Re: [-empyre-] microsounders / software

[Glenn Bach <gbach@csulb.edu>]

Nemo Nox wrote:
> but could
> not find references to the software used


Nemo,

My setup is at home, so let's see if I remember what I have used: Bitmap 
Player, Bitmaps and Waves, Spectrogram (?), Coagula, Sound 2d Warper, 
AudioPaint, SayIt by Analog X, et al.  All are freeware (or shareware), 
and I think are all available at database audio 
(http://www.databaseaudio.co.uk).

If not, a google search will turn up the sites.  There are a few more 
sites for spectrographic software, but I have the link at home, so I'll 
try to send it tomorrow.

In my past digital work, I used all of these as free and simple methods 
of databending, which also included opening up all types of files in 
SoundForge, and manipulating .raw files in Photoshop.  There is a 
discussion list for databending at yahoogroups: 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/databenders.

When I was more actively involved in manipulating digital files, I would 
use these freeware apps in long daisy chains--feeding a signal from one 
to the other to the next until the resulting sound became unrecognizable 
from its original source.  One simple chain would yield enough raw sound 
for innumerable compositions.  The resulting sounds then were flipped 
back into image and words, then reflipped, and back again.  I suspended 
and wove these fragments into slowly evolving/devolving drones, 
punctuated by isolated sonic events.

Trace mentioned that granular synthesis offers a paradox: work that 
focuses on microscopic levels of sound suggests vast expanses of space. 
 The same holds true for both constructive microsound (building 
compositions grain by grain) or de/reconstructive (reworking sound 
sources by repeatedly zooming in to increasingly magnified levels, 
"mining the noise-floor" to cop a term from Kim Cascone), and work that 
fuses both.

I will have to share Trace's impatience, however, with the current 
tropes of classic microsound music, including my own, at least as a 
listener.  While I appreciate "grain traveling, glitch, and broken 
warez," I'm trying to find some kind of hybrid for my own work.  I'm a 
big fan of Erik Davis, who explores the mystical underpinnings of 
digital culture (http://www.techgnosis.com).  In a little paper I'm 
writing, I'm looking at the laptop computer as a metaphor for 
pre-digital myths and avatars: the laptop as house, vessel, and loom; 
allowing for alchemical and shamanistic reads of laptop composition and 
performance.  These connections have a poetic resonance for me that open 
up new possibilities for hybridization, as well as the chance of 
reconnecting back to cultural and spiritual threads that predate the 
modern and the digital.

I think one promising solution, for me, lies in the introduction of 
purely analog sounds from the real world (cafe sounds, bells, river 
water, naturally occuring drones) into a compositional conversation with 
the highly abstracted, non-referential timbres of the digital.  So that 
the abstract digital can be nudged to reference the analog, and the 
field recordings can be unattached from their real world link.  This 
highly simplified binary relationship will hopefull serve as some sort 
of grounding from which I will be able to find new manifestations of 
sonic reality and poetic reverberation.  I've only had a few concerts 
and a handful of studio compositions where I've actively tried to 
concoct a hybrid, so it's still early in the process.

And, as I mentioned earlier, my current efforts are focused on my sound 
drawings, on which I work in silence, actually, in an attempt to access 
memories of sound, palimpsests, and sound-inspired mark-making.  So, my 
audio in a holding pattern right now.  I'll be performing this Saturday 
with two highly analog musicians, G.E. Stinson and Steuart Liebig, so 
we'll see what kinds of digital/analog mutations I'll introduce to the trio.

Anyway, Nemo, I hope I answered your question about software.  Trace can 
give you more info on the MIDI, webmix, and VJ angles, of which I know 
very little.

Best,

G.