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Messages - Guy Birkin

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31
OTHER MUSIC / Re: What are you listening to?
« on: March 07, 2011, 11:00:50 am »
The Automatics Group - Auto17
Peter Broderick - How They Are http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=safO91oH-zg

32
interesting! i think i remember reading somewhere (or maybe it was a david attenborough documentary :)) that rainforest jungle fauna that rely on sound for mating, marking territory etc, have evolved in such a way that each species takes up its own frequency spectrum so as not top disrupt other species in their day to day lives.

kind of like a nature's FM broadcast licensing system.

I remember something like this too. The only reference I can find is Schafer's Soundscape (Chapter 16 / Rhythms in the Natural Soundscape, pp. 229-231), where he discusses the acoustic activity of birds and two species of frogs. The lower-frequency bullfrogs show a pattern that overlaps the other two, but the activity of the higher-frequency chirping frogs never overlaps with the similar-frequency bird calls. Schafer says:

"...as the voices of both sets of performers occupy a similar high-pitched range, they would, if sounded together, tend to mask one another, thus reducing the clarity obtained by vocalizing in rotation. The bullfrogs, on the other hand, with deep voices, offer no competition for either performer. They continued to croack intermittently through both day and night."

But I also vaguely recall some more general theory (maybe via Attenborough) which suggested that in densely-populated ecologies each species occupies a niche in the audio spectrum. Would love to track it down again - anyone else remember this?

33
ART / Re: watching
« on: February 27, 2011, 06:55:20 am »
On Wednesday, I went to see Efterklang play at the Queen's Social Club, Sheffield (UK). Instead of a support band, there was a screening of the film An Island, directed by Vincent Moon. It's a great little piece about the band, starting with lots of field recording around a barn and in the forest, including performances of their music with local residents and schoolkids. Lovely, heartwarming stuff. There is also the opportunity to host your own private-public screening of the film.

http://anisland.cc/home/

34
STUDIO + RECORDING TECHNIQUES / Re: Scale, chords, tempo & time signature.
« on: February 15, 2011, 09:03:47 pm »
I love tracks in odd time signatures - 3/4, 5/4, 7/4 and even 11/4. I think the best ones work well when you barely notice the oddness of the time signature, i.e. when you don't have to count!. 12/8 is great to work with because you can alternate the feel from 3/4 to 4/3!
Tracks that disrupt a regular time pattern with measures inserted are also appealing, I find. Often thought it might be interesting to make electronic music with similar structures to odd-time guitar-based stuff, e.g. Slayer, Metallica, Tool (how many times have those names come up on the 12k forum?!)

With guitar scales, apart from the standard western ones, I like the symmetrical eastern/arabic type scales (as used by Dick Dale in Misirlou). These tend to be good for drone-based stuff in a single key.

35
SELF PROMOTION / Re: Semi
« on: February 15, 2011, 08:42:37 pm »
Good stuff. Read about it on Disquiet; it sounded like my cup of tea. I like this kind of simple structure, and it works very well in this case.

36
ACOUSTIC ELECTRIC / Re: Lap Harps
« on: February 14, 2011, 12:58:58 pm »
I'm still trying to find one of the Russian or Belarus models much like the one in the picture (above in earlier post)

As I understand it, the zither I linked to from Hobgoblin is essentially the same construction as the Russian ones - they both have 15 steel strings, so they should be fine for use with an EBow. Do you mean that you want that brand (Nepenenoyka) specifically?

37
ACOUSTIC ELECTRIC / Re: Lap Harps
« on: February 13, 2011, 12:41:22 pm »

38
COMPUTER MUSIC / Re: Looking for a good time stretching program...
« on: February 07, 2011, 08:49:06 pm »
I've tried Paulstretch but I keep getting unbelievable static? Like I'm overdriving it or its clipping?!?

Joe

Try lowering the output volume. I had a similar problem with loud source files - the output waveforms had lots of clipping, and this solved it.

39
OTHER MUSIC / Re: What are you listening to?
« on: February 05, 2011, 11:13:42 am »
@c - Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom
various artists -
Mark Harris - The Boy Observes the Ocean

40
ART / Re: the beer thread
« on: January 17, 2011, 08:09:19 am »
Recently had some lovely beers from the new Coppice Side Brewery, Heanor, Derbyshire (UK), a micro-brewery run by Chris Turner. Scary Crow (5.0%) is a good pale ale and the latest one is Nottingham Blonde (4.0%). Good to see a small local venture doing well.

41
ART / Re: the photography thread
« on: January 10, 2011, 11:29:58 am »
any thoughts here about film scanners or ideas on how to digitize film negatives
being able to do panoramic cameras would be a plus

Land Titles: A few years ago I was paid to scan 35mm slides, and I was provided with a negative/slide scanner for the job. I guess that's the tool you need, but I doubt that they're cheap. Sorry I can't provide more information on makes, models and prices, but I'm sure you could do some searching yourself. The advantage of these scanners over normal ones is their very high resolution and their methods of holding the film in a stable way. Good luck!

Here's a few recent shots from Sneinton woods again. The first one is a long-exposure image of the moon, with camera shake. Weirdly, it makes it look closer than the trees instead of further away. Two others are of street lights through the trees with camera blur (notice the 50Hz flicker of the sodium lamps).






42
ART / Re: Reading!
« on: January 10, 2011, 10:52:53 am »
R. Murray Schafer (1977/1994) The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. Destiny Books.

Fantastic. Read it!

43
FIELD RECORDING / Re: Chris Watson - A Journey South
« on: October 20, 2010, 06:03:45 am »
The link to the short interview didn't work for me, but I found it here:
http://www.onlineupsite.info/craft/3081-Chris-Watson.html?archive_year=2010&archive_month=03&status=-1

Thanks for reminding me about the Watson/Attenborough interview. Found it via Touch but forgot to watch it until now.
A friend recently gave me the DVD set of Attenborough's Life On Earth (BBC, 1979). It's an amazing story of evolution, very rich in information, with great electroacoustic music by Edward Williams.

44
ART / Re: the photography thread
« on: September 02, 2010, 02:12:35 pm »
A few more from Sneinton woods, this time taking advantage of the warm evening sunlight:










45
OTHER MUSIC / Re: What are you listening to?
« on: September 02, 2010, 02:08:14 pm »
Food - Quiet InletPassioLitany

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