Found Sounds

Every so often the idea sneaks into my head to record a bunch of found sounds and turn them into loops and samples, then write a piece of music revolving around them. For those who don't know what found sounds are, well, they're just that, stuff you find which are not musical instruments. A good example would be what the musical group STOMP does. They take a broom sweeping and a basket ball bouncing and "play" them. Toddlers everywhere amuse themselves with a bunch of keys on a ring. It could be the sound of change dropping, a spray can, the striking of keys on a typewriter (remember those?), a pair of rocks, or my favorite "two shards of coconuts".

I used to work in a plant which made bases for juice concentrates and I would be captured by all of the tones and rhythms of the machinery and causes and effects through sympathetic harmonies and entrainments. Sometimes it would sound like a primitive call and response. When I worked in construction the same things would happen between saws and a hammer drill, and if it was a large building there was an added biscuit: antiphony. It could be like being inside a very large musical instrument, or a really cool surround sound recording.

Another found sound is the body. I once made a virtual drum set out of vocalizations. When all of the samples were routed through my electronic drum set they could then be played in the regular fashion. Tongue clicks, lip pops, "CH", "K", grunts, and other acapella sounds were what made that set up. Then I laid down some beats, cut and looped them, strung them together and started to orchestrate using different chants I had recorded of myself. With some digital voodoo thrown on top it was hauntingly primitive, yet beautiful.

Body sounds are most likely the most primitive musical instrument there is. You can beat your chest, slap your belly, pound your feet, clap your hands, scratch your legs, with a little bit of imagination and a few variations you soon realize there's a veritable orchestra of found sounds which you are walking around in.

Once you find a few sounds that fit your color pallet, explore their other possibilities. Lets use a set of keys on a key ring as an example. Different variations and subtleties occur through an extrapolation of your playing technique. They can be dropped, caught, shaken, twirled in a circular motion, dampened by your hand closing around them in mid swing, muted, skidded across various surfaces, struck; each technique provides another hue to work with and in combination with one another it transforms into composition.

Growing up playing drum set in rock bands I never had time for such ideas. I hit things and I hit them hard. "Ugh! Me Mongo!" As I got older and more into composition, I understood the importance of dynamics in conjunction with timbres. For me, some things have to be lived out for me to have a full understanding and not just a dead definition of words. I guess this is called experience.