Working with sound is, for many of us, the experience that attracted us to working with computers. Field recordings can be the best way to get close to sound – you’re attached to sounds you’ve found in the real world, you’ve experienced and collected, even if you transform them into something very different in production.

Nick Maxwell of the excellent Nick’s Tutorials Ableton Live production site shares some free explorations with us, complete with downloads you can reverse-engineer the instruments and play with the topics the video cover. You can also use these in your own work, royalty-free.

I really like some of the work here, from a kitchen knife to a found sound bass. Here’s Nick:

“Icy Shimmer” Effect

In this video, I use a few field recordings of a kitchen knife being unsheathed as well as a door closing as the layers for the eventual sound effect.  Basic things like reversing the waveforms, filtering , panning, and retuning are employed.  I also go beyond that into some more interesting stuff like using a grain delay, simple delay, and an autofilter to create a little effects section to further realize the sound.

Download

While talk of notation is in the air, it’s worth noting that sheet music has a chance to make a comeback in the digital age. After all, passive musical consumption seems to have already peaked some time in the now-past 20th Century. The desire for fans to be able to play the music they love is strong as ever, evidenced by the popularity of the Rock Band and Guitar Hero phenomenon. If you really wanted to be optimistic, you could interpret the downturn in recorded music as a positive trend back to live music and personal performance – the very musical trends that had been eclipsed by recording in the first place.

As with digital music downloads, the hope in digital sheet music is, naturally, being able to connect fans with the growing variety of music they might want to play. Brick and mortar stores where you can buy sheet music have already largely gone the way of the dodo. Here in New York, the big victim this spring is the storied classical music supply around the corner from Carnegie Hall: Joseph Patelson Music House has gone online-only. Music recording can count on some sort of transition to new formats; music publishing has to find a way to rise from the ashes of a business that’s had to deal with the invention of the Internet and records.

Selling MP3s? Try Sheet Music, Too, Says TuneCore

Last week, the latest announcement on this frontier was a partnership between TuneCore and Musicnotes.com. That brings together two real success stories in this arena. TuneCore is an affordable, flat-fee service that distributes music across different online stores (iTunes, eMusic, Amazon MP3); they’ve worked with everyone from indie artists to Areha Franklin, Beck, Bjork, and Cirque du Soleil (among others). Talk long tail: they release more music per day than any single major does in a year.

Musicnotes is interesting in that their catalog of on-demand online sheet music, topping about 100,000 titles, has been accelerating in sales – even as the economic recession takes its toll on the rest of the industry. They also boast 100,000 daily visitors to their site, thanks in part to partnerships with big-name publishers like Alfred, Faber, Disney, and Universal.

So, how do you bridge downloadable tracks with scores?

Eno had Music for Airports. It’s fitting that Monolake would do Music for Jet Lag. Robert Henke writes about this month’s free download:

Since I also have been flying a lot recently, I named it after one of the most annoying side effects of modern transportation and mixed it in a way that reflects that dizzy feeling of being hyper active and totally asleep at the same time. ( "Last call for mister Robert Henke, flying to Berlin, please come to gate B 154 IMMEDIATELY or we will unload your luggage !!!!!!!!!" )

I am myself recovering from jetlag on the way to Portugal, so the timing is perfect. In a way, I have to say I sometimes oddly enjoy the disorienting feeling. I don’t think it’d be terribly addictive, but it’s a physical, profound reminder of traveling a great distance, something you could otherwise ignore in the age of absurdly-fast jet travel.

Grab the download here:

Free Downloads of the Month [yetlag, May 2009 – should be archived if you’re catching this late]

Installation details:

http://monolake.de/installations/lufthansa.html

The installation is fascinating in itself: a Max/MSP-powered, interactive sound score for a giant flight simulator, a model of the presence of jets, travel, and air traffic control. Robert did the sound; Christopher Bauder of white void was the concept and very elegant visual design. (See also Aaron Koblin’s striking Processing-based visual piece Flight Patterns, which seems to have embedded itself on a certain airborne digital zeitgeist. The United States becomes a feathery web of connections and flying traffic. You can imagine how this might continue to be mined in sound.)

As we work to keep our creative process flowing, I especially love the idea of focusing on a feeling to get a production started, as Monolake did here. So often, it’s too easy to get caught up in something technical or some very particular idea, then lose that in the process. By focusing on a feeling or deeper sentiment, it’s possible to remain connected to the ethos of what the track really means to us.

Of course, travel too much, and that may just wind up being … well, jet lag.

Meanwhile, as I listen to more music piped through airport terminals and even Metro stations, I wish Eno’s original idea had caught on.

It’s easy to forget how deeply strangers can be connected by music in recordings and performances. Sadly, we too often take this connections for granted until we lose someone. When Telefon Tel Aviv’s Charlie Cooper passed away earlier this year, the loss sent shockwaves through the electronic music community. Because his work was influential for many people here on the CDM community, we certainly welcome musical tributes.

Our friend King Britt of Five Six Media today posted a couple of heartfelt, beautiful tracks from Fhloston Paradigm, a mysterious duo from Philadelphia. They’re described as “songs of love and admiration.” I’ll leave it at that and hope you enjoy them. One thing, happily, musicians do not have to leave behind: silence.

Download / play links on this story require Flash.

Direct link to Five Six Media:
FREE DOWNLOAD: FHLOSTON PARADIGM TRIBUTE TO CHARLIE COOPER

To kick off your weekend listening with a full album of delicious IDM, our friend Quantazelle / Liz McLean Knight offers up a compilation from her label subVariant. While big-name artists have gotten lots of publicity for doing free or pay-what-you-will albums, oddly a smaller group of them have chosen a Creative Commons license. subVariant does do that with a noncommercial / no derivative license – a bit restrictive, in that it doesn’t allow remixes, but perhaps a decent start.

And licensing aside, this is a lovely, clever compilation of tracks.

Interestingly, the physical object did sell out on eBay. When it comes to enthusiastic fans, it seems digital isn’t reducing the value of tangible objects – it may be doing just the opposite. (Adding still more irony, the tongue-and-cheek name for the album was “Coaster,” just what CDs have supposedly become.)

My label’s latest glitchy techno / IDM compilation is now a free digital download: SubvaritraxTM [Liz Revision Blog]

Product page / download links on fractalspin (warning: autoplays)

I quite like this album, released in the heady days of 2005 – there are some lovely, delicate tracks on there. The price is right, though, so grab it (registration required) and let us know what you think. If you torrent it, which you can under the CC license, feel free to post a link.

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