This week's prompt finds me experimenting with using very different tools that I normally do. It would seem that Mr. Murch had tape recorders with variable speed controls for both record and playback functions. My normal field recorder does not have this functionality (well, at least I couldn't figure it out if it does). I know this sort of manipulation can be done after the fact, but I wanted to experience what it is like using the precise method for creating a reverberant space which he describes in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_py6jVyOqUY
All sounds in this track are taken from his video and there was no post production other than a slight bit of EQ to keep my ears from totally bleeding. I recorded the playback of the video on my iMac using SmartRecord on my iPhone. This app has the ability to both slow and speed up both recording and playback, but it's max speed is 2X. So After I recorded the initial recording at 2X, I then bounced that over to my iPad recording with the same software also running at 2X. This got me into the realm of the 4x recording he mentions. All of these recordings were done over the air in my studio space which doesn't have much going on in the way of acoustic treatment. After these initial two recordings, I began bouncing faster and faster, and then slower and slower. I was greatly irritated by the exceptionally aliased recordings complete with stair stepping and piercing artifacts. But, these were being played and recorded, repeatedly, with tinny consumer-level speakers on portable devices not known for their fidelity. I did eight takes on each device for a total of sixteen; half speeding up, and then half slowing down (.5X is the slowest it could go). After that I ended up with the screechy drone that runs in the middle channel of this. I captured it using my MKH20 pointed towards the iPad's speakers. I didn't care for it by itself and decided I'd bring two of the early iterations into play in the left and right channels panned hard each way. I really liked hearing my breath, which was frustrated as I did this, in the recordings. That and my clumsy efforts to press play and record on multiple devices concurrently led to some thumps and bumps that I also like in the final mix. I was surprised to find that once I'd sped things up that many times, and bounced the recordings that many times, there was no rescuing the human vocal data of the original recording. No matter how much I slowed things down on the drone, it droned on.
More on this 229th weekly Disquiet Junto project (“Fourth Worldizing: Use a favorite trick of legendary sound designer Walter Murch”) at:
http://disquiet.com/0229/
Thanks to Steve Ashby (ashbysounds.com) and Jakob Thiesen (jakobthiesen.flavors.me) for beta testing it.
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
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