Posts in !
Procession of the Species and Cinco de Mayo

Some neighbors were celebrating Cinco de Mayo so I stole some of their music with my recording device! Don't tell anyone!

Also in this episode is procession of the species, a local parade here in Olympia WA. You won't find any marching in formation in this parade, it's all pretty freeform. Incidentally, I use stock photos for the images I post when I announce the show: when I searched for "parade" all the top results were Russian military parades.

Next week some more long-form field recordings I think.

!Cooper Schlegel
Goldmeyer Hotsprings in North Bend/Snoqualmie Area With Brianna

In February of 2018 me and my girlfriend Brianna decided to go on a trip instead of exchanging anything. We saved some money since then and finally took that trip this week. We drove up into the middle of Snoqualmie-Mt. Baker state forest, spent the night and started a hike right before dawn to Goldmeyer Hotsprings. I won’t say too much about it, because in this show I have a special guest! My girlfriend Brianna! She gives a little info at the beginning of each field recording, as I have more than I usually do. This way each section has a little background for it in the show. We actually had to cut ~3 field recordings in studio to stay on time.

!Cooper Schlegel
Phonelines Stress Me Out a Little Bit, and Industrial Sounds around Evergreen State College

Recently I listened to “Sorry Wrong Number,” a Suspense radio show episode from 1945. It’s an amazing short radio play from 1945 where there’s an entire universe encapsulated in one woman’s room and her phone. Terrifying! People just give her customer lip service when all she needs is someone to calm her down. “Hello Operator? Can you connect me to the police?” “Oh, you can call that number direct.” ?!?!?!? Lady call the police!

Anyway, when I first started working on pure data, one thing multiple beginning tutorials walk you through is how to recreate phone machinery, DTMF tones, dial tones, busy signals, etc, so I thought hey, why not try to capture that feeling of a small phone universe on my show?

The people which I’ve scrambled together on the other end of the line are my girlfriend Brianna, my mom Michele, friends/cohorts/musicians/teachers/gigmasters Chris William-Wolter, Alex Charland, Dave Cohen, Joe Mailhot, Steve Luceno, and Richard Davis, and robots who keep telling me the police are on their way to arrest me for tax invasions and/or to sell me insurance/a credit card account.

Towards the end of the show are weird ventilation machines around Evergreen, which is on it’s spring break right now and so therefore is the equivalent of a ghost town. Not one soul except the DJ before me, (K-punk, the DJ of the ultradope show The Sound).

Last episode I got some feedback that listening on bigger speakers yielded sort of boomy results so I tried to remedy that in this episode, and re-upload last weeks’ episode as well.

!Cooper Schlegel
Frogs from Chehalis, East Olympia and Tumwater, Slot Machines from a Casino

Did you know that the first slot machines were made by the “Liberty Bell” company, which is why they have bells? And that when San Francisco outlawed cash-payout slot machines in 1909, they were converted into gum dispensers, hence the fruit symbols for fruit flavors and the BAR for sticks of gum? Neither did I!

This show starts off with 3 different frog recordings from around the local area, thanks to Jacqueline, Brian and Kai for the recording from Chehalis, WA, thanks to my sister Isabelle for the recording from east Olympia. Frogs have just begun croaking within the last couple weeks for spring, so I thought they’d get a prominent place on the show. By comparing the Wikipedia list of frogs in the Pacific Northwest to online recordings to the field recordings taken, my best guess is that all the frogs in all the field recordings are pacific chorus frogs.

The crux of this episode was the slot machine music program I made which pays out based on matching pitches in the left, middle and right channels. I got the idea from an game app designed for blind people. On average it was supposed to “pay out” every ~3 minutes or so, but during the show on air it took 18! I was scrambling to try to figure out a way to force it to win without stopping it on air after the 11 minute mark rolled around, so it ended it up having a good 6 minutes or so of the just the computer program which I trimmed down in the podcast. Perhaps I invited the devil into my show by taking a field recording at a casino. The field recording of the casino only lasts as long as me and my girlfriend Brianna's 20$: around 15 minutes. Also, I must say that going to the casino on a Wednesday afternoon wasn’t my favorite thing due to the money loss and the gloomy atmosphere, but listening to the sounds is cool. Bonus points for finding quotations of “John Brown’s Body,” “Histoire du Soldat,” my own piece “West” and “My Foolish Heart.”

!Cooper Schlegel
New Zealand Birds, Crickets (and cicadas I think)

My sister returned from New Zealand this week but not before sending back field recordings! The birds in this recording include but are not limited to chattering lory, plum-headed parakeet, bourkes parrot, king parrot, mulga parrot, cuban finch, south island kaka, long-billed corella, opaline red-rumped parrots, blue red-rumped parrots, eclectus parrot, red-tailed black cockatoo, blue and yellow macaw, scarlet macaw, blue and gold macaw, gouldian finch, diamond dove, jacarmi finch, siskin finch, namanqua dove,and red-faced parrot finch. Dang that's a lot of birds!

Also in this recording is a couple bits of classical music I really like, one of which is being played in the symphony orchestra I am in (Olympia Symphony Orchestra)..

Magic Conch, Grandkids, New Zealand Ambience

My buddy mark sent me his band's album in the mail which I sampled for this episode, the tracks unsettled and the sky is the limit. If you were to write out the order in which the first samples appear they would be BBAAAAACAACCAACAACBBCBBBAACACB which is magicconch in a triliteral (base 3) cipher. AAA = a AAB = b AAC = c ABA = d ABB = e ABC = f ACA = g etc. We continue our (my sister's) sound voyage of New Zealand and go to a rugby game, a bird park, a rainy portch and sit down to hear a grandkid's wishlist. Extra special thanks to Magic Conch, Mark, Rosa, Alexie, and Isabelle.

!Cooper Schlegel
Various Ways of Getting to Dunedin

Last episode, we heard some field recordings from my sister Isabelle in Seatac Airport, and we continue this episode with many more field recordings sent from halfway around the world! I will say that this episode, due to some recordings featuring people talking among other things, is a little less sleepy than some of my other episodes, but hey I'm trying something different. Save for one obvious exception, I have left the field recordings pretty much as they've been sent; I spliced them together, I censored any swearing, and I adjusted volumes, other than that they are completely untouched (also they're only untouched if you don't consider me playing over them tampering). The exception is an extended plane noise section where I take 5 different recordings of the puddle jumper Isabelle took from Auckland to Dunedin at different stages; taxiing, taking off, climbing, cruising, and descending, along with making a synth-y patch of the in flight "bing."

Thank you to Isabelle, Rosa, Imogen and Georgia.

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!Cooper SchlegelDunedin
Seatac Airport

My compatriot Jacob Bicknase was in town this week and we played a lot together during that time. Me and Jake were both part of Left Field Quartet in Madison WI a little while back (https://leftfieldquartet.bandcamp.com/releases). My sister sent me the first of a series of field recordings she is taking of her trip to New Zealand, the first being Seatac Airport of [con]course.

!Cooper Schlegel
Tacoma Narrows Bridge

When I took the field recording at the narrows bridge it wasn’t exactly sleep inducing. The coal trains were running underneath, the sound of the cars going over the bridge end was loud and obnoxious, and some dude rode what looked like a razor scooter with a lawnmower engine attached by. I had the idea to change this raucous soundscape into something more mellow so I transcribed those three elements, the cars taking the longest. Had I had more time I would have also transcribed the big trucks passing too, (maybe I’ll return to it later). I slowly add in all the elements until it’s completely electronic, and randomized. The second half I played a couple things that continuously slowed down while I added notes halfway in between the slowed notes.

painted by my mom

painted by my mom

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!Cooper Schlegel
Crazy Birds by my Apartment

First Patch

The thing that took me the most time on this patch was the random number generator.  Pure Data has a random number generator which you can choose the range of, but I didn’t want it to repeat itself until it found all five numbers.  So instead of 1 2 3 1 4 5 1 2 3 1 2 it would be in sets of five 1 2 3 4 5 or 5 4 3 2 1 or 3 1 2 4 5 etc. I wanted each voice to come in before they started dropping out again.

There’s probably a better way to do this because I think it might skew the probability the way I set it up.  When a voice trips it then connects itself to the next highest number, or in the case of 5, back to 1, and when all voices are connected, it resets.  So after 1 is tripped, it becomes 2, and after 2 is both it and 1 would become 3. Another problem with this method is that it isn’t super easy to expand the range.

1 2 3 4 4 becomes 1 2 3 4 5

5 3 3 4 1 becomes 5 3 4 1 2

Each number is connected to an on/off switch for the voices, which are made from a choir sample played at different speeds simultaneously, original speed, ¾ speed, 3/2 speed, 4/3 speed and ⅔ speed, so the 3/2 and ¾ speeds are the same notes just shifted up and octave, as are the ⅔ and 4/3.  It reminded me to the opening of the 3rd movement of Bartok’s 4rth string quartet so I through in some quotes of the cello line. Also dang I was struggling with the drumming/bassing at the same time but it was fun!

After the first patch, I tried an additive meditation where it accrews variation slowly.  Can you tell where I accidentally break the pattern? I’m making it up as I go. Gotta remember to concentrate!  But I’m getting better at these sorts of mind games.

Second Patch

Whoo what a mess!  So the animal sounds are recorded obviously, but each of the little blips I programmed.  All of the osc~ mean oscillators and they are tuned in a 5 limit tuning (like the recorded samples before https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-limit_tuning)  Does it make it sound better? The reasoning for the sustained samples in the first patch was so there’s less wubba wubba stuff, for the ping pong stuff in the second patch idk maybe, I tried it both ways and the jury’s still out.  

So for this patch the main attraction is the big ol select bar.  I’ve programmed it so it plays the blips like this: 1, 1 2, 1 2 3, 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4 5 etc until it gets to 25 where it will reset. I stole the idea from this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR7KOncoYOc.  I’ve used it in my playing, but haven’t programmed a patch for it yet.  Every time the 11th blip is played, it starts playing a note every five eighth notes, after which it will slow or speed up the overall tempo at a gradual pace.  The big ol circle on the right flashes a metronome so I tried to play the same tempo throughout, while it shifted above me, so when you hear me out of tempo, I’m actually playing the same tempo throughout.  Pretty tough if I do say so myself. Does it pay off? It sure sounds weird sometimes. I think I’ll have to try something like this again to really know if it works or not. I have to sound like a metronome, and the electronics have to sound like they’re changing.  I don’t think I quite pulled it off. I end with an American style sort of thing.

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