(Sharbaugh)
Michael Ash Sharbaugh [ https://soundcloud.com/michael-ash-sharbaugh ]: synthesizers and 'found sounds'
Composed and Recorded ca. June 21, 2021.
sm4 [32WAV].
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"I bought some new effects plug-ins tonight -- W. A. Productions' "Orchid" chorus and "Satyrus" distortion, and wanted to try them out. Rather than simply record random sounds and audition the plug-ins, I thought, "why not compose a piece?" I remembered I hadn't participated in the 'junto' for a few weeks, so checked this week's assignment out: "Compose the sound of a single imaginary insect."
Well ... I missed the word, "single," and, instead, recorded a whole swarm, as per the working title of the assignment.
I laid down a single synth pad note, and changed random sections of its pitch upward to mimic the 'singing' of an "imaginary insect." I then copied and pasted several copies, and tended to time-expanding them all by different ratios (anywhere from 163% to 700%). I ran them through my new plug-ins, distortion first.
Pondering how an insect typically makes noise (by rubbing external body parts), I then took two [or three] different samples of squeaky and creeky doors, and layered them alongside the synth pad notes. I time-expanded the doors by a similar range of ratios, and took (cut-and-pasted, and, yet, more time-expansion) the most insect-like sounds that were interesting, and tried to construct a single pattern from them.
I spent about 4 hours aligning the tracks to rival an insect-like sound pattern.
Oh, and it's intended to be a swarm, and not a single insect, but that should not matter: the disquiet junto progenitors and members and participants have fine imaginations, and will probably forgive me, instead granting the 24-second sound I composed, in effect, a single insect."
~ Michael
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"More on this 494th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Insect Menagerie (The Assignment: Record a 20-second clip of the sounds of an insect that you yourself have invented) — at: https://disquiet.com/0494/
Thanks to Tobias Reber and Musikfestival Bern for collaboration on this project. More on the festival at:
https://www.musikfestivalbern.ch/
https://www.instagram.com/musikfestival_bern
https://www.facebook.com/musikfestivalbern
More on the Disquiet Junto at: https://disquiet.com/junto/
Subscribe to project announcements here: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0494-insect-menagerie/
There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.
The image associated with this project is by dr_relling, and used thanks to Flickr and a Creative Commons license allowing editing (cropped with text added) for non-commercial purposes:
https://flic.kr/p/6RPmAq
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/"
~ Marc Weidenbaum
