June 19, 2008

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Spaced Out -- Last weekend I checked out David Byrne's Playing the Building installation. Using an old organ as a controller, visitors can "play" an old warehouse. Different keys activate blowers and hammers around the space. Standing in the middle of the room you can hear the sounds move around you as people play on the organ.

Today's piece was inspired by that listening experience. Using slivers of a field recording by Bram at the Freesound Project I created a similar experience of sounds moving around the listener. The effect is heightened by listening with headphones. Enjoy.

May 14, 2008

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Goodie Bag -- As a going away gift, my friend Lillian gave me a bag of noise makers before I left Columbus. She specified that I was to use them for this project. Well, I found the bag earlier this week and pulled it out to make today's piece. Every item in the bag can be heard. The next couple of days will feature solos on items in the bag. Enjoy...

May 8, 2008

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eieio -- my third installment in this little series of pieces using an old family cassette recording.

May 5, 2008

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Keys -- What key is my computer in?

May 1, 2008

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Cold -- Today is the first day of May, and sadly it's been cold here in NY. We're expecting more of the same (plus rain) this weekend. Yay weather!

sample attribution: chipotle(2) by aarondbaron

April 28, 2008

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Untitled -- no really, there's no title today, only these processed lawnmower sounds...

April 26, 2008

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Celia Speaks -- I'm visiting family in Massachusetts today, including my two year old cousin Celia, who helped me make this piece.

April 23, 2008

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Nature Song is a celebration of Earth Day. Yes, I know that today is a day late, but it slipped my mind after seeing the World Trade Center site.

attributions:
20060607.bird.gone.nuts by dobroide
spring river 2 by laurent

April 21, 2008

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Save Some -- For the past couple of days I have been working on a new dance piece with Emily Lawrence at Kenyon College. We needed some additional sounds, so today we recorded Emily making some vocalizations for me to build with. In between takes, some little incidental sounds and comments were captured. I've used those for today's piece so that they won't go to waste.

April 18, 2008

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Say What? is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. I found some vocalizations at The Freesound Projectand used them for this collaboration.

In case you haven't noticed yet, Boris will be finished with his Dance-A-Day podcast on May 11. Tune in while you still can...

attributions:
the sample-pack Dr Laura Turner by scuzzpuck
monkey-vox by lunarsight

April 11, 2008

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City Scene is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. Yesterday he sent me a video of him dancing on the streets of Washington DC with a nice note about my move to NYC. I had a flash of inspiration to take 60x365 to the streets as well and make today's piece while riding on the subway this morning. All went well, except that I spent the day at a symposium without the ability to get online to post. So Boris has been forced to wait all day as well. (Sorry Boris!)

April 8, 2008

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Internet Woes -- I did not post anything yesterday because I was having trouble getting my brand new internet set-up to work properly. It works now, so here's this little anthem to my troubles....


I will not put posting off until the last minute.
I will not put posting off until the last minute.
I will not put posting off until the last minute.
I will not put posting off until the last minute.
I will not put posting off until the last minute.
I will not put posting off until the last minute.
I will not put posting off until the last minute.
I will not put posting off until the last minute.
I will not put posting off until the last minute.
I will not put posting off until the last minute.

April 6, 2008

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Unload -- Today's minute is a quick "thank you" to Paul, Susan, Kristin, Kathy and Kris, all of whom helped JoLayne and I unload our U-Haul after our long drive to our new place in NYC.

April 4, 2008

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MLK is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. Today is the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination. Boris marked this occasion with a dance at the future site of a memorial to King. I created this soundscape using a sample of King's voice, "Like anybody, I would like to live."

March 29, 2008

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Bad Neighbor -- I was inspired by this recording of a bad neighbor that I found at the Freesound Project, and I used it to make this little tribute to apartment living...

March 27, 2008

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Political Buzz -- Isn't it odd the way words lose meaning when heard again and again?

March 26, 2008

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Ignition -- 60x365 is being featured in The Fuse Factory's inaugural exhibition, Ignition, this weekend. If you're in the area, stop by and say hi.

sample attributions:
car start rear.wav by metamorphmuses
Lighter Ignition.wav by gelo_papas
20060329.match.02.wav by dobroide
Car starts in garage.wav by fogma
small_plane_ignition.mp3 by sanus_excipio

March 23, 2008

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Easter Eggs -- Happy Easter, everybody!

March 16, 2008

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Spring Fever -- another fever-themed piece, this time with birds.

sample attribution: evening in the forest.wav by reinsamba

March 10, 2008

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Watery -- Well, it finally happened... I missed a day. Damn. Traveling yesterday after a long weekend made it slip my mind until i was drifting off to sleep last night. Oh well, today I must compose two minutes to catch back up.

The first re-uses a water sample that I first explored a couple of weeks ago. Today though, I have subjected it to the kind of manipulations I usually reserve for beat-based samples.

March 1, 2008

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Lions and Lambs - 60x365 enters March, and we all know that old saying.

sample attributions:
20070407.lambs.kids.WAV by dobroide
Lions Roar at Lincoln Park Zoo.wav by Terwelp

February 28, 2008

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Leap -- Today, 60x365 celebrates Leap Day, even though the rest of the world won't until tomorrow. Why, you ask. Well this is 60x365, not 60x366. There will be no new music tomorrow. Instead I will be posting some longer tracks that have been generated for performance situations based on earlier minutes.

This piece is also this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. Cruise on over to his site tomorrow to see his dance.

February 26, 2008

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Greetings from Minneapolis. I am traveling this week to visit/participate in the 2008 Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts. Tomorrow morning, nine selections from this very podcast will be featured on a concert of appropriated music. I will report back on it when I post tomorrow.

Anyway, today's piece is called Waterworld, and no, it has nothing to do with that Kevin Costner movie...

February 24, 2008

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Cutting - don't run with this music. ;-)

February 17, 2008

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Echo - I feel like this sometimes. Do you?

February 12, 2008

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Chatter - a quick tribute to a classic electro-acoustic composition... it could go on for a lot longer than a minute too.

February 11, 2008

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Ringing -- drunken bells sound in the night.

February 9, 2008

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Rub -- 60x365 is bringin' back mono.

February 6, 2008

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Bull-Man -- After a brief pause for Fat Tuesday, here is my second variation on Jay C Batzner's Mancala Theme.

February 4, 2008

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Man-Bull is a one minute variation on a theme of Unsafe Bull's Jay C. Batzner. He made this piece using samples from a Mancala game back in January and has been creating new variations ever since. Today he sent out this email challenge:

You may or may not know this, but I have a weekly podcast in which I compose a new electroacoustic piece. I'm coming up on my 1 year anniversary (end of February) and I was hoping to enlist your help.

While I have been doing self-contained weekly compositions, over the past few weeks I've started a "theme and variations" piece based on sounds from a mancala game board. Each week I'm writing a new variation and eventually I'll stop. Anyhow, I was hoping to get any and all of you to write "guest variations" to be plugged in to celebrate my year of podcasting.

My anniversary for the podcast is February 28. If you'd like, please go over to my website (http://thecollected.org/batzner) and check out the Mancala Samples page. Download all the files you want, make something out of them, and send that variation to me.

Today's is the first of two variations I plan to make. Tune in tomorrow for Bull-Man.

February 3, 2008

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18-1 -- Today the NFL season came to a close as the New England Patriots lost to the New York Giants. New England's record for the season is 18 wins and only 1 loss, a remarkable feat.

January 31, 2008

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Cut
sound of scissors, looped.
notes hang in arpeggios.
torn fabric textures.

January 28, 2008

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GWB -- Tonight George W Bush will deliver his last State of the Union speech to Congress. To mark the occasion I thought we could listen back to some of his earlier speeches.

January 26, 2008

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Picture Phone -- Today's piece is more of an audio document than a composition, but sound is sound right? This weekend my in-laws are visiting from out of town. Tonight we introduced them to Skype so we could video-chat with family across the country. It was their first experience with this technology and they were amazed to interact with their 5-month old granddaughter from so far away.

I decided to covertly record some audio of this seminal event, and have edited this one-minute audio documentary. The voices you will hear are my father-in-law, Charlie, my mother-in-law, Judy, my sister-in-law, Jainie, and my niece, Eiley (also here).

January 24, 2008

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Tube Go Boom is made from a simple recording of a cardboard tube found at The Freesound Project.

Attribution: Cardboard tube 1.wav by JonathanJansen

January 21, 2008

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Last Words -- I've used a recording of the final words from a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., titled I've Been to the Mountaintop. He delivered this sermon on April 3, 1968, at Mason Temple (Church of God in Christ Headquarters) in Memphis, Tennessee.

He was assassinated the next day, April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

January 15, 2008

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Modem Music -- Today I celebrate our upgrade to a DSL connection to the internet. No more modem for us!

January 11, 2008

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Loose Change is the sound of, well, loose change. It is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. Enjoy.

January 4, 2008

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Old Tape is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis, the first of 2008. I tried to make this sound like an old piece of audio tape that had been recorded on many times. It fits the mood and style of the video.

January 3, 2008

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No Idea -- This one needs no explanation...

January 2, 2008

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Bells -- I was feeling very zen-like today.

January 1, 2008

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Resolutions

Happy New Year!

December 31, 2007

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Year of Pig -- Today we conclude 2007, the Year of the Pig according to Chinese Astrology. What could be better than pig sounds downloaded from The Freesound Project?

attributions:
public domain Pig.wav by mkoenig
pigs_breathing.MP3 by oyez

December 28, 2007

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Smile Song -- For Christmas, I got to visit my four-month old niece, Eiley. I recorded her cooing and giggling and set that to music for today's piece. Check her out, sporting her 5of4 logo shirt. You can get your own shirt at Cafe Press.

December 27, 2007

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Flying Home -- We flew home from California today. Thiry minutes in line to get through security. An hour and a half waiting at the gate with loud, crying children. Five stupid hours on an airplane. Creativity is at a low ebb tonight, so more airplane sounds.

December 22, 2007

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Flying -- We take a break from my podcast "tribute" to holiday music to bask in the sound of airplane engines. Many people fly during the holidays, adding to the season's stress.

December 20, 2007

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Bellsong provides some ultra-minimalist, ambient sleigh bells for your holiday mood. Enjoy.

December 15, 2007

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Free Speech Ôø‡Ôø‡“â€Ôø‡ Today is Bill of Rights Day. Celebrate our rights while we still have them.

December 14, 2007

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twenty five celebrates my 25th danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. We decided to emulate the collaborative process of John Cage and Merce Cunningham. We each created our own part separately, only combining them at the end. Any resulting correspondences in sound and movement are pure serendipity.

There are 25 sound segments of various lengths, arranged randomly. Some are repeated. Some are filtered using randomly selected filters with random parameter settings.


(For those of you anxiously awaiting more Christmas cheer, I will resume my 12 part holiday series on Sunday.)

[12.25.07: Boris has made another video using this music, check it out.]

December 9, 2007

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Birds is the title for today's piece. I made it using a sampled bird call and modulated sine waves.

December 5, 2007

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Sketch -- I came home from work today, excited to have some time to compose, finally. I jumped right in and worked on some sounds for a collaboration with Esther Palmer (those of you keeping score will recall that she suggested this piece for Listener Appreciation Month.)

The entire time I was working I had this nagging feeling that I was forgetting something. There must have been something else I was supposed to be doing. Eventually it occurred to me that I hadn't made today's minute yet.

So...

I made a one minute version of a sketch I was working on for Esther. Think of it as a preview for a preview...

December 3, 2007

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Cigarettes uses audio from an old commercial for cigarettes. Believe it or not, this commercial was made to run at movie theaters before the feature began. You could make your way to the lobby for popcorn, soft drinks and a little tobacco. I found this little gem at the Prelinger Archives.

December 2, 2007

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Minimal -- in the craziness and confusion of my life right now I looked for simplicity. What could be simpler than a single sound run through a simple delay?

November 19, 2007

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Musicbook is my piece introducing a new object to Peter Traub's Itspace project. Yesterday I made a piece remixing two of his original objects. Today I made a new object using my old music theory textbook.

Visit Musicbook's itspace page.
Visit my myspace page.

November 18, 2007

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Banillow -- Networked Music Review is a blog that I try to read on a regular basis (recently 60x365 was featured). It was there that I first read about a new project by composer Peter Traub called Itspace. He's working to build a community of objects within the architecture of the Myspace social network. Each household object will have its own page with photo and one-minute composition created using sounds that the object makes -- musique concrete meets Web 2.0.

He invites others to make their own Itspace pages either using a new object or remixing an existing object. For today, I made a remix, combining two of the original nine objects: banister + pillow = banillow. Tomorrow I will introduce a new object to the community.

Visit banillow's page.
Visit my myspace page.

November 9, 2007

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Soft Shoes is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. The soundscore comes from a suggestion by Lillian Gray. When I first announced Listener Appreciation Month she gave me a list of different sound sources for me to use. We'll be hearing from her again.

The source sounds come from The Freesound Project. They are StepDance_01.wav, StepDance_02.wav, StepDance_03.wav, StepDance_04.wav, and StepDance_05.wav. All by Ironi Alef.

November 3, 2007

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Stomach Song -- Today's listener suggestion comes from Lillian Gray. She too is involved in a daily art project. Every day she writes a new haiku and posts it on her myspace page. Lillian has submitted several great ideas so you will be hearing from her again.

All stomach sounds come from The Freesound Project:
stomachrumbling1.aif by nannygrimshaw
gut_grumbles.mp3 by bigfatseal
tummy grumble-Normalized.aiff by martian

November 2, 2007

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Shadowrock is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. For the sound I used parts of the intro to Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline. These ideas were originally developed for yesterday's piece, but ultimately didn't work there. I've also added some rock sounds I found at The Freesound Project. They are SPLASH by petenice and selections from the sample-pack Falling Rocks by Melak.

October 30, 2007

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Scanner uses a set of samples found at The Freesound Project. This collection is by Noisecollector and is called Scanner. Enjoy.

October 27, 2007

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Scrub explores digital imperfection in all its glitchy goodness.

October 25, 2007

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Zap is another in what has become a mini-series of famous and familiar voices. Today's piece use audio of Frank Zappa talking about problems in the music industry, tastefully set against his own Nasal Retentive Calliope Music. Enjoy.

October 23, 2007

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Bleeping is an alternate version of yesterday's collage of a Casey Kasem out-take. In 2004, NPR's Wait WaitÔø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡ Don't Tell Me included a question about this out-take in one of their quizzes. Carl Kassel read a modified version of the original. In addition to his voice you will hear host Peter Sagal and regular panelist Paula Poundstone.

The original audio can be found here:
http://www.empty-handed.com/archive/2004_01_11.html

October 22, 2007

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Dedication uses a recording of Casey Kasem's voice to tell a new story. The original clip is actually an out-take in which Kasem blows up at his producer. It's a famous recording in certain circles. You can listen to the original recording here (be warned, his language is foul and not appropriate for all audiences and environments):

http://www.empty-handed.com/archive/2004_01_11.html

The band Negativland used this out-take in their song U2 (Special Radio Mix). You can find a recording of this banned track here (definitely worth a listen):

http://ia300128.us.archive.org/2/items/illegal-art/

October 17, 2007

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Joyful Noise 3

Joyful Noise fading
backwards into memory,
distant vibrations

October 16, 2007

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Joyful Noise 2 -- here's another collage made using an old cassette recording of a music group I helped create while in college. In addition to the sentimental attachment I have to this piece of sound, I am drawn to the lo-fi nature of the recording. The tape hisses and warbles, the instruments are unbalanced, odd background noises creep into the sound.

We live in a world that often seeks the highest fidelity in recorded sound, trying to achieve the effect of having the band right there in the room with you. To me, an old recording like this gains from its imperfections, transporting the listener to the time and place where it was made -- we are now in the room where the band once played.

October 15, 2007

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Joyful Noise 1 -- In college my room-mate and I formed a four-piece music ensemble with some friends that travelled to local churches to play music for their services. We called ourselves Joyful Noise. Because of our peculiar instrumentation (voice/piano, clarinet, trombone, and tuba) there was no music available commercially for us to use. I had the opportunity to develop all of our arrangements, which turns out to have been good experience and preparation for the life of a professional composer.

Recently, an old cassette recording of our group was rediscovered. I'm planning to sample from it for a few postings this week.

Joyful Noise was: Erin Beute (voice/piano), Barbara Lovely (clarinet), David Morneau (trombone), and Jonathan Schnicke (tuba).

October 4, 2007

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stx2 is the second in what will be a series of acousmatic pieces using sounds from the Library Book Depository at The Ohio State University (where I work...)

The first one is here. Incidentally, stx is the three letter code for the depository.

September 26, 2007

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Lawn Mowerment is another meditation in envirnmental sounds, created from a recording of my neighbor mowing his lawn last week. I recorded this using my laptop's internal microphone.

September 25, 2007

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Recovering no. 4 continues my series of pieces using the noisy sounds I found while recovering deletd files on my hard drive.

Listen to the first three pieces: Recovering no.1, Recovering no.2, Recovering no.3.

September 14, 2007

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Teledrone is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. It was my turn to go first, so on Monday I pointed my browser to The Freesound Project and grabbed the "Random Sample of the Day", which was telefon-piep.wav by barb. That is the only sound for this piece.

September 9, 2007

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Haell
I found a recording of a sermon while searching for something else entirely. There's something about the preacher's cadence that caught my ear, so I used it for this.

August 21, 2007

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25:17 is the result of hearing an interview with Samuel L Jackson on the radio last week. If he had a church, I'd consider going...

August 14, 2007

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Recovering no.3 continues my exploration of sounds recovered from my hard drive. In addition to all of the wonderful noises, the recovery software actually pulled out little pieces of long deleted recordings. These are found scattered throughout the noise, much as you will here them today.

August 8, 2007

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stx1 is the first in what will be a series of acousmatic pieces using sounds from the Library Book Depository at The Ohio State University (where I work...)

August 7, 2007

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This is This uses my computer's speech reading utility to channel the spirit of Gertrude Stein.

August 3, 2007

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Holy Sonar Batman! It's another Dance-a-Day collaboration. Watch it @ http://danceaday.com

August 2, 2007

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A few years ago, my insane sister-in-law, Jainie, left an excited message on our answering machine asking if we remembered a particular moment from one of the Ace Ventura: Pet Detective moviesÔø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡the moment when Ace responded to another character by saying: Hello, Satan?

That was all she wanted, nothing else was in the message. It cracked us up so much that we've kept the message on our machine to this day.

Today is Jainie's birthday, so I created a piece for her using a snippet of that message.


Happy Birthday Jain.

August 1, 2007

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One month down, eleven to go.... We begin August with Anna's a Brat. My sister's name is Anna, and she really is a brat. If she were here she would tell you that I'm a geek, but she's not.

July 30, 2007

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Unsafe Bull is a tribute to Alvin Lucier's experimental classic, I Am Sitting In a Room. I used a short sample of composer Jay C Batzner saying "unsafe bull" (also the name of his podcast). This sample was compressed using QuickTime's Qualcomm PureVoice setting. The resulting file was compressed again in the same way. This process repeated 14 times, each version becoming more distorted. The different versions (original and 14 compressed) are heard in sequence.

If you haven't ever experienced I Am Sitting In a Room, you really should find a free hour and give it a listen. Also, check out Jay C Batzner's Unsafe Bull Podcast.

July 27, 2007

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Midday is this week's collaboration with Boris Willis of danceaday.com. After making a dance to last week's track, Late Night, he created this response. Same location, different time of day.


Freesound Project Sample attributions
heatwave.wavby laurent
Park_insects-02.wavby jakeharries

July 25, 2007

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Glass Canon
More musique concrète.

July 24, 2007

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Ashley Pearson Believes in You is a phrase from the 2004 State of the Union address. As a refresher, Ashley Pearson is the girl who sent the President a letter about supporting US troops in Iraq. Bush read from this letter during the speech.

I'm not sure what it is about Bush's peculiar way of speaking that attracts me, but I find myself going to the The George W. Bush Public Domain Audio Archive a lot.

July 20, 2007

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late night is this week's collaboration with Boris Willis of danceaday.com.

darkness. crickets sing.
a moaning wind moves the trees.
distant tv sounds.

July 19, 2007

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Glassbreak
Start your day off with some old-school musique concrète.

July 18, 2007

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Hot

I apologize, there's really no excuse for this.

July 11, 2007

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Recovering #2 further explores the noisy sounds I recovered from my hard drive while attempting to reverse an accidental deletion of some important files.

Watch out, it's noisy.

July 10, 2007

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Oh expands a recording of a woman's voice saying "oh" to a full minute.

July 8, 2007

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Leading was created using a single sample from the The George W Bush Public Domain Audio Archive that I manipulated using my favorite freeware, Sound Hack, and mixed in Logic. Enjoy.

July 5, 2007

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Recovering #1 is one of a series of pieces I intend to create using a particular set of sounds. While working on a project last year I accidentally deleted an entire folder of sound files that I needed. In a moment of panic I purchased a file recovery program and ran it on my hard-drive. In addition to the files that I needed, it somehow recovered 14GB of random sound files. Most of these are noises, probably from data that was originally part of some other file type. I've kept this fascinating collection and will use it to make many little pieces over the next year.

Watch out, it's noisy...

July 3, 2007

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Here, I'll Play It Again is my submission to this year's 60x60 project. A single spoken phrase gradually comes into focus. This music was created using MaxMSP and is a byproduct of another project of mine: ImDM