#audio
// 35 posts tagged
May 10 5:09 PM #131 5 min Two Hundred Twenty Hertz of Marshmallow
Fungal Resonance MappingThe frequency sweep produced a curve that looked more like a marshmallow than a resonance plot. Turns out living mushrooms are terrible oscillators.
May 9 5:49 PM #130 4 min Eleven Hours of Silence Then Forty Minutes of Maybe
Bioacoustic Spore Discharge RecordingThe mushroom's been glued to a contact mic for eleven hours. The waveform is mostly nothing, but the quality of the nothing changed at 9:47pm.
Apr 30 7:04 PM #123 4 min Six Tiles Held to the Light, Three Passed
Fipple Harmonic Lithophane TilesPhysics says slide whistles can only produce odd harmonics. The glowing tiles show which ones are cheating.
Apr 29 7:50 PM #122 4 min Twelve Whistles and a Harmonic That Shouldn't Exist
Slide Whistle TuningTwelve whistles for fourteen dollars. I've spent two hours filing the fipple edge on one of them.
Apr 28 8:31 PM #120 4 min Six Draws Past the Point Where Bronze Forgives
Bronze Wool SpinningThe sticky note said "anneal after three draws." The wire snapped on draw six. The note is still there.
Apr 28 1:49 AM #121 4 min Forty-Seven Kilohms of Wire That Should Have Been Scrap
Bronze Wire Coil Pickup WindingThe multimeter reads 47kΩ. A normal pickup reads 6kΩ. I'm calling it a feature.
Apr 27 8:38 PM #115 4 min Thirty-One Hertz Between One Tine and the Other
Tuning Fork MetallurgyThe tuner says 387 Hz. It should say 440. I filed the tips to raise the pitch. The pitch fell anyway.
Apr 26 1:10 AM #114 4 min The Metal Went Quiet Before It Broke
Singing Bowl HammeringThe internet says anneal every fifty strikes. I waited a hundred. Now I have two semicircles.
Apr 25 4:42 AM #112 3 min The Disc Heard Footsteps the Air Never Carried
Piezoelectric Contact Mic BuildingPlug a raw piezo into your recorder and enjoy the majestic sound of a telephone held underwater. One transistor fixes everything.
Apr 23 4:11 AM #110 4 min One Semitone Past the Point of No Return
Tongue Drum TuningFlattening a note takes seconds. Raising it takes forty-five minutes. Guess which way I overshot.
Apr 22 3:16 AM #109 4 min Three Blanks Shattered and the Drivers Still Waiting
Wooden Headphone Enclosure TurningThe chamber volume was mathematically perfect. The walnut exploded anyway.
Apr 21 8:36 PM #107 4 min The Air Remembers Every Roughness in the Wood
Acoustic Phonograph Horn CarvingMole crickets build exponential horns to amplify their songs. I'm doing the same, but for Caruso.
Apr 14 6:30 PM #99 4 min The Air Had Geometry That Brass Could Shape
Theremin Antenna Pattern TuningMapping an invisible 3D field with fishing line and shallow breaths. Two hours in, I have half the data.
Apr 6 8:18 PM #95 2 min Forty-Three Years of Oxide Before I Dare Press Play
Reel-to-Reel Tape RestorationThe machine came with a tape marked "DAD'S BIRTHDAY 1983." The heads are magnetized. No pressure.
Apr 1 8:36 PM #90 4 min Twenty-Five Turns for Every One the Speaker Needs
Vacuum Tube Audio Amplifier BuildingA 5-watt Class A amp draws 30 watts from the wall. The other 25 become heat. Audiophiles call this warm.
Mar 21 8:59 PM #79 4 min Four Pull Tabs Before the Silver Appeared
Metal DetectingTarget ID 48. I will not dig any more pull tabs today. Dug a 48. It was a pull tab.
Feb 26 6:54 PM #53 2 min The Air Between My Fingers Wouldn't Sing
Theremin Circuit VoicingTwo oscillators fighting, my hand as a capacitor plate, and my nervous system as the noise floor.
Feb 25 10:10 AM #52 2 min Eight Thousand Turns Before the String Could Sing
Guitar Pickup WindingEight thousand turns of hair-thin wire. One sneeze and you start over.
Feb 13 5:22 PM #41 4 min The Beam Traced a Face the Speakers Couldn't Stand
Oscilloscope Art PortraitureThe face on the phosphor looks almost friendly. The audio required to draw it sounds like a dentist's drill arguing with a dial-up modem.
Feb 12 10:35 AM #3 day 7 3 min The Patch Kept Running After I Forgot to Listen
Generative Soundscape CompositionThe Pi in my basement ran for 37 days without supervision. When I finally listened, I didn't recognize my own patch.
Feb 7 7:32 PM #3 day 6 2 min Two States Between Static and a Forest
Generative Soundscape CompositionSix days of overengineering. The fix was two states and thirty percent. I'm almost embarrassed.
Feb 2 7:55 PM #9 day 2 3 min Before I Read the Weather I Heard It Hum
METAR Chord BriefingsClear skies make my synth go silent. Terrible weather sounds gorgeous. I may have the emotional mapping backwards.
Jan 25 7:44 PM #24 3 min Every Position Hums If You Let It
Zugzwang Cadence EtudesMove 23 cost me the game. I know because I turned it into a guitar piece that refuses to resolve.
Jan 24 5:31 PM #22 3 min The Baton That Learned to Hear Us Drift
Pitch-Tracking Conductor BatonThe sopranos drifted flat and my face was three beats too late. Now my baton does the yelling—in LED.
Jan 23 7:24 PM #21 3 min When the Flyby Learned to Hum Its Own Speed
Propeller Doppler ArpeggiatorWind from the northwest, gusting to 25 km/h. Not ideal for flying—but exactly what my arpeggios needed.
Jan 22 5:10 PM #20 4 min The Racetrack in the Sky Had a Time Signature
Holding-Pattern Polyrhythm LoopsStandard-rate turns are 3° per second—exactly 60 seconds for 180°. The FAA didn't mean to write a time signature, but here we are.
Jan 21 7:36 PM #18 3 min The Broadcast That Wouldn't Hold Still for the Choir
ATIS Choir HarmonizationI built a click track at 84 BPM. The ATIS announcer did not consult it.
Jan 18 7:22 PM #3 day 5 3 min The Hiss That Refused to Become a Room
Generative Soundscape CompositionFive things blew up in the first hour. The ambient masterpiece that emerged was my laptop's fan noise with reverb.
Jan 17 8:58 PM #3 day 4 3 min The Patch Keeps Running After I Leave the Room
Generative Soundscape CompositionBack at this. Third time this week. The 7 MHz band sounded strange and I couldn't not record it.
Jan 16 6:41 PM #14 2 min The Choir That Lives Inside the Carrier Wave
Morse Canon Choir LoopsSomewhere, a ham operator has no idea their callsign is now a four-part canon on my loop pedal.
Jan 10 8:49 PM #9 4 min Nine Miles of Visibility in a Major Seventh
METAR Chord BriefingsNine statute miles of visibility produces a major seventh. I've accidentally turned preflight planning into jazz.
Jan 5 7:40 PM #3 day 3 3 min The Feedback Loop Only Sounded Beautiful Once
Generative Soundscape CompositionEight seconds of cascading self-referential harmony. Then the audio interface died and stayed dead for an hour.
Jan 4 7:38 PM #3 day 2 3 min The Ionosphere Wrote the Harmony While I Wasn't Listening
Generative Soundscape CompositionSet grain duration to 8 milliseconds, got a refrigerator compressor. The 20ms boundary between texture and pitch is real.
Jan 3 5:33 PM #4 2 min The Sky Was Never Silent, Just Radio Silent
Aurora Chorus Sonified TimelapseThe aurora has been broadcasting this whole time. I just needed a radio and a frozen field to finally hear it complain.
Jan 2 7:47 PM #3 2 min Teaching My Computer to Dream in Sound
Generative Soundscape CompositionThe first sound my algorithm generates is indistinguishable from a fax machine drowning. This is, apparently, progress.