It's 4:52 PM

Damian and I have now been writing music and manipulating the sample for about four hours. It's starting to have an effect on me, but I can't tell if it is positive or not.

It's always a challenge to work with just a small amount of source material, you can feel boxed up and claustrophobic. Or the reverse might happen - the limitations could set your mind free.

Milkcrate 30 - It Begins

Damian West and I have now started Milkcrate #30. All of our music will be made from the sound of a pin dropping.

Milkcrate 29: Noises In The Woods by Brian Green

Brian Green presents the first session of 2009 with a very special ambient milkcrate using materials found in the woods outside of his home in South Carolina, USA. Only thirty seconds of source sounds were used to construct the thirty minute work.

Get it here: http://milkcrate.com.au/sessions-details-029.html

Milkcrate 29: Mr Green Is Doing A Milkcrate

http://www.seeyouinsleep.com/blog/2009/4/18/milkcrate-noises-in-the-woods.html

This is a landmark milkcrate in that it is the first session not to be directly connected to the Adelaide group of milkcraters in some way.

The sounds that he has going so far are great! Let's wish him luck on what is surely going to be an intense journey.

My Project

I actually could use some of everybody's help with my project.

Right now, I'm collecting fast food restaurant kids' meal toys.

I will use nothing but those as the raw material.

So far, I determined that part of the rhythm section will be done with (insert restaurant here)'s toy of the Mark I of the Iron Man suit. I haven't tested to see if it can be even used for rhythm, but I guess I'll find out.

I only have this and a few other toys. I could use some more.

Send an e-mail to timorousme@mac.com if you can provide me with more.

Milkcrate #28: "Synthermal"

A direct foil to the water-based theme of milkcrate 26, 'Synthermal' uses only objects that are associated with heat and fire. From sparklers to butane-based soldering irons, from toasters to matches - all is fair game.

Get it here: http://milkcrate.com.au/sessions-details-028.html

[#28] On The Final Road To Victory

(by jordan)

[#28] No sleep... yet

I haven't slept yet. So I am a bit tired. On the plus side, I've made 24 tracks of one-minute goodness.

The others seem to have been fairly productive as well, which is awesome!

Less than a quarter to go now.

Black Coffee

Two thirty something and I'm still powering on, although a brief creative lull has sent me scampering off to the blog to rant for a bit. Heat Crate is going pretty well so far, despite my technological difficulties (a demo version of live that won't let me save or use plugins). My solution so far has been to just make everything really, really loud because in my crate crazed mind, the sound of everything peaking all of the time is a pretty neat effect. The reverb we got in the stairwell was also a pretty neat effect. Virtually everything I've done so far I would probably broadly class as industrial (just like the last milkcrate I did). Thematically it's pretty much all about volcanoes.

[#28] Halfway Report

All is going well here in the land of 'crate.

We spent the first three or four hours of this crate collectively sampling and choosing objects and sounds out of the ones that we had all brought.

For objects that we could record indoors (ie. those with zero fire hazard), we set up a large diaphragm condenser in a tiled room - the room itself adds a bit of nice sound as well. There was quite a bit of background noise because of the air conditioning vents and about 16 or 17 computers with their fans on, but our samples were still useable.

So each person would come up with their objects (except for me - because the only thing I brought along is a box of matches) and then record some material from their chosen objects. I was manually riding the input gain to try and maximise our effective dynamic range and manage the already unmanageable environment noise.

For objects and actions that we could not record indoors (ie. those with some fire hazard), David and I went over to the park next to the parade grounds. Here we used a portable recorder with a shirt as a wind shield and recorded a few useable samples.

Some of the highlights of the samples have included:
• some party poppers (courtesy of david)
• a toaster (courtesy of jordan)
• a heatsink (courtesy of jesse)
• some butane and a gas-powered soldering iron (courtesy of justin)

As I've said the only thing I brought was the box of matches (others brought the same or similar items too of course).

All in all, we have about 6 or 7 minutes of samples (after editing and splicing) which is actually a huge sample bank for any milkcrate. There are probably well over 80 or 90 individual events contained in our samples, which is nice. However, almost all of the sounds are really very percussive, somewhat limiting the source timbres we can use for melodic / pitched music material.

For the most part, people seem to using a combination of Live and ProTools, often in tandem rewired together.

Jordan and Justin have been working on a dance track that makes use of Justin's new Kaos Pad 3. Jesse has been working on an ambient track and David has been making a number of highly distorted and loud works. Unfortunately, his computer only has a demo of Live running on it so he is unable to save his projects, forcing him to work very quickly, constantly in fear of crashing.

As for me, I've somewhat formalised some of the things I've been doing in the last few milkcrates. I have thus far only used my very short sample of me striking a match. I have written 15 tracks, but my self-imposed limitation is that every track I make has been and will be one minute in length exactly. This may sound easy but I've been finding it more and more difficult as the day progresses.

To some degree, perhaps it's an exploration of 'pop' music sounds and structures as sound objects in their own right, something with their own weight and mass to be considered a single event. I'm not sure. I've been going for more than twelve hours, so I'm not even sure if that sentence makes any sense or not.

Wish us luck as we slip into the night...

- seb