Recording Ideas that Failed

Started by Balor/SS1535, November 12, 2020, 06:49:34 PM

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Balor/SS1535

I think that noise, more than any other variety of music, invites wide-ranging experimentation.  However, just like all other venues for experiments, there are attempts that do not work out as intended.  Sometimes, that might result in an unexpected result that was even better than what one was initially aiming for.  At other times, it might just fail entirely.

With that in mind, I was wondering what others have experimented with that did not work out as hoped.  What did you want to try?  Did you learn anything?  Why did it fail?

Perhaps we can learn from the mistakes of others, or find new ways to explore noise ourselves.

JLIAT

Some many years back I wanted to create very long sound files. I learnt to things from this practice. 1. That 4 gig is the maximum size for  a .WAV, and 2. Running programs to create such files on old laptops over several days can destroy the hard drive.

FreakAnimalFinland

I think it is not usually about single idea that would have failed, but difficulty of circumstances.
Such as being on construction site, hearing exactly the kind of sound you wish to use, recording the situation and realizing soon that your ears picked up the sound you thought of, but microphone picked up everything.
Instead of the great rhythmic thumping sound and steelworks being done, you get most of all traffic, people talking, and so on. Things you completely managed to ignore while listening on the spot. I have bought 2nd hand shotgun microphone, used by state radio. That thing is pretty neat. Like 1 meter long, and you can direct to exact spot far away in distance, and it can actually record it pretty well without sounds of surroundings disturbing it too much. Phantom power is needed, and it is of course not very discreet in public places.

Another thing what one often fails, is having loud sound source sound loud. So many times being on location, where action itself sounds great. Later on, without to original object sound, the recording alone is like throwing around beer can, instead the gigantic sound. Of course, with experience and knowledge, this is less problem now, that it used to be.

One of recording ideas of album, has been "power electronics" happening in room. Where amplifiers would be placed in specific way, and this 3 dimensional room could be sensed well. What sound comes from which amplifier as well as the movement of person could be heard in the room when/if physical action or vocals happen. Been thinking of this for years and drawn the templates of what and how it is done. It should not be merely "recording idea", but sound be very specific way and the physicality of recording should be tactile. Something that you do not need to "explain in liner notes", but you will most definitely know what it is when you hear it. Of course I did a lot of almost that type of recordings, but not reaching quite the level that would set it apart from what is the "normal" recording method. In my case normal method often involves also room microphones and recording space/action at the same time as the electronic sound.
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Andrew McIntosh

Quote from: FreakAnimalFinland on November 13, 2020, 07:38:58 AM
I think it is not usually about single idea that would have failed, but difficulty of circumstances.
Such as being on construction site, hearing exactly the kind of sound you wish to use, recording the situation and realizing soon that your ears picked up the sound you thought of, but microphone picked up everything.

I had that when I tried to record the sound of wind powered electric generators. These huge windmills which sound great to the human ear, but recorded picked up a whole lot of clipping distortion. Made me think if I had used my tape recorder it might have come out better, but who knows? Or in another location.

Almost worth a thread in itself - times you've tried to record something and it didn't come out the way you wanted it to.
Shikata ga nai.

JLIAT

Slightly off topic but many years ago as a "serious" artist I had the idea of making videos of myself talking in a landscape setting...  the only problem being my dog, Bella, who at critical moments would wander into shot...!  We have subsequently noticed in how many photographs she managed to appear in...

W.K.

Quote from: Andrew McIntosh on November 13, 2020, 12:17:45 PM
Almost worth a thread in itself - times you've tried to record something and it didn't come out the way you wanted it to.

I'm sure there must be a field recording topic on here somewhere? Anyway, I'm keen to hear more about it!

(Recording) ideas that fail....an interesting subject matter. Artist that can build works from their own failures, and are able to work the process of the failure through their art are often very interesting to me. But my own failures? Well, I might come back to this topic with a more in-depth reply if times allows me.
Straight murkin' riddim blud, absolute vile gash

Major Carew


Quote from: FreakAnimalFinland on November 13, 2020, 07:38:58 AM
I think it is not usually about single idea that would have failed, but difficulty of circumstances.
Such as being on construction site, hearing exactly the kind of sound you wish to use, recording the situation and realizing soon that your ears picked up the sound you thought of, but microphone picked up everything.
Instead of the great rhythmic thumping sound and steelworks being done, you get most of all traffic, people talking, and so on. Things you completely managed to ignore while listening on the spot.


With regard to trying to record things on building sites and certain circumstances influencing the recordings:

Whether a recording / field recording 'fails' is a matter of opinion, sometimes it's clear you haven't gotten what you wanted, sometimes you get something you would never have been able to expect....

What was likely to be the best field recording I ever made was lost to a portaloo on a site I worked on a few years ago. Thought I might as well make a short story of it as i'm near housebound at the moment and have little else to do this evening:

I was once given the task of keeping an eye on agency workers on day release & non-English speaking workers on a fairly large site, in the absolute middle of nowhere, at he hight of a stinking hot summer. Other than the sort i'd been to keep an eye on before ( teenagers and twenty somethings for example on day release / 'on tag') there were also a few Romanians who spoke fairly good English, and one Hungarian who's name was Atilla...

Atilla was well over 6ft tall , had hands like cow udders,and could probably eat the average human being if he was hungry enough. Due to his lack of English speaking skills, he referred to himself in the third person, which was absolutely hilarious. When it would get close to lunch time he would say "Hal....Atilla Hungry!" in a rather high pitched voice for a man of that stature,and would rub his belly. Despite not understanding much English, and me not much of his native tongue, we did agree that we both liked metal, and most of our summer was spent digging huge drainage ditches together whilst listening to Demolition Hammer on Atilla's phone and portable speaker...

On this same site, there was a portaloo that had been rejected for return by the portaloo company because it had been 'treated with neglect' according to them, and in all honesty they were right. When the portaloo was still usable, the 'game' we would all play was to throw brick bats and large bits of left over Yorkstone at it whilst someone was in there using it. If you wen't expecting it when you were in there it was a shock to say the least. It made an absolutely fantastic resonating 'booming' sound & I remember thinking whilst I was in there having bricks thrown at me; "I should try and record this, it sounds great!"

It was an absolute state after weeks and weeks of this, holes in it, parts smashed off, it was fucked.Unless a fine was paid to the company who were supposed to collect it , it was going nowhere, and in the baking hot sun (over two months of 30C+ days with no shade) it was starting to stink. No one used it anymore other than in desperate circumstances. Even the hardened alcoholic Poles refused to go anywhere near it, and as it got worse it had to gradually be moved away further and further using the arm of a digger over by a disused barn where we kept old brick pallets and things that at some point needed to be burned , destroyed or gotten rid of.

One day towards the end of the summer we had built up a wicker man size pile of brick pallets that needed to be destroyed, and then burned. Myself and Atilla were given the job of taking care of it. Problem was, these pallets were next to the now putrid shithouse. So bad was it by this point that a couple of the other blokes on site were playing games such as 'Lock your mate in there and don't let him out'... etc etc . Eventually, the fine was paid to the portaloo company, but weeks went by and it stayed there. I guess it was beyond hope this thing was ever going to be salvaged...or taken away.

On occasion I would bring a dictaphone I had to record sounds for use on noise releases. A bit of fun to break the monotony.Sometimes, Atilla would smash things up whilst I recorded him screaming profanities at the same time and vice versa. On the day we were smashing up the brick pallets, we were told by my supervisor that we should smash the portaloo up too out of spite because he was getting grief from the home owner and housekeeper about it, and was sick of it. There and then, out of sheer vitriol my supervisor then proceeded to put a paving slab through the side of the stinking Dunny making an awful racket, and as he walked off he turned around & said "Oi Hal that sounded like the sort of shit music you're into, you should record it!"

Well, not being one to turn down such advice I proceeded to place my dictaphone on the inside of the shithouse door (as fast as possible without wretching my guts up) with tape and began throwing bricks, chunks of rock & hardcore at it whilst Atilla screamed all kinds of Hungarian swear words in between rocks hitting the now half destroyed & stinking plastic shitter...

Seeing what we were up to my supervisor and another of our colleagues simply known as 'Old John', a Teddy Boy in his 60s who lived in a caravan, came up to us and taken by the moment began screaming "Go on Atilla you cunt! Go on son!" at the top of his lungs whilst smoking a rollie. "This" I thought "needs to be an endless loop tape of some kind, this is hilarious."  Atilla suggested his back tattoo should be the cover of any release using this recording. Atilla, as an aside, being a metalhead and into pretty brutal shit,had a huge back tattoo of a bomber dropping its cargo on a city. It would have fit perfectly.

As Atilla hurled huge lumps of rock at the bog, Barry the Teddy Boy screamed all manner of obscenities within range so the tape would pick it up, whilst I watched, and my supervisor just shouted all manner of profanities over and over whilst we all laughed, knowing our childish collective tantrum was being recorded...

Once we'd had our fun throwing rocks at the shithouse like idiots, making a horrendous racket and screaming at each other , I went to retrieve the tape recorder. I opened the door whilst holding my breath and saw that a brick must have hit it from the other side of the door, as I couldn't see it anywhere, not on the door , not on the floor, nowhere to be seen...."oh fuck" I thought.... I imagined the worst, and I was right. The tape recorder had been hit from the other side of the door & hurled  into the morass of overflowing liquid viscera, as once I got the nerve up to look down into the bowls of hell where I saw it floating, half submerged in shitty agony. No way was that recording ever going to see the light of day.

I emerged feeling sick as a dog from there only to be asked by my supervisor  - "When's the album out then, Hal? Will I get royalties?"

Other than that, speaking of recordings that aren't expected or seen as 'failures' :

Out of humorous interest I have made several recordings of scaffolders over the years shouting at each other on various sites i've been on (some I think I did in binaural actually) , being around them in large numbers or on a big site is like being in a human sized aviary, and when layered & mixed down it's hilarious to listen to.All the utterly inexplicable random vocalisations they make (that are very much particular to scaffolders only, other trades never seem do this), bits of songs being whistled and occasional unannounced profanity coming from them whilst they are all ensconced individually on different levels of a huge scaffold behind the weather sheeting so you can't quite see where they are is very much like watching a bunch of birds in a large aviary. 'Hitchcockian' almost.

On the ZSS release 'Racial Superiority'  the distant crashing sounds you can hear on the track 'Ascenion Cycle' are scaffolding poles being dropped but recorded from the top of the riser of the building I was working on,around 13 or 14 floors up I think.I was installing backup power supplies for lift shafts, and the reverb travelled really nicely up there, as it did across the whole basement floor. Only problem was that I spent an eternity editing out the various birdlike vocalisations of the scaffolders!



Cementimental

early Cementimental (possibly pre-cementimental while recording stuff for animation soundtracks actually) fail was drowning cheap headphones in a cup of water. They turned out to be basically waterproof and didn't make any interesting sound at all being submerged.

however poking holes in the diaphragm, gluing them into the bottom of a tin can and overloading gabber mixtapes and drum loops thru them till the voice coils melted worked a treat, just today found the samples I recorded and will finally put them to good use 20 odd years later :D