Moodle

uploaded: Sat, Dec 1, 2007 @ 8:57 PM

by	gurdonark
length	2:49
Recommends	Recommends (12)

This song is inspired by the work of Copenhagen video artist Sam Renseiw, whose “voodles” (i.e., video doodles) sometimes use (and sometimes mash-up wonderfully) my music as part of his ongoing effort to redefine how we experience video, through the absurdist discipline of pataphysics. His videos may be found here:
http://www.blip.tv/posts/?u...

These very accessible short videos conduct their experiments in the best possible way—with an emphasis on the meaning inherent in pursuit of the odd perception of the day-to-day. The goal is not to prove how obscure one can be, but to prove how fascinating everyday life can be.

Sam makes a second kind of video, which does not have a soundtrack, called “lumiere”, which is a reference to the French Lumiere brothers, who made some of the first captured film footage. In keeping with the tradition, Sam’s lumiere films have no soundtrack, as the original films lacked sound tracks also.

This “moodle” is a “musical doodle”
meant to serve as the imaginary soundtrack simultaneously to all of Sam’s lumiere, like the pianist at the silent movie house.

I wanted musically to make use of the sample packs posted by the band Bucky Jonson. These pack are great, and if you’re interested in great samples for remixing, I highly recommend you download a few of the sample pack songs.

I used samples from a moog, a trumpet, a hat and a snare, processed through my simple shareware synth, Sawcutter 2.0.
The samples, however, would lend themselves to the loops and more extensive sampling that even the most sophisticated mixter might bring. I therefore give a shout-out to Bucky Jonson and their label for making such a fun set of samples available.

In this matter, an element of random field-recording sample selection was important to the absurdist nature of the juxtaposition sought. The “random sample” key at the freesound project was invaluable to this task. However, I did not just use whatever samples “came up” randomly, but instead did an extensive listen to many, perhaps hundreds of samples, to edit down to the right set. It’s fun to hear all those different freesounds, like a kind of aural symphony of recorded ambience. My goal was to use each sound as a kind of soloist or accompaniment of its own.

I tried to find a set of samples that,when used together, would provide an unexpected synchrony among discordant but not dissonant sounds.

My thanks to Sam Renseiw, who got me thinking in this way, at least for the moodle.

The term “moodle”, by the way, is also an open source e-learning tool. I wish all a quiet holiday season filled with learning only the most fun lessons in life.

media, remix, trackback, in_video, absurdist, by_sam_renseiw, electronica, experimental, field_recording, moog, pataphysics, nc_sampling_plus, audio, mp3, 44k, stereo, CBR

Play Moodle

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