Posted by: J.C. Combs | January 17, 2010

Jane Martin

Dear Readers,

I would like to announce an album that I am hosting on my Bandcamp page for a friend of mine named Jane Martin. She recently finished up the minimum of pieces to move forward with the release. She wishes to add all future works to the album over time as one collection, thus simply naming the album Jane Martin.

Jane wanted me to relay this info:

My Biography

Hello everyone. My name is Jane Martin. I live in Fairview, OK, or actually 10 miles on the outskirts of town in a little hobbit hole-type abode. I’m surrounded by many trees and I feel as though they are family. Sometimes I feel more connected to nature than to humans – as we know how humans and their bad sides can be. Anyway, not to ramble too much, but I was lucky in that a distant relative visiting from Eureka informed me about wireless internet and managed to hook me up. This was around three months ago, around the time my composition, music life started. Ever since I’ve been busy working at this album and I’ve managed to finish enough to post it for sale. I intend to add to the collection over time, but the trees have been ignored these last few months due to my obsession with music and now I feel its time to give them the attention they deserve.

Special thanks to J.C. Combs for hosting my album at his Bandcamp page and thanks to the fine citizens of Fairview, OK.

Yours Truly,

Jane Martin

Posted by: J.C. Combs | January 2, 2010

iTunes Goes Experimental!

Posted by: J.C. Combs | December 7, 2009

Safe Passage

December 19, 2009
By mapleleaf (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=314747)
old pinball.wav (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=34730)
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glitch_02_StatiqGlitch_(suonho).wav (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=3789)
glitch_08_jeniusjelinek_(suonho).wav (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=3795)
glitch_11_computo_(suonho).wav (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=3798)
By Timbre (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=1015240)
Cinematic Ticking Clock (heavy gears).wav (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=77738)
By Erdie (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=118241)
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By loofa (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=149377)
FLATbell7.aif (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=23615)

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December 18, 2009
By Parking Sun (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=5550)
bandung-taxiradio-1.aif (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=74310)

December 12, 2009
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SineDrone 10.flac (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=47337)
Pad 007 – Space Violin – A4.flac (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=52493)
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By Figowitz (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=706196)
DC3 takeoff inside short.wav (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=84740)
By laribum (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=110287)
Metal and Wood Movements.wav (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=66064)
By Sonic Sculptor (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=562449)
tension builder2.wav (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=48624)
By relwin (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=1024769)
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By mrtoftrash (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=245507)
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By nonono2 (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=728157)
Dark Mech Pad.wav (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=66446)
By Nimrod2000 (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=193983)
tv�glas.wav (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=26833)
November 26, 2009
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Big Stab.ogg (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=8923)
0 STABscrapes.ogg (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=8891)
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November 20, 2009
By domingus (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=512432)
BARCO_MUELLE_OMAN.wav (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=49295)
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20080421.docks.flac (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=52405)
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Tunnel ambience 150Hz.wav (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=75482)
—————————————
November 19, 2009
By roubignolle (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=328279)
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Ascenseur-Arrivee.aif (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=36339)
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Tasse caf� 2.wav (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=31760)
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Prepared Guitar Noise_Scrape Strings.wav (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=38080)
By thereelfryboy (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=257688)
Flashlight_Clicks.aif (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=35013)
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—————————————
November 13, 2009
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Intense Tone Clusters-Ligeti Homage.aif (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=44653)
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LAYERS 010 – Dreamdrone-05.flac (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=82938)
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280802F.mp3 (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=8443)
ESM08-L01-Tones.mp3 (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=19649)
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20070623 174921 kalibaru.wav (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=38286)
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Cedric Peyronnet – Linotype.mp3 (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=17316)
By Richard Gooderick (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=880489)
Glen’s Tractor 1.mp3 (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=64944)
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—————————————
November 7, 2009
By reinsamba (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=18799)
Fortaleza election campaign.wav (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=14385)
By Erratic (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=15)
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By FreqMan (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=92661)
034 Typing sequence.wav (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=23169)
By Benboncan (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=634166)
Rockfall in mine.wav (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=60085)
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—————————————
October 31, 2009
By DJ Chronos (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=103319)
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Metal Atmosphere 001.mp3 (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=57714)
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—————————————
October 24, 2009
By plagasul (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=23)
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Marcato Harp.wav (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=37282)
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Binaural Beat 01.aif (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=21152)
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—————————————
October 23, 2009
By tnickles (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=123153)
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MamaPesnya3.mp3 (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=52591)
By Kicked (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=513516)
glithcy thing.mp3 (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=61255)
By TJ Mothy (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=245459)
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By milo (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=444)
Cycling1.aif (http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=17337)
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Posted by: J.C. Combs | December 5, 2009

Ives, Cowell, Bartók – The Historic Meeting

The Fletcher Session – 1943 by Steve Layton

A unique meeting of the minds occurred in 1943. Charles Ives had just made some private recordings of himself playing a few of his pieces and songs. Fellow composer Henry Cowell had heard and played some of these for Dr. Harry Fletcher of Bell Laboratories, who was working experimentally at the time on the creation of stereophonic recordings. A dinner and meeting between the three was arranged at Dr. Fletcher’s apartment, and Fletcher had the idea to invite his recent acquaintance, famed refugee composer Béla Bartók, to the dinner as well. Bartók was feeling quite cut off in New York City, and was already suffering from the leukemia that would end his life in less than two years.

After the meal and chat, the three composers were shown Fletcher’s small home studio, which contained among other things a baby grand piano, a smaller box piano, a kind of celesta, and some of the new stereo recording equipment that cut masters directly to a large 16″ disk (there was no magnetic tape in the U.S. then). It’s not known who first suggested it, but all three of these leading modern composers agreed to sit down and play together for an impromptu test of the stereo recorder. They simply improvised freely, listening to and playing off each others’ ideas. As part of the ‘game’, each agreed to mostly use only one of their hands while playing!

Bartók, Cowell, Ives — The Fletcher Session, 1943 …(Steve Layton, feat. Adam Kondor & Benjamin Smith)

Cowell remembered that while listening to the disk afterward, he was immediately struck by the strange and yet cohesive nature of what had been played. He asked the others if they might agree to let him take this recording and issue a small run of copies for distribution. Ives couldn’t care less, but Bartók — whose perfectionism was legendary — was very adamant that this was only a small game among friends and should be kept private. So the disk remained among Dr. Fletcher’s possessions until and even after his death, to be only recently rediscovered in the Fletcher Archives of Brigham Young University.

Given the offhand nature of the session and the subsequent disposition of the disk, it’s not surprising the recording quality is only fair. But it is truly a unique document of a historic moment, a meeting that had never happened before, and would never happen again.

(the names in this article are true, everything else is fiction).

Article was submitted at ImprovFriday.

Posted by: J.C. Combs | December 2, 2009

Megalomaniac’s Machination

I entered a room. Twenty people stood in various poses, chatting about this and that. “Why, I heard that Nixon ordered an investigation,” a man in a flowery yellow suit replied and then took a puff from an Ashton. “Felines are immune,” I made out from another conversation at the window at one end of the flat, “but not all, not half breeds.”  Two elderly ladies nearby sat facing each other in red velvet chairs, both adorning gigantic white wigs and long painted black glue-on fingernails. “Let me read your palm,” said a young man who approached the elderly lady in the chair to the left. She blushed, slightly embarrassed, extended her hand and nodded. He took her hand and turned it palm up. He steadily ran his index finger along the lines and cracks of her palm, all the while his eyeballs rolling forward and backward, almost seizure-like. He then became calm and at once let go of her hand. “What I see in your future,” he began when out of nowhere the young mystic was smashed in the head by a statue head of Beethoven. The young man who just seconds before feigned seizure-like activity was now in full spastic dance, blood spurting from his eyeballs, legs kicking, arms flailing. All attention was directed toward the wielder of Beethoven’s head who stood over him laughing blissfully.  The man shouted, “anyone want to read his mind?”

Posted by: J.C. Combs | November 22, 2009

Musical Therapy

Ophelia Steve Layton (feat. Paul Muller, Lee Noyes, Steve Moyes, J.C. Combs)

She Noticed the Color of Her Eyes - JC Combs, Joseph Benzola, Lee Noyes, Benjamin Smith

I would like to share two works from this week’s ImprovFriday session, exact opposites and I have realized they work as therapy, especially if listened to back to back. Heaven and Hell. Lets start with Hell. The first is “She Noticed the Color of Her Eyes.” The exact moment in time where a woman fell in love. Its a big mash of Joseph Benzola, Lee Noyes, and Benjamin Smith with serious tweaking on my part and employing the addition of found sounds. I combined all three of Joe’s works he submitted to IF and at one point spaced two side by side. I tweaked the volume level to lower and rise and switched the sound direction to pan. I also added the effect “a cold house – reverb” . For Lee’s percussion improv, I added “formant frenzy” from the echo chamber. For Ben’s electronic organ impro, I tweaked the volume as well but here’s the catch, I added the sweeping phaser “red pill/blue.”

Once you listened to that, its time to shake off any anxiety or tension with Steve Layton’s “Ophelia.” A mash of Paul Muller, Lee Noyes, Steve Moyes, and myself — Steve says “crazy, but quietly and sweetly so.”

I hope the therapy worked.  For more, head over here.   ImprovFriday

Posted by: J.C. Combs | October 31, 2009

Flip flopped again (trials & tribulations)

Seeing that I have a horrible preamp (I’m pretty sure its made out of toy parts) I realized that a pair of nice NT5s won’t sound very good until I spend quite a bit more on a preamp. So I canceled the order.

As you may know, I’ve been moving toward the direction of “sound art” for the last several months. So the question really is, what’s more important, recording my piano or sounds of the world? The latter.

sony-pcm-d50-pop

However, I did spend an additional hundred dollars on this unit because it has a solid reputation as one of the quieter field recorders with pretty good built-in microphones. We will see just how well it records the Acrosonic.

Posted by: J.C. Combs | October 30, 2009

ImprovFriday is growing up!

blank-ad_brick-wall copy11ahh, isn’t she so cute?  The event ImprovFriday is really flourishing with its own public network. I want to encourage users to use the network features beyond the fun event, especially the blogs to promote themselves and share thoughts, ideas, etc.

So far users have been taking advantage of the photo section to make an art walk.

There are also some pretty nice videos there as well.

And lastly, what makes the place tick, the members.

Posted by: J.C. Combs | October 28, 2009

Some things technically don’t make sense

It has been almost two months in my quest for a microphone to both capture a decent recording of my Baldwin Acrysonic and to use for field recordings.  The research has led me to this thought:  If I only had five thousand to kill on a matched pair of microphones?

I’d be curious to know if there is really that much more involved in manufacturing a higher quality microphone that would change the price tag so drastically.  Maybe so, but in any case I’ve decided to go with a matched pair of Rode NT5s.

255009rode

I was going for a pair of large condenser microphones to capture a fuller medium range, with the piano in mind.  I ordered a pair of Marshal V87s on Ebay.  The seller had a 99 percent rating, so I found it strange that the microphones weren’t delivered at the two-and-a-half-week mark.  I canceled the order and maybe it was a good thing.  Over the last couple weeks I have been thinking more and more about capturing my own field recordings.  I think using other people’s sounds is a must, so sites like Freesound.org have my utmost respect.  But I have a strong feeling that getting out there in the field, imagining the way the recording will work in the piece as I record, is going to be a great experience.

The next step…. what mini-digital recorder?  Ahrrggg!!

Posted by: J.C. Combs | October 18, 2009

Across the Road

Composer, Greg Hooper, has been busy with a set of fantastic phonography works. His latest is titled “Across the Road.” For this piece Greg meticulously recorded the construction work on a house across the street from his own once a week at the same time for 28 weeks. “Across the Road” is mesmerizing and wonderfully unique.   Its available at Bandcamp on the label Analogous-Sounds.

Here is the official description of the work:

A field recording of a house being built across the road. I recorded an hour every Tuesday morning (at about 10:00 am) for 28 weeks. Each week provides – I think – 20 secs of both background and individual spot sound. The background was developed by taking a representative sample from that week, taking the FFT randomising the phase, then taking the IFFT, to give a noise sample that represented the spectrum (but not the dynamical structure) of that week. This was then convolved with representative sound of whatever the activity of that week was. Overlaid on top of that are spot sounds that seemed to me to represent the normal sounds of that week. The density of the sounds is determined by a drawing the builder made of the activity cycle across the entire building period.

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