Week2-CC1-Paper Cuts

* Apologies to all those who visited whilst I had the wrong samples up today (Wednesday 14th). The intended samples are now posted (late night, long story ...)

http://www.comparisonics.com/color.html(accessed 14/3/07) Comparisonics Corporation

Guess the song?

Who would've thought audio recording required so much paperwork? Seriously - I found this exercise really enjoyable.

All paper noise was recorded with my Rode NT2 condenser microphone in my bedroom in the next room to my home studio using Cubase. My wife made the paper noise whilst I recorded it. Then I forgot about it for a few hours and came back to it with fresh brain and ears. I reviewed the samples and snipped them into shape, discarding any dead air and unwanted offcuts (normally I would keep all unused noise on a muted 'scratch' track for future possibilities).
After reviewing and tweaking the gain here and there, I wasn't happy with a scrunch and wanted to add a rustle/crinkle and heavy rub, so I set a rough level, hit record and headed for the bedroom myself. Not ideal but the results are fine for the purpose of this exercise.
Naturally, I wound up with heaps more material than I was going to need (for now) so it was time to begin experimenting and culling (no mercy!)

Tuesday evening I got back to it and after spending the day listening to people at uni discussing the boundaries of what we were supposed to be doing in this exercise, I decided to do what was asked on the paper for week two. Basic tape techniques. Vary the duration, colour, amplitude and pitch contour. I could have spent hours splicing and dicing and getting out every effect available, but I've kept it simple and here are the results.

It was late on Tuesday night when I did a crash course in online data storage accounts, uploading and linking files from one place to my blog page - all part of being a musical technologist utilising current technoloies in the name of musical technology I guess!

NB: For the moment, these files are all waves to preserve audio quality. Sorry for those who have slow data speeds. I will put up links to MP3's, and for those of you who can play them and want to preserve audio integrity whilst still squishing audio files, FLAC format. Enjoy the Cuts ;-p

The first sample sounded to me a little like something familiar. Not quite a cash register ...

SlowTypewriter.wav

She Doesn't love me! When I listened back to this one 30 hours after recording it, someone ripping up a 'Dear John' letter before reaching for the scotch was the first thing that sprang to mind(!) -

UnwantedLetter[47].wav

A slow rip dropping to almost no volume at moments but with random peaks -

PeakyCrinkles[99].wav

A short rip, named onamontepaedically (hope I spelt that right!) as is the next one -

Tzzzzzzzzaa[46].wav

A short rip with a different inflection -

Zaaaaaaup[11].wav

... and finally, Paper Saw - a rub that sounds a bit like sawing -

PaperSaw[84].wav