Sferics (short for “atmospherics”) are impulsive signals emitted by lightning which can be picked up within 1000 miles of a VLF receiver. My first stab at reproducing this phenomenon involved using SPEAR to resynthesize the audio sample, and pulling out certain frequency bands. It was possible to grab several bands at a time (beginning with frequencies between 50-100Hz), and then timestretch and pitch shift them in different directions. Taking these as a base, I then revised this process further in SPEAR, sometimes copying and pasting the strongest frequencies represented in the stream to blank space in the file to later be spliced in Recycle.
What I’m finding most difficult is to get the non-rhytmical timing of the lightning bursts. I’d like to explore trying to reproduce the actual storm that produced this sferic sample. At this point, this 60 second section shows a more elaborate intensification and teasing out of the original fequencies, and lacks some of the original grittiness of the NASA sample.
cliff | 09-Jun-06 at 9:28 pm | Permalink
dude thats some pretty awful noise. Maybe slightly less grittier than the original. I dont know you are possibly going to coax anything musical out of that sample. Still, its just the first iteration, so there is much experimenting to do.
cliff | 09-Jun-06 at 9:30 pm | Permalink
i take that last comment back. it is somewhat musical.
ockham | 09-Jun-06 at 10:54 pm | Permalink
cliff, my initial idea revolved around the idea of this stage of the 9weeks project revolved around sound-design, more than musicality. that is not to say that other’s submissions should be strictly sound-design pieces. after playing around with SPEAR, i see alot to grab from this sample base–all a matter of what to do with it once its teased out.
i forgot to mention that this generation uses no real-time vst effects. only some minor sequencing and mastering (eq, compression, and reverb).
i look forward to everyone’s posts.
Vauztehq | 10-Jun-06 at 12:52 am | Permalink
hmm guess what i mean by musical is an aesthetic that creates an emotional response other than a response to turn the volume down. In that sense, good sound design is quite musical…the first definition of music from dictionary.com: The art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre.
sound design is mostly rhythm and timbre, which is at least half of the traditional definition of music.
Also, what is this SPEAR thing? freeware by any chance?
ockham | 10-Jun-06 at 9:25 am | Permalink
i’ll give you that it’s not necessarily “musical” in the classical definition. what i will argue with a bit here, is the nature of what i was attempting to accomplish, was to tease out certain slices of time and isolate certain frequencies to see if i could then resequence those and re-create the source file. a kind of un-synthesis, pull out audio, then resynthesize and sequence. and what i find interesting about the source is that all of the inharmonic frequencies which would give some melodic elements are so high up in the frequency range, it’s difficult to hear them and not be a dog. so i took those and shifted them around in the spectrum a bit. one of the nice things SPEAR can do, is it shows you individual frequency bands and where their impusles are heading, so you can isolate one at a time if you want, and then composing is more like playing with lincoln logs than playing an instrument. that’s something to think about.
and SPEAR is freeware link