electro-acoustical tool box for sampling!
- Hugo
I think a combination of contact mic and a nice omni mic right in close is a great way of capturing electro-acoustic instruments. The contact mic gives you the full resonant sound of the body and the omni gives you the detail and intimacy, specially when the instrument is played delicately...
For me the fun begins when you layer two instruments together in a sampler. Using a sampler also means you can get away with a poorly made instrument... it only has to play single notes and tuning doesn't have to be spot on...
My next little project is dismantling a cheap kids accordion to get to the metal reeds and pluck them like a kalimba. Mix that with some kind of mallet hitting wood sound...
One day I'd love to create a large resonant box with various tuned pieces of metal, tensioned wire, glass, nails, anything and every thing that vibrates sonically. Played with mallets, drum sticks, violin bow. With a couple of contact mics inside. An electro-acoustical tool box for sampling!
- Hugo
Reminds me of Amon Tobin, or that guy who plays plants on YouTube. Maybe even Waits' "Bone Machine". Looking forward to hearing it. (Also not surprised the procedural thing was unsatisfying - that's how I've always found it to be.)
I usually use regular mics rather than contact mics, but that is largely because I haven't had the chance to use or own good/non-terrible contact mics. Let us know if you find good ones.
As for production tips, I'd say if you have experience recording normal acoustic instruments, that will apply more than anything else. In my experience, most of the "homemade" instruments tend to be quieter than their refined acoustic brethren.
You can always change any sound with processing to be whatever you want.
Also far better to play them live than sample them. Because when transposed, some of the inharmonic stuff that makes the home instrument sound so unique starts to become more prominent and hard to keep in tune/in a mix. But if you go all minimal/Chess/Bone Machine it may not be an issue.
I've done this type of thing a few times, and I often use the found sounds to "badly" emulate their synthy brethren. PVC pipe thumps are close enough to square-wave synth bass to be interesting. Acoustic guitar + ebow can make some nice ethereal pads. Found percussion + compression = IDM/EBM drums. And so on.
I usually use regular mics rather than contact mics, but that is largely because I haven't had the chance to use or own good/non-terrible contact mics. Let us know if you find good ones.
As for production tips, I'd say if you have experience recording normal acoustic instruments, that will apply more than anything else. In my experience, most of the "homemade" instruments tend to be quieter than their refined acoustic brethren.
You can always change any sound with processing to be whatever you want.
Also far better to play them live than sample them. Because when transposed, some of the inharmonic stuff that makes the home instrument sound so unique starts to become more prominent and hard to keep in tune/in a mix. But if you go all minimal/Chess/Bone Machine it may not be an issue.
I've done this type of thing a few times, and I often use the found sounds to "badly" emulate their synthy brethren. PVC pipe thumps are close enough to square-wave synth bass to be interesting. Acoustic guitar + ebow can make some nice ethereal pads. Found percussion + compression = IDM/EBM drums. And so on.
while not strictly electro-acoustic, i once strapped some pickups on a bicycle frame which sensed the spokes going around. put the whole thing up on a rickety stand and pedal like mad.
then put some contact mics / transducers on your head to capture a nice crunch when you fall over.
that's what i did, anyway, except for having the foresight to mic my head.
then put some contact mics / transducers on your head to capture a nice crunch when you fall over.
that's what i did, anyway, except for having the foresight to mic my head.
My only purely acoustic homemade instrument was a fretless ukelele thing that used a dried gourd as a resonator. I helped a friend make a slide guitar, where the bridge was pressing down on the skin of a snare drum, and that sounded much better.
You may want to look at the various publications of the long departed Experimental Musical Instruments journal, for homemade instruments that are closer to your aesthetics:
link [windworld.com]
Granted, there are plenty of wacky hippie instruments in the EMI stuff that you would want to steel clear of (i.e things with horns going in every which direction, played by a fat naked guy in body paint while riding a three wheeled bicycle). There are also bowed cables that are several hundred feet long, Aeolian harps, and other things that skew more towards the spooky avant-garde than the old Ozark Mountain tradition of song storyin'. One of the EMI books has an introduction by Tom Waits, if that helps put things into perspective.
You may want to look at the various publications of the long departed Experimental Musical Instruments journal, for homemade instruments that are closer to your aesthetics:
link [windworld.com]
Granted, there are plenty of wacky hippie instruments in the EMI stuff that you would want to steel clear of (i.e things with horns going in every which direction, played by a fat naked guy in body paint while riding a three wheeled bicycle). There are also bowed cables that are several hundred feet long, Aeolian harps, and other things that skew more towards the spooky avant-garde than the old Ozark Mountain tradition of song storyin'. One of the EMI books has an introduction by Tom Waits, if that helps put things into perspective.
"things with horns going in every which direction, played by a fat naked guy in body paint while riding a three wheeled bicycle"
And now I have the name of my next project.
bb
And now I have the name of my next project.
bb
I totally forgot about Windworld. Thanks for reminding me. Man, that site has been around for _years_.
-CR
-CR
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