All Videos Tagged minimal (The Visual Music Village) - The Visual Music Village

Tape Loop|Skipping CD|Loopception ~ Gen Thalz

2014-09-30T02:22:17.661Z

Tape Loop|Skipping CD|Loopception

Track: Eight Equals Zero
Genre: Electronic
Style: minimal techno, aleatoric,noise house
Experimenting with tape loop, skipping cd, and loopception (feedback loop within a feedback loop). No synthesizer, drum machine or any acoustic and traditional instrument was used. Recorded straight using an old digicam, eq and volume boost using DAW.

We call it "aleatoric" because of how the nature of the sounds in this experiment was created - by chance.

For example the malfunctioning or skipping sound from the cd player. The discman itself determines when and how it would play those affected area that we burned (you can just scratch or paint it if you like ;D) unless we click "pause" which on the otherhand emits a beeping tones by default that we really like.

The kick drum sound projecting a 4/4 beat. Again, by chance. Purely made out of feedback signal creating a pulsating sound that we harness by accident through random tweaking of the knobs and patching cables to in/out from a loopception consisting of an 6 channel analog mixer, DIY passive 3x3 matrix mixer, and DIY ring modulator.

Lastly, the rest of the sound is from 3 cassette tape loop (23cm long). These 3 cassette tapes have different loop sound - random noises from a radio, i.e. white noise, static, commentators, etc. Done by switching the selector (no timing at all) of the mini-cassette from tape to radio, Am to Fm, and tuning a station simultaneously while in record mode. It is very random what sounds will be recorded to the tape loop. Another thing here is, we played the tape loop on mini-cassette by fading in/out the volume and it decides what part of the loop will be heard. The multitrack tape recorder slowed down its loop via pitch control, while walkman played its tape loop as is.

You can also hear a sampled sound of our voice murmuring "Eight Equals Zero" repeatedly. It was played, sliced, chopped, and resample using a sampler/looper.

Hardware used:

- Mini-Cassette Radio

- Walkman with tape recorder

- Discman

- DIY Passive 3x3 Matrix Mixer

- DIY Ring Modulator

- Sampler/Looper

- 4 Track Tape Recorder

- 6 Channel Analog Mixer

The visual is a combination of datamoshing and video granular synthesis. We say granular because some parts of the video was made from a small very short frame we cut from a videoclip (us walking inside an arcade center) and clone it repeatedly to create a loop almost like a gif. While the datamosh part is done by cutting an equal part of the said videoclip into 2 then mix and render the two again using DAW to create a psychedelic glitch effects.

Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun [Pink Floyd cover] ~ Gen Thalz

2014-07-25T03:20:23.520Z

*please listen with headphones

Our first attempt to do a complete cover song and it's full of pretension, dreams, delusions, and ambition - considering it's from the Floyds'! But hey, we need to get this psychedelic paranoia out of our heads, also this is a personal favorites of us from them and we are deeply moved after hearing the version of this song from the great Mr. Mika Vainio (electronic/noise musician), and our newly found progressive metal band OSI (Office of Strategic Influence). So we dearly hope that we give justice covering this trippy-enigmatic-magical song though the recordings is not on its best quality and vocals is a bad idea haha :)

All sounds was made from analog electronic hardware, except for the "bell" or the sine wave sounds which we done/programmed using a free android app called S.A.M.M.I., there is also some noises that happens during recording and editing which is not intentional but we see it as "happy accident", we like it so we keep it.

- recorded using an old multitrack tape recorder.
- arranged, master, and mixdown using DAW.
- spoken sampled words by Morpheus from The Matrix movie (redpill scene).

And for the visuals, obviously it is composed of several random footage of our gears that we used overlapping each other, combined with a different video feedback loop clip that we shot using an ordinary webcam staring at itself on a pc monitor... No special effects and animation.

Lyrics-

Little by little the night turns around
Counting the leaves which tremble at dawn
Lotuses lean on each other in yearning
Under the eaves the swallow is resting

Set the controls for the heart of the sun.

Over the mountain watching the watcher.
Breaking the darkness, waking the grapevine.
One inch of love is one inch of shadow
Love is the shadow that ripens the wine.

Set the controls for the heart of the sun.
The heart of the sun, the heart of the sun.
The heart of the sun, the heart of the sun.

Morpheus: The matrix is everywhere, its all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. (Neo: What truth?) That you are a slave Neo, like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you can not smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind.

Look/Witness the man who raves at the wall
Making the shape of his questions to Heaven
Whether the sun will fall in the evening
Will he remember the lesson of giving?

Set the controls for the heart of the sun.
Set the controls for the heart of the sun
The heart of the sun, the heart of the sun (several times).

Morpheus: This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes...

Noise Music|Feedback Loop|Sound Sculpture ~ Gen Thalz

2014-04-26T08:53:31.275Z

Strange Noise in the Sky ~ Gen Thalz
[noise music/feedback loop/sound sculpture]

*All parts of this audio-video experiment was created out of feedback signals recorded live.

-The sound is a sculpted feedback signals coming from all the hardware stated below looping and controlling each other, the mixer and the effects pedal is solely the one acting as oscillator or sound/tone generator. There is no external sound sources, all is coming from within the hardware natural hiss, hum, buzz etc. noises. And by patching cables
and arranging every equipment in different ways, the possibilities are endless, almost like a semi-modular synthesizer.
We try to be gentle with outmost care as possible twiddling and manipulating the knob because just a slight of a turn can
change the form, tone, timbre, volume and pitch of the frequencies.

Hardware:

1.Analog Mixer
2.Mini Synth Delay Effects
3.Chorus Stompbox
4.Vibrato Stompbox
5.DIY Feedback Looper

-The visuals is also a feedback signals coming from a camera staring at its-self or by its own monitor creating loop
and a slight delay on its output. The results is very generative and may vary using different types of camera and t.v.,
the equipment we used is stated below. By pointing the camera at different angles and zooming it in or out, it can creates
a vast variety of organic-geometrical-fractal shapes, designs, and patterns as if one is on a wonderland trance-like altered-state visions. We put together here some of the videoclips that we created.

Equipment:

1.SLR Camera
2.CRT TV
3.LCD TV

"Sometimes it was enough to barely touch one of the recording or playback potentiometers to develop a sound. It was in this way, i think, that i discovered the pleasure of a work made with the tips of the toes or rather the fingers, and above all in looking for a certain kind of sound." ~ Eliane Radigue [electronic music composer]

i18n [organic/sound texture/breakbeat] ~ Gen Thalz

2014-04-12T10:04:59.562Z

*please use headphones
This is just another sound design/music concrete experiment that leads into a beat oriented atmospheric way.

Most of the processed found sound here is a sound of birds chirping and rooster cocking nearby that we accidentally captured while recording a sample intended only to pickup the gentle ambient sounds of the morning on a rooftop drinking coffee and turn it into something harsh, dirty, and gritty.

The visual is an actual steady footage of the recordings on the rooftop that undergo through a over-acting processing until the video turns into white, we really want it to be minimal. The grainy, sand, dusty figure that coming to and fro throughout the video is actually our shadow - as we move around the place or pressing the "record" button. As someone see or notice this is really not meant to be sync with the audio.

And the verse at the near end of the video is from our poem/song title "Through the Broken Glass".

"The silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun. ... It doesn't really mean anything. I just liked the sound of it" ~ Morton Subotnick [electronic music composer]

DIY Electronic Music Instrument ~ Gen Thalz

2014-04-05T23:47:58.112Z

Dual oscillator with 8 step sequencer, 2 LFO and mild fuzz

Sound Title: "intron"

*A little improvise jam with voltage and frequencies using our recent hand job electronic music instrument, we don't know how to end it so we just fade out...…