Added 1/31/2002

Mario Brothers Theme Music
Digital music, old school. For those of us in my generation it brings back memories of simpler days, of making friends because they had nintendos, and when controllers only needed two buttons.

Einstein explains e=mc^2
On a very old recording, einstein explains -very briefly- the meaning of his famous theory of relativity. His accent is thick, and his manner very patient and unpretentious. Many pops and much hiss and noise, makes this clip sound more, I don't know, honest, in this age of crystal clear recording and editing.

Einstein speaks against the Nazis
Einstein speaks against the Nazi government and the Third Reich. The recording is very old, and adds warmth to the familiar voice that we have heard (and heard imitated) throughout our lives. It is almost comforting to hear such words from a man we know had such impact on our modern world.

Added 2/7/2002

Refreshing beverage
While I was recording the other sounds put up today, I took the liberty of recording my roommate. A sound familar to all of us, recalling thirst and refreshment. Ah. Also you may recall straws, styrofoam/paper cups, watered down soda (because the ice has all melted), or fast food.

Sounds of my car:
Shift 1
Shift 2
E Brake Release
Hood Close
Hood Open
Door Slam
Everything my car ('66 Mustang) does is noisy, and each of its noises is unique. I can identify my car easily just by hearing all of the sounds that it makes. The cool thing, though, is that all of these mechanical sounds are highly useful - outside of the context of my car they can be anything: specific things like levers and things mechanical, or just to add to ambience. These are not grinding industrial sounds, but much more laid back, almost rural mechanical sounds.

Added 2/21/02

Super 8mm Camera Motor
One of my favorite sounds, recorded in various modes including: 18 fps, single frame (click!) and with the shocking 40 fps slow motion kicking in. This conjures up all kinds of imagery for me, flickering pictures, bad focus, warm color tones, the relative heft of the camera, clay armatures... Unless you don't know what it is and you hear it, then you may just say, "Hrm. It just sounds like a motor to me."

Power Drill on Slow Speed
A low electrical buzz accompanies strange, high pitched squeaks, like some freakish mouse-torturing contraption. But it's just a power drill, humming along with its gears squeaking - here you can hear the recurring single squeaks, whereas they normally blend together when you pour on the juice.

Cracking my Knuckles
"Ew," you may say. And you may be correct, the snapping of tendons and joints is not a pretty event to think about. I'm not snapping them in the normal way either: my hands are all messed up from having played too much tetherball in middle school, so now they snap in all sorts of bizarre ways. Ah, the memories this sound brings me, the strange looks on people's faces, and of pummeling my opponents in tetherball (recalling an even more familiar sound to me, the sound of chains clanging against poles in the wind.)

Added 2/28/02

Excerpts from 'Der Fuhrer's Face'
I've highlighted these two excerpts from this song by Spike Jones and His City Slickers for there use of what is one of my favorite instruments. I don't know what it is, it sounds kind of like a raspberry, but it's a wonderful sound they use on lots of their sounds in various forms. When I was thinking about noise vs. music these were some of the people that first come to mind, often using large contraption kits, people gargling, gunshots (real), chicken sounds, you name it in their songs.

Sample Synth Sounds
One website I found had a CD of 'Menu Sounds' for sale, and they decided to let you preview them all at once, with a bit of background playing too. Just this by itself sounds pretty cool though, and people like me will be thinking about the different shapes they're using.

Added 3/7/02

Expansion of the Robot Arm
Actually it's just a section of dryer air ducting, which is like a huge slinky wrapped in foil. We were building robot costumes the other day, and we realized, "hey, this stuff sounds pretty neat." And it does. Though it doesn't sound like robots.

Orbitron
Yet another sound clip that sounds much less robotic than it's name implies. This is a toy that I've had for some while, it has a loop of string that goes through a center disk and has two handles at either end in the loop. You spin the thing up a few times and then pull the strings to make it spin faster and faster. The spring really gets going and that's the 'wow' sound you hear. The clicking sounds occur because this particular model, when new, had a little LED that would light up at a certain rpm, which is now defunct.

Added 3/19/02

Eerie Monks
Gregorian chant gone horribly wrong, or at least it's backwards and reverb-y. It redoubles the ambient effect of the music, I think, to become a surreal backdrop. I say so.

German Apache
Continuing with this weeks musical theme, here is another way that voices can become detached from the verbal meaning. In other words things are different to you when you don't understand the language. This song would be more of an example of this if I included the whole thing, but I didn't. It's in German, and there's lots of that acapella sound effects going on.

Added 3/28/02

Instrument Comparison
In the chapter about the concept about which I am basing my project there was a note about the argument that a purer line or tone meant something is more musical. (Man, I'm all about subordinate clauses today, sorry.) Is this true? The waveform of the musical instruments are much less perfect than those of the computer generated tone.

Golden Pirate Booty
These were pennies, but I slowed it down and overlayed it upon itself for the more full and deep sound of gold dubloons. I used this sound in a production of a pirate short that I made.

Added 4/4/02

Put a Sock in It
Investigating resident noises, here is a piece played on guitar with a sock threaded through the strings to dampen any sustained vibrations.

No Time for Socks!
And then here is the same thing sans socks.

Added 4/11/02

Robots Wax Philosphical
Here I was playing with one of the many computer voice emulators on the internet. I love these things, especially the ones where you can tweak everything from the pitch to the niceties of pronunciation. Its such a different experience to have your documents read to you.

Weird Noise Nextdoor
This weird noise, a clicking and a beeping, is always coming from a small box mounted high under the roof of the TX Department of Transporation building, nextdoor to my apartment complex. Every time I walk by, it catches my ear. Upon closer inspection I see that there are also blinking lights that follow the sounds, and it appears to be some kind of security device. I don't know what it does, though, its purpose seems to attract the curious. This section also has the sound of me climbing the metal steps to get closer to this thing.

Added 4/18/02

Angry Bee that Ends my Dreams
Ever since there was a power surge that screwed up all of the electrical sockets in my room, I've been using my cel phone as an alarm clock. The funny thing is, it's not so much the beeping that wakes me up, but the sound of the vibrating battery. It's a cheap battery I got from ebay, and the so called 'silent' mode vibration sounds like a giant angry bee that got trapped somewhere near me. It never ceases to scare the living daylights out of me each morning.

Doorstop
When I was walking into my bathroom studio to record my cel phone, I kicked the little spring doorstop thingy and it made it's characteristic sound, which brought back many memories for me. Well, really, the memories are all the same: me being little and playing with them constantly going "buwadadadadadaddadadadada" and bugging the hell out of my parents.