Static Sounds

The blog has moved

noreply@blogger.com (Static) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 09:36:00 +0000

I have decided to develop this blog on the wordpress platform and I have moved it on a self-hosted server. I hope to offer more content like sound libraries and ableton presets. See you there.

Diaxiom Radio

noreply@blogger.com (Static) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:16:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, I received a message from someone who had found out about me through SoundCloud and who was interested by the sound design on one of my tracks. After a few emails back and forth, where we discussed mainly technical stuff, that guy told me he ran an internet radio called Diaxiom and that he would be happy to broadcast some of my stuff on there. We agreed on four tracks that best represent my sound and since today it is going to be played on rotation.
Diaxiom is a net radio that plays ambient, experimental and dubby minimal music released mainly on netlabels. For me that's a great way of finding out about very talented musicians and interesting netlabels I wouldn't have come across otherwise. So far I have been very impressed by OCP, a portuguese musician, who gets lots of exposure over there.

Vortex

noreply@blogger.com (Static) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 22:59:00 +0000

For the past few months, I have been focusing on thematically related ambient tracks. They have been created over long periods of time and heavily composed and arranged. I wanted to take a break from this project and make something more spontaneous that would sounds completely different. I dug out an old unfinished project that used few instances of a granular synthesiser I created in Ableton Live and started to play with streams on grains coming back and forth into the soundscape. I then derived two recordings that I mixed together and augmented with a field recording in the background. Nicken sent me message saying it "sounds like being in bottom floor of a big ship. right besides the engine-rooms. plus water dripping in. creepy." I think that describes this track very well. Enjoy!

<a href="http://static.bandcamp.com/track/vortex">Vortex by Static</a>

Distant

noreply@blogger.com (Static) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 22:53:00 +0000

Second installment of a series I started with the track 'Oblique'. This time the tone is not as dark as before and the melodies are more upfront and obvious. I had lots of fun making this track and for once things seemed to come quite easily. I feel this marks possibly a new direction for me. We'll see.

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Oblique

noreply@blogger.com (Static) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:40:00 +0000

This track started from a very simple custom-made generative device emulating water dropping in an imaginary basement. Something I would play at home as background atmosphere at low volume. I forgot about it and started working on other tracks. A few weeks later, while browsing through my projects, I decided to come back to it and I added more elements like field recordings I had just made in an old and dusty workshop and the sounds generated by an home-made contact microphone. From a somehow dark atmosphere, the track moved into more intimate territories after I added a few distant melodies and a slow pulsing bass. Enjoy!

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Hazafelé Remix

noreply@blogger.com (Static) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:27:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, Hungarian musician Banyek posted on the .microsound mailing list a sound competition to remix one of his tracks called 'Hazafelé'. He asked people to follow only one rule : "The submitted track should be built upon the sounds of the original track — though there are no restrictions on the sound processes that are allowed to be used, so the possibilities are relatively infinite."
With no stems available and only a mp3 file as source material, I had to do things very differently than usual. Lots of chopping up, filtering, time-stretching, time-shrinking and processing to shred the source material into clicks, grainy textures and distant melodies. After many hours of de-constructing, I started to assemble each piece of that new puzzle to give the track a completely new form. There is still the sense of time and space of the original but I wanted to tell a slightly different story. Here is the result!

&amp;amp;lt;a href="http://static.bandcamp.com/track/hazafele-static-remix"&amp;amp;gt;Hazafelé (Static Remix) by Static&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;

Asleep

noreply@blogger.com (Static) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:46:00 +0000

I started working on this track about a year ago and it has been through many forms and shapes since then. It was originally built around a voice sample mixed with some broken-beats, a saturated drone and a few dubby elements. The more I worked on it, the more I felt something was missing and I felt the track wasn't going anywhere. After many attempts to give it more life, I stopped working on it for a few months. Only recently I decided to give a new direction to the track and I used the large amount of loops and sounds I had created to make something new. From the original take, the old elements have been recycled and appear very sparingly, the vocal samples have been processed and buried to give it a darker feel. I am now very happy with this track and it is time to work on something new. Enjoy!

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Sydney House Sessions

noreply@blogger.com (Static) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 21:47:00 +0000

About a month ago, I met my friend Rod for a improvisation session with nothing really prepared beforehand. He had set up the studio with a couple of guitars, his Korg SP-200, a few microphones and Ableton Live. We started the session by recording an acoustic guitar chord which we reversed, transposed, filtered and looped producing a very nice drone. From there, we added a few guitar loops, some time-stretched voices and everything that fit the mood of the session at the time. I remember I felt very happy by the end of it even though the atmosphere created by the music was quite dark and spooky.
I spent the next couple of weeks arranging and mixing all the parts in order to re-enact that session and how things fell into place. Hopefully, I have managed to stay closed to the spirit of that night. Enjoy!

<a href="http://static.bandcamp.com/track/sydney-house-sessions-1-static-mix">Sydney House Sessions 1 (Static Mix) by Static</a>

Shortwave Set

noreply@blogger.com (Static) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 00:08:00 +0000

This is the first track of a series of live sessions I'll be posting within the next few months. The starting point for this track was a recording of a random shortwave radio station which I looped and passed through some effects. That night the radio reception wasn't great and the sample quality was quite gritty, but it fits perfectly with the mood of the session I recorded subsequently. The version you can listen here is a 10 min edit of the full session. Enjoy!

<a href="http://static.bandcamp.com/track/shortwave-set-1">Shortwave Set 1 by Static</a>

Brian Eno

noreply@blogger.com (Static) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:22:00 +0000

Recently, I came across a very interesting documentary about Brain Eno called Imaginary Landscapes. For the time being, you can watch it there.

It's a fascinating journey through his world, where he talks about his way of approaching and making music.

Credits :
Imaginary Landscapes
a film on Brian Eno
by Gabriella Cardazzo and Duncan Ward
a Filmaker Production - London 1989

Acoustic Ecology

noreply@blogger.com (Static) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 17:58:00 +0000

In late 2007, I read a fascinating book by Curtis Roads called Microsound that talks about granular synthesis. Very quickly, I started developing a granular synthesiser rack in Ableton Live using Operator and some MIDI plug-ins. The track below has been written with multiple instances of that custom rack and is available for download.

&amp;amp;lt;a href="http://static.bandcamp.com/track/acoustic-ecology"&amp;amp;gt;Acoustic Ecology by Static&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;