Trash_Audio

This sound bank is a compilation of runout grooves from most of my record collection of as January 2012. The idea to record and document these grooves came about when I found myself picking out a record with the intention of listening to the runout groove, after the music, for an extended period of time. I wouldn’t exactly call it therapeutic but its a sound I’ve heard ever since I was a child, have yet to grow tired of, and enjoy listening to while working. The patterns are all unique, utilizing the same sound palette of pops, clicks and static but once in a while there is a strange creak, a steady hiss, or a resonant hum from the motor, all in a perfect repeating pattern.

As with all audio and sample banks there are unlimited ways to utilize them. Some basic examples are to use them as source material and mangle it up with plug-ins.

- Sidechained to a kick with Amp Designer
- Soundhack Decimate with Valhalla Room
- Uhbik G with Valhalla Room
- Timestretched with Native Instruments Guitar Rig

A few of the records have etched or blank back sides which create interesting patterns depending where you place the needle and some are picture discs which tend to be noisier. Some of the records have lock grooves which I’ve decided to omit for copyright reasons.

The grooves were recorded with a Pro-ject RPM 1.3 turntable with a Sumiko Pearl cartridge in stereo at 24 Bit 48kHz. The files are normalized -3dB, meaning there is some headroom to play with and dynamics to take advantage of. The approximate natural tempos for a runout groove at 33 rotations per minute (RPM) is 133.6510 and at 45 RPM’s is 180.4290. Every file has fades on the top and tails so that they will seamlessly loop in your audio player without clicking.

Here is a free sampler download. It contains 2 standards runout grooves at 33 RPM, 45 RPM, and a picture disc side. Download Here – 14 mb!

$18 – Full Edition
Includes all 310 Runout Grooves at a comprehensive 1.2 gigs. Over 100 albums recorded and 1 hour 8 minutes of subtle runout grooves, noisy picture discs, etched sides, blank sides and a few incidental sounds.

$12 – 100 Edition
A selection of 100 Runout Grooves 395 mb. An efficient and versatile selection from the Full Edition. 22 minutes.

Richard’s building his new studio and sold some gear the past few months. Unfortunately when gear doesn’t sell to friends, Craigslist is a last resort. Here a reply he received from Craigslist in Atlanta, GA.

Robert Clouth of Vaetxh.

Background
I was born in Abergavenny, a smallish town in South Wales. I went to uni in London for 4 years and now live in Bristol. I started messing around with computer sound when I was 12 or so when my family got our first computer (an epic 186mhz) on this shitty MIDI programme called Evolution Audio Lite. I wrote a couple of potential xmas number ones on that – one anthem called Losenge, and another that consisted of one of the demo songs compressed down to a single beat. Then later got Fruity Loops v1 on a pirated mega-disk of music software my brother brought me back from Thailand, then worked up through every version until now (10).
Listening to the IDM classics got me motivated back then, these days music doesn’t so much. I have real motivational issues sometimes with music, especially when I’m under deadline pressure. The spiral usually goes like this: leave it too late -> don’t think I have enough time to make it as good as possible -> don’t think it’s going to be any good -> put it off -> leave it too late, etc. There a lot of other things I like doing and sometimes music doesn’t get my time for weeks (but when I go back I remember what I was missing and have an all nighter).

Current Favorite Hardware
If it counts, first is my computer by a long, long way. Most stuff that can be done in hardware can be done in software, and if it can’t someone is usually working on it. One thing software can’t very well yet is imitate the real world, so second is my Zoom H2 recorder and mic collection. I bloody love it. As soon as I bought it a couple of years ago it became my camera and I always keep it in my bag, just in case there’s some sound that I want. I’ve got some nice mics to go with it – some deep-ear binaural mics, some waterproofed contact mics (double up as hydrophones) and this relatively new one, a coil mic that picks up the electromagnetic fields of electronics (you can hear CPUs crunching numbers, it’s nuts). I’ve also modded the H2 ready for a soundfield mic that I’m making for capturing ambisonic recordings, for post-rec panning with head-tracking experiments. Third favourite is this little Roland Dr-Drum that I’ve taken the back off to expose the synthesis circuits. When you poke it, it sounds like the scream of someone trapped in a digital nightmare. Instaglitch. Crack a bit of reverb on it, job done.

Current Favorite Software
Synthmaker is fuckin wicked. I started playing with it when Max dropped their export to VST feature in favour of the Max for Live thing (which I have almost no use for, and when I thought I might do I’ve found it can’t do it yet). It’s done so many things right and in some ways I prefer it to Max. It’s so quick to prototype stuff in it that it’s changed what VSTs mean to me – now I tend to knock out ones that create a specific sound for a specific track, rather than more flexible synths etc. Plus it’s tightly integrated in FL which which is great. I’m a Max fan though, but I just use it for live stuff and sound generation, I’ve never found a way of knitting it fully into my setup. A couple of years ago I started programming, and that’s changed things because now I can make new tools for sound design and sequencing. For example, one thing I’m working on is sound painting – sculpting sounds from the ground up by painting their spectrums using a digitizer I got for xmas. Another is a tool for sequencing fractal-structured tracks with infinite zoom (i.e. as the track slows, the next layers emerge in the opening gaps between the beats), a bit like that fold 4 wrap 5 Autechre tune but controllable faster and slower. As for actual VSTs, xoxos.net has some really weird physical modelling ones which are great, and also the convolver that comes with FL is excellent – you can record the impulses of other plugins with it.

Workspace and Environment
I know this is Workspace and Environment, but they don’t really effect me too much to be honest. I find that when I get into the zone it doesn’t really matter where I am. I’ve snapped out of sessions and realised that I haven’t eaten since breakfast and that I’ve been needing a piss for the last 4 hours – where I am is the least of my concerns.

Are Ergonomics Important?
Very, after one summer without a mouse and keyboard and the savage aches and pains in my wrists that resulted. I sorted it out then and haven’t had a problem since.

Does Your City Affect Your Output?
Definitely, but I’m far more affected by the people around me than the music scene of the city itself.

Ideal Location
The massive dweeb answer: virtual reality. It would be bonkers. Music wouldn’t be just sound anymore because sound waves wouldn’t exist and you wouldn’t have eardrums to hear them if they did. Everything would become general sensory input. Smelling music and hearing light, etc, etc. Sound/visual synths that you control just by thinking about it. It brings up some interesting questions. How fast could you press a note of a keyboard or twist a dial if you weren’t limited by the physical speed of your finger? How many separate parameters could you control at once? I’ve thought about this way too much. A slightly more realistic location would be in some sort of floating sky-booth that sits above the clouds, like the London eye but not shit, a lot higher and with a stonking sound system.

Routine
Generally I make an effort to experiment with new techniques. It’s too easy to get locked in the same formula. A while ago I got muscle memory tweaking this one reverb to exactly the same sound, and put it on almost everything. I try to avoid that now. Though I guess my general process is to listen back to the tune I’m working on for little hooks and ideas (not necessarily intentional ones as I use some generative techniques), and then develop those. It’s by expanding and emphasising these anomalies that my tracks are made basically.

First Piece of Gear
My Event TR-8 monitors. Loved em then, love em now. When I bought them I cracked them on the floor facing each other and lay between them, listening to rain sounds of all things. I know you can more expensive ones with flatter responses, but unless your studio is in an anechoic chamber inside another one in space it seems a bit pointless getting posher ones since the room has much more of an effect…and I’ve been in acoustically turd rooms since I got them.

Last Piece of Gear
10 radios for one of my half-finished projects. My thoughts of them now are that I’ll probably never end up using them so I should just offload them to the chazza shop, but probably won’t. My thoughts of them in the future will be that I should have offloaded them to the chazza shop because I never used them, and now they’re just going in the bin.

How Many Workspaces Have You Had?
As many as I have had houses in the last 5 years…so 7. It hasn’t changed that much to be honest. It’s not the best studio but I only really use the monitors to listen to things really, really loud, generally I find a good pair of headphones better for mixing. The biggest change it got was when I got a sub a couple of years ago. The first thing I did when I got it (as everyone must do when they get a sub) is do a 20kHz to 20Hz sine sweep. I got a call 2 minutes later from my estate agent because the lady next door had ran to the office to complain that my ‘drum and bass music’ was rattling her picture frames. It goes down to 20Hz, and having this entirely new chunk of the spectrum really affected my music (and the neighbours), putting 20Hz rumble in tunes and that.

Extra Curricular
Me and my housemate made this silly animation recently that seems to be going down quite well on youtube. The internet does love cats it seems. Too much in fact because some people have actually bought the track. Some german public TV show contacted us to feature it and we’re getting 40 quid out of it which is nice.

- Vaetxh
- Rob Clouth Soundcloud

- Via Jonathan Snipes of Captain Ahab’s Twitter

This podcast will hopefully illuminate the world of synthesizers and the people who use them along with the people who build them and repair them.

A great podcast featuring in depth synth interviews conducted by a regular at TRASH_AUDIO events, Bizarro Lord Zool. There are only 4 interviews at the moment but I saw him hustling around NAMM interviewing lots of people so expect more.

- Waveform City Podcast

waveform city episode 02 gorillabox by waveform city

waveform city episode 01 christopher jon by waveform city

By Stretta

hardware: Livid Code
software: harmonic designer, drone designer and wavestep

download this software at http://cycling74.com

This is the companion video to Working With Hardware part three. In addition to a tutorial on how to build your own Max applications that use the Live Code, four free applications are included. These applications are demoed in this video.

http://cycling74.com/2012/01/04/working-with-hardware-livid-instruments’-code/

Drone Designer hosts audio effects plug ins, the sends of which are controlled from the Code. An Audio Damage Eos reverb was used on both the Drone Designer and wavestep examples. A tempo synced delay is included in wavestep.

Eric Avery has wrapped up his second solo album and is currently part of a music project with Brent Hinds of Mastodon, Ben Weinman of The Dillinger Escape Plan, and Jon Theodore.

Background
I was born here in LA. I arrived here by being born – it got messy. Ive made music since I was a lonely wee lad. I had lots of time not having alot of friends and not getting laid, a few good motivational sources there. What keeps me motivated is my desire to keep motivated. I make as many decisions as I can afford to based on what will keep me interested and keep the proverbial flame lit, and of course I’d like to continue getting laid.

What is your current favorite hardware
Favorite current piece of hardware is almost always the most recent piece of hardware, right? That would be Make Noise Phonogene module, right now. Actually captured a spam cell call in the Phonogene this morning and fucked around with it, love that little thing. I would have to probably describe my access virus c as THE piece of hardware I couldn’t live without. Since a friend gave it to me, yeah, I know; GAVE it to me, I found its the workhorse. It does everything great. I also love my Andromeda A6, Little Phatty, etc. Oh , fuck, did I forget my OP-1? Christ that thing is creative.

Favorite current software?
Soundtoys. Decapitator. Decapitator. Decapitator. Did I mention Soundtoys?

Workspace and Environment
I try to shut out the day as much as possible. Its the Las Vegas casino strategy: if you don’t know what time it is, you’ll just get lost in it. I find ergonomics generally feel more fascist than comfortable. Just as long as you don’t move, you feel perfectly comfortable? Not me. Not for very long anyway.
I don’t think municipalities can always really have much of an effect on your work. Not site specifically really but LA has because I grew up in a multigenerational film family. My grandfather was an LA transplant re-recording engineer, father was an actor. Academy members, involved in the business and art of film. I think that directly informs my work, always has and probably always will. To a greater degree than anything else. Regardless of the style of music I am ever currently interested in, I am always listening to things in a cinematic way. A sense of place or environment has always been more important than melody or other more musical concerns. Not always consciously but always just the same.

What is your ideal workspace?
Wherever I am really. When I get too concerned with anything being just right, I generally just get a bigger than usual dosage of the blank canvas syndrome. The blank canvas becomes a giant white wall. Ok, everything is just right…ready…set…go…make genius happen now. I hope that makes sense. Plus, if I lived in a big scruffy warehouse space on a beach with a great surf break, I might be too busy counting my blessings everyday to get anything done.

I adhere to the by-hook-or-by-crook strategy. Whatever gets it done. I always hear people talk about rules “all the best music just flows out easily” blah, blah. Not for me. Sometimes the music that just flows out FEELS great but when I listen back a few days later I just think, “oh no its happened, I am officially a douchebag”. Sometimes it’s my best work but sometimes my best work comes from hammering the shit out of some idea for years until its listenable or makes some sense one day. Some folks might have tidy creative rules that apply. Not me. look at the accompanying pic of my workspace. I’m a fucking mess.

Background
I was born in Bergen County, NJ, where I grew up (Hillsdale, to be precise). I went to college at Berklee in Boston, where I’ve stayed for the last 20 years (the Boston area, not Berklee). Currently I have an office & a studio space in Porter Square in Cambridge (just a few blocks north of Harvard) & there’s another set of workstations in my apartment in Somerville about 2 miles away. Although these days I tend to do most of my music-work at home (recording at least).

I started making electronic music on a vic20 when I was 10 years old ; then the Atari 400/800/st, then Mac’s, etc … I love music, I always seem to find new areas & techniques to explore & I’ve been lucky to be surrounded by people (although less actual & more virtual these days) who at least share some of my interests. I’m largely motivated these by other people continuing to ask me for music ; I have a hard time saying no …

Favorite Hardware
The two items I’ve been using the most this month are a Tascam dp-008 digital 8-track & a Soundevices mix-pre-d … I bought the Tascam on a whim, but it’s proven to a be a great stand-alone multitrack (it fits with a Cloudlifter CL-2 on a shelf mounted to a mic-stand! It’s tiny) ; I’ve been recording loads of music on it, which is always the sign of a good piece of gear. I picked up the mix-pre-d to do higher quality location recording (previously i’d just been using a Sony PCM-D50 & was considering the standalone phantom power source, then realized this cost almost as much as the mix-pre-d) but its ended up being a pretty powerful workhorse – works beautifully as a mic pre, a usb recording interface, a preamp for feeding decent audio into a dslr for video, a mid-side decoder … the list goes on.

Favorite Software
It’s been AGES since I’ve gotten anything new, or even updated my DAW setup at the studio (I’m running Logic 8 & MAX-MSP 4.5, there’s a UAD-2 card in the main machine). Everything is running smoothly & it sounds great, so stasis is the best course … wait, I did get some of those Valhalla DSP plugins recently, those are great (the room one is especially good) … I was really into that Tobor experiment Berna package for a while, although I quickly realized I VASTLY preferred doing those sorts(s) of things in hardware ; still, it was a cool idea for a software suite. Oh, and the madrona aalto is really, really great for a software synth.

Workspace and Environment
The studio space in which I do most of my computer-oriented music work doubles as the warehouse of the distribution company I run ; all of the stock is there, along with my personal record collection … endless inspiration right there. That said, people are always knocking on the door looking for records & that can sometimes get in the way of deep concentration. The space is gorgeous, in a big mill building. After 6 it clears out & it’s whisper-quiet (other than the commuter rail trains going by) … 30 foot high ceilings, good light.

Ergonomics
They’re important ; I never set out to make the different workstations ergonomically feasible, but often things get shifted around to be a little more comfortable. The best ergonomic choice I made was to just set up a bunch of different workstations for different tasks ; that way I’m not always using the same set of muscles, sitting in the same position, focusing on the same screen at the same distance for 12 hours a day. I have a “standing desk” at the office where I do things like assemble records, plus there’s a big packing bench which is great for projects where I need to lay out a bunch of different things temporarily … the “synth desk” is also a standing desk ; a bar table with storage underneath for cables & whatnot. I find standing while doing creative work really helps to focus on what I’m doing at any given time.

I’ve chosen to stay in Boston as it’s extremely pleasant here. there’s a great, small, tight-knit scene for the sort(s) of music that I make & enjoy that doesn’t suffer from the delusions of grandeur you’d get in a larger city ; I guess that’s why I love it here – people just going about their lives, working on their craft. The winters are brutal, which is great as I tend to do most of my creative work for the year while sequestered inside. I’m actually fairly antisocial … I can go days at a time without seeing anyone other than my partner & our cats.

Ideal Location
I think this is it! Having the time & resources to get deep into projects without too much temptation to go out every night. That sounds like heaven to me …

I tend to move apartments every couple of years, which is actually a great thing – it’s nice to re-assess what you’re using & what’s gathering dust every so often, pawn off anything that’s not being used. Since moving to boston for good in 1993, I’ve moved home/studio about 8 times. I’ve been in the porter sq. office for 4 years now, this apartment going on 2. I almost always had one of those Omnirax or Middle Atlantic workstations, but I noticed after a while I was getting neck & back pain from always craning my neck up to see the monitor on the top shelf. Now I use bar-tables with storage underneath, much better, plus it forced me to stand … plus those $49 staples “computer desk” stations, which I find very comfortable (you just have to remove the upper shelf).

Routine
I often work in very conceptual ways … having the hour or two going back & forth from the home/studio to the office/studio every day, away from all of my gear & whatnot, to think about possible approaches & ideas is crucial. I don’t really make notes or diagrams, but I tend to think about something I’d like to try & map it out in great detail mentally before I begin. specific to the modular, I’m constantly re-working the portable case that I take out on the road. pretty much every week I’m swapping something out for something else. I like to approach it as a series of little micro-patches. Right now, in the 90hp 12u I have in the Monorocket mx-6, there are 7 self-contained sub-patches which all speak to each other in different ways. but it’s constantly changing from week to week.

First piece of Hardware
Hard to say … the vic-20 was prob the first I remember using to actually make music, but I remember saving up my paper route money to get a Casio CZ-1 when those came out. Actually, I remember having Casios before then (def. an MT-68 ; i have a different one now & still use it all the time) – I know I had a TR-505 at one point too, a fostex cassette 4-track, then, later, a Tascam Syncaset 8-track cassette & the matching mixer. I really wish I still have both of those!!! The sound you got out of that mixer was incredible ; the channel distortion …

Last Piece of Hardware
This week I picked up a Boss DR-55 drum machine – super interesting as it has two clock-outs (one sends a 16th note, the other follows accents programmed into a given rhythm) – it’s been fun to clock a modular patch with it, maybe send the clock through a few 4ms rcd’s, but then have the audio of the drum machine to play around with as well … very cool.

Eavesdropping
I went to see a band a few weeks ago at a “big” rock club ; They played “playthroughs” as the between-band music throughout the night. It kind of freaked me out, actually. I’ve had music on TV, in video games, and in movies as well. Whenever i hear something out of context, I usually get very disoriented …

Extra Curricular
I do a bit of sound-design here & there ; nothing I really pursue, but it’s nice when that work lands in my lap. Last year I did a few pieces for a few games & some sound-design for one of them … it was based on the seven chakras, and I did sound for the final, “crown” chakra level. Did a bit of research on the root frequencies & tunings, which made it this interesting mix of science / psycho-acoustics and music. I’m quite happy with how it turned out …

- Keith Fullerton Whitman

Finally sold out & made some good old fashioned synth porn. – Jonathan Snipes

In 1980 Stanley Kubrick released his masterpiece of modern horror, The Shining. Over 30 years later we are still struggling to understand its hidden meanings. Rodney Ascher’s film Room 237 is an exploration of the truths concealed in The Shining.

Kubrick’s film was scored in large part with pre existing classical recordings, but the score for Room 237 has taken as its inspiration the elegant but quirky film music that accompanied low budget horror movies in the 1970s. Composers Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson utilize a combination of vintage and contemporary analogue synthesizers, as well as acoustic instruments to create an atmosphere that is at once both haunting and funky.

Musicians:
Jonathan Snipes – Synthesizers, Pianos, Vocoder, Percussion
William Hutson – Synthesizers, Percussion
David Rothbaum – Guitars & Bass
Nick Murray – Drums
Maryclare Brzytwa – Flute
Bear McCreary – Clavinet
Cristina Bercovitz – Vocal Effects

jonat8han.com
room237movie.wordpress.com

Mahsa Zargaran of Omniflux.

Background
I was born and raised in Tehran, Iran. Got put in jail at 15 for having a party. So that made it kind of an easy decision to move out of Iran. Couldn’t have picked a more opposite freak show of a town to move to than Orange County. That was 1999. I now reside in Los Angeles.

I’ve played classical piano since I was 5. Became very good at it, but by my late teens it felt more like doing math and/or a meditation exercise than doing something wild and unpredictable. I still love playing classical piano though. It’s very calming. I got really deep into film scores when I was about 21 and that’s all I listened to (besides Eminem). Thats when my interest in creating music began. I crave being completely focused on something. That craving motivates me. What’s special about making music is that I can put headphones on and get lost listening to a beat but still stay fully focused.

Current Favorite Hardware
Dave Smith Instruments’ Poly Evolver. It’s such an intuitive synth and yet so complex. I love all the knobs. I lose interest in sound design quickly if I have to read menu options on a screen for everything instead of turning a knob for every parameter. AND it has pretty blue lights.

Current Favorite Software
-NI’s Massive and Arturia’s Minimoog are my two go to plugins right now. I understand them well and I’d rather use 2 plugins i know than having all the plugins in the world. That stresses me out to even think about.

Workspace and Environment
I like working in small intimate spaces. I can’t work if there’s anybody around. I’ve always worked by myself and will probably continue to do so. People would be scared if they saw me work. lots of dancing around happens. Good lighting is essential to my work flow and it probably serves my work more than any piece of gear.

Ergonomics
I know they’re supposed to be important but physically I don’t apply it. I often find myself sitting in awkward positions on a couch with a synth for a long time. Can’t get to anything comfortably, and when i get up my whole body has fallen asleep, but I keep doing the same thing. I have a sickness. I like changing around my studio set up a lot. Having the same gear in the same place all the time freaks me out. Makes it routine like.

Los Angeles probably gets in the way of my output more than it contributes. there’s always a friend playing a show somewhere. I could go out every night and see a show. It’s very distracting. Too much information going in.

Ideal Location
A loft in the middle of a busy city with lots of big windows and skylights. Cats, baby goats and ducklings would live there. Nice places to walk to would be cool. Like a river, museums, etc.

Routine
Less is more. No preparation, just execution. Don’t think. Stop thinking. Seriously, stop thinking. Don’t spend too much time on a sound, take a crappy sound and make it work.

Extra Curricular
Outside of my own project Omniflux, I play drums in Sabrosa Purr and Big Black Delta. I’ve scored a couple of short films. I hope to do a lot more scoring in the future.

- Omniflux