Night and Day

I went to see Toy Story 3 yesterday with some friends. As usual, Pixar puts together some awesome flix, but I was more impressed with the preceding short than the feature. Don't get me wrong, I loved the movie; but that just goes to show how much I enjoyed the short "Night and Day".

There was some truly excellent story telling done through sound effects. This was also something that was planned out that way from the get go, which (as an audio nut) really makes me smile. If you haven't gone yet, I highly recommend it.

What the sun sounds like

So, a group of scientists have released an audio clip of what a solar corona sounds like. I haven't found a lot of information as to how they've put this together, but it remains interesting none the less.

I've got my wife to thank for this one. She forwarded me the link, which I now post here:

Sound of the Sun (courtesy Richard Morton) by University of Sheffield



If you'd like to check out the (what I think is) original posting, head here:

http://www.thedailyswarm.com/headlines/listen-scientists-record-sound-sun/

Fun with electronic interference

I went around my apartment a few weeks ago recording electronic interference using a super cheap unbalanced microphone/pickup. I got a couple of interesting sounds, and I need do it again to see what other unique sounds I can grab. I've got a really interesting sound from a digital cable box. I think it was the power supply, and I was hearing the alternating current relay. That's one I've got to go back to, and see if I can hold the correct position a little longer to get something a bit more usable.

I loaded a couple of them into Pro Tools to toy with them a bit, and wound up layering two very different sounds. (As a side note, it's interesting just how varied electromagnetic interference can be.) They turned into a pulsating sci-fi sound. Admittedly not hard to do (it only took about 5 minutes), but I was just messing around anyways. The two sounds are the interference caused by a power LED in a computer monitor, and the interference picked up from a cd player's drive.

Here's the result.

Phasey electronics by spfarley

Doors done!

So, I finally finished all the work for my contribution to the DOORS collection for Tim Prebble's Hiss and a Roar library.

It was an interesting task to complete. I won't say it was fun right now (probably will with some more time behind the project), but that was mainly due to trying to finish it before going out of town while trying to restore my audio computer from catastrophic failure. Things got a bit tight because of that, and I'm just happy I was able to get it done.

Thanks for the chance to contribute, Tim. I'm looking forward to see what everyone else's work inlcudes.