Alice in Noiseland

I am currently working on a sound project with ONO based loosely on the theme of Alice in Wonderland. P.Michael, travis, Jesse and Rebecca have been doing some recording; this morning I received an email with instructions from P.Michael:

"Please download and cut the tracks up in segments and add some Shannon to them then send them back to us."

I listened to the track and copied it into Garageband. In the meantime, I used High-C to generate some loops that I might use in the piece. I started generating sounds in High-C by using "Alice" as a basic structure and point of departure. Working with the alphabet series in mind, I quickly wrote out the name and began to copy, paste, sequence, and invert the text to come up with the following spontaneous pattern. At this point I worked quickly, visually, and intuitively to generate material.
This is what it sounds like:
Alice 1 by bledwhite



From there, I cropped one section and copied it into another file in order to try to develop an interesting sounding pattern and/or discern certain parts that had an interesting sound quality:
This is what it sounds like:
Alice 2 by bledwhite



While listening to the above sequence I found one small part interesting and decided to replicate it into a sequence. I also added different colors for different pitches using the Show Pitch with Color option under the View tab:
This is what it sounds like:
Croak FFF by bledwhite



I liked both the look of the simple "F" pattern and the dirty rhythmic croaking sound that was developing. I removed the pitch colors and began working to further develop the pattern visually and to create a longer slightly more complex sequence:
Sounds like:
Croak FFF modulated sequence by bledwhite



At this point I was working both visually and in terms of sound. I decided I liked the kind of purring sound that was emerging in with the croaking locusts and worked to build that development. Visually I was interested in creating a more dense pattern with color.
Sounds like:
Croak FFF modulated sequence derivative by bledwhite



Once I finalized the above sequence I made it into a Pattern using the option under the Effects tab:

Sounds like:
Croak FFF modulated sequence derivative looptest by bledwhite



Finally, I made the above sequence into a Waveform using the option under the Effects tab. With this, I copied the wave and layered it in different keys on top of one another. The visual data is lost and I am left with three modulating bands of color. It's interesting because these most simple visual forms equate with the most complex of the entire soundscape development.
Sounds like:
Croak FFF modulated sequence derivative looptest waveform by bledwhite



I will use some combination of these sound files in the ONO collaboration and also in some other solo pieces. For example, I really look forward to using the basic Croak-FFF as the bottom to a _bledwhite_/Leatherettes song.



All original images, text, soundtracks, etc. that constitute the blog, "bledwhite" by Shannon Rose Riley are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. For more information, contact the artist at misstranslation@gmail.com