When first tasked with this assignment and seeing the picture of what seems to be a man in a make-shift lab on the homework page, I knew that this assignment was going to be all about experimentation. I came in wanting to imitate a more traditional beat using found sounds, but I admit I ended up spending a majority of the time playing with processing the sounds in Chuck and eventually tried to put them in an order that makes sense. The experimentation phase was, however, in my opinion worthwhile because I was able to see how small, simple changes such as filters can completely change the quality of an audio file. I also created some things that I’m not even sure how it happened, but I really enjoyed. For example, the base of my homebrew piece remained true to my original intention and is a pretty conventional beat that springs out of a code I wrote that plays an audio file of a person eating chips, chops up and messes with the timing, then adds in swallowing noises. After the code runs for a bit, a seemingly random collection of sounds transforms into a clean rhythm with the swallow acting as a sort of kick and the crunch of the chip acting as a sort of high hat. It’s almost like a simple ‘boots and cats’ beatbox and I”m not entirely sure how Chuck made it happen, I’m just glad it did since it became the foundation for the rest of my musical statement. Overall, I wanted to make a piece that sounded pleasant and linear without trying to force it into the structure of a song. As for the aesthetic goals for this, I used mouth sounds entirely, which makes up my ‘inner aesthetic loop’ and for the outer loop I wanted to convey this sense of the human noises we make that fill the silence when we’re alone.
For my work in progress for this musical statement, I created a layered beat using the recordings I made and processed them to sound more interesting or musical. Making separate chuck files for the different sections of ‘instrumentation’ or beats was really helpful in creating the layers and getting the timing right, but it was especially helpful in experimentation as I’m not used to creating electronically composed music, particularly with found sounds. This gave me some more freedom and confidence to mess around with the various sound files I collected. Most of the recordings are played linearly, but I have one sound file that has a variety of different mouth noises that I have playing at random intervals and random lengths to create a sort of randomized and unexpected ‘melody line’ so the linear and more traditional found sound beat is a bit more interesting while taking advantage of how chuck can play with timing.
I’ve always found beatboxing fascinating, it was probably my first exposure to music that wasn’t created with a traditional instrument. Even the voice is a traditional instrument, but beatboxing was so different; it was the sounds you could make with your face, mouth, and throat. I also always thought it was interesting how most western cultures really don’t like mouth noises, but in other cultures such as Japan they’re actually considered a good thing! I wanted to have a theme to the sounds I collected, like the door homebrew example we heard in class so I collected and recorded a series of sounds made with the mouth, whether it’s a sigh, a consonant, or even eating. I’m hoping to create a rhythmic musical statement with the sounds I collected.
I wanted to start with a looping beat to begin with and add on top of that in a typical, almost cliche musical structure. Since I’m new to using these types of ‘found’ sounds, I wanted to have a methodology to it that made sense so I could learn more about musical structures and how to use unconventional sounds. Perhaps after I have something that sounds like a traditional beat, I can further experiment with it. My greatest struggle was figuring out how to layer sounds in order with Chuck, but I’m finally getting a better understanding of how to use SndBuf the spork method. I admit I spent way too much time figuring out how to get a looping beat, but I think now that I know how to do that and add sounds on top at different times, the rest of this project should go more smoothly.