Homemade Samples

[eyes cast down]

I just finished chopping up a mess of home-recorded samples and loops, some from slightly weird sources - though I'm sure I'll be able to find REALLY weird ones in good time. Of course the fun only starts when the source becomes unrecognizable... So far I got bubble wrap, Go stones pouring into a heavy crystal bowl, a snapping towel, a crinkling plastic fruit container, some water glasses, and dozens of odd shakers. The next recording session will include ice cubes crackling in hot tea (ya gotta hear it to believe it). Then the fun part of processing them into stew...

What other strange ones have others come up with?

[Seren]

I really enjoy creating my own sounds - I used the foil bag from a mulitpack of crisps to great effect and I recommend getting them in stereo if possible so the sounds move around as well as being weird. I had two mics very close together and gently moved some plastic padding type material around the heads...

If you can get a shaker that you can open and replace the loose stuff with small glass 'seed beads' you can get a much purer and finer sound....(or go the whole way and get some rawhide [dog chews are a good source], synthetic sinew, a right sized branch, seed beads and leather to make your own)

[eyes cast down]

Decent - I got some good South American shakers from an eye-candy shop. Just reocrded another batch of homemade stuff last week, with my wife helping out. The buble wrap sounds promising....

Seren said:

I really enjoy creating my own sounds - I used the foil bag from a mulitpack of crisps to great effect and I recommend getting them in stereo if possible so the sounds move around as well as being weird. I had two mics very close together and gently moved some plastic padding type material around the heads...

If you can get a shaker that you can open and replace the loose stuff with small glass 'seed beads' you can get a much purer and finer sound....(or go the whole way and get some rawhide [dog chews are a good source], synthetic sinew, a right sized branch, seed beads and leather to make your own)

[F Fang]

I don't use a lot of homemade samples these days, but years ago, had some fun slowing down the sounds of mundane things I had recorded, like tearing newspapers or banging on old stainless steel pots and pans. These days I've been subjecting some of my older unused recordings to the recycling/reprocessing treatment and finding uses for them in other new pieces.

Forrest

[eyes cast down]

That's a great idea, I want to try that with some of the textural ones, maybe a few of the shakers. My wife blows a mean conch shell, and I look forward to messing with that too.

[John Koch-Northrup]

I haven't recorded much in a long time with my minidisc... but I used to love just walking around the yard with my binaurals attached to a ruler and I could focus in on all sorts of odd sounds. It's kind of like macro photography - take something tiny and bring it way out into the forefront.

I was listening to 'sub.terra' for the first time in about a year and remembered that on the last remix called 'solitude' where I took my original 'sub.terra' track, and all the remixes that the others did and then mixed them altogether into an 18 minute final piece... I remembered that I wanted some cymbal sounds - and I used a bit of tapping on my trumpet bell and also used two wire hangers. There's actually quite a bit of wire hanger going on in 'solitude' which I find a bit funny thinking back... :-)

My 'marco polo' track (which is currently on my profile page music player - and is going to be remastered/released in a few weeks) - has one long field recording using the minidisc and binaurals - I was at a hotel in northern illinois - and I stood on our balcony recording some kids playing 'marco polo' in the pool across the parking lot. Since there were evergreen trees right up against our balcony - tons of insects are all over the recording - and a 6 lane highway was only stones throw away as well - so that's in there the whole time as well. The recording is untreated except for me trying to minimize the traffic rumble...