Qualm

May 2, 2013 7:44 PM

A disquieting quasi-ambient piece from January, 1999, which was among my first purely software-synthesized efforts. I think I was listening to a lot of Oval at the time.

This was generated by a Perl script driving several C programs. I had just started trying to make electronic music, under a rather Quixotic self-imposed discipline of using only software I wrote myself.

So this one ended up being mostly a way to show off a “Brownian motion” effect I had written, which simulates a tape head playing while it does a Poisson-process random walk over a sound file with a mean length of a few milliseconds. The source material for the effect is Joe Jackson’s “Steppin’ Out,” Led Zeppelin’s “Achilles’ Last Stand,” both playing underneath most of the piece, and a few interludes from Blixa’s spoken introduction to Einstürzende Neubauten’s “Prologue.” Various other sounds including the chime and guitar-like notes were just synthesized.

(Posted in disappointment at not coming up with anything for the Backwards challenge in time. If nothing else, the Brownian motion effect is equal parts backwards and forwards.)

posted by mubba (1 comment total)

Totally perplexed and disturbed. Talk to David Lynch and ask him if he needs some ambiance for his next movie.

I'm at a loss for words. I don't think the question I should be asking myself is: "Do I like this song?" But something of the lines: "Does this song affect me?". And that it surely does.
posted by AnTilgangs at 5:53 PM on May 5, 2013


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