full spectrum tape drone. patience. low end cycle. high end faster than trans-linear light. blurred space as stars fold. twenty minutes pass and five hundred years are gone.
notes
This piece was made from very limited source material – no added sounds, no synthesis or electronics except for the recording device. Other than a 7-band graphic equalizer no effects were used. The only modulation comes from the pitch knob mounted to my 4-track.
There are four slightly different takes of the source material recorded onto the tape running at a speed of 9.5 cm/second plus 25% pitch. A C-90 cassette in this mode plays in just under 20 minutes per side. Three different takes were then recorded on another 4-track using the previously mentioned tape here played back at 4.75cm/seconds minus 25% pitch. Slow, very slow.
This is how the fundamental drone is created in this piece of music – the slowness of the source. The high tones evolves from the interaction of all three takes. In the end I added a final mono track (number four) on which the source sound on the cassette is wound back and forth repeatedly. Basically that is it.
You can try and do it as well if you are able to get hands on two multi-track cassette recorders, at least one of them with a pitch knob. Find a nice sound source first and the rest is mixing and trying out different options of the finished tape. The equalizer in this piece just pushes the mid-tones at 32.k and the high tones come from that. The source material of this piece is the static noise created by a broken electronic toy piano that I found in our rehearsal room. I recorded it there in November of 2013. The soft murmurs emitted by the plastic toy were nearly inaudible via the built-in speaker but they came out kind of harsh and with a strange sonority when I connected the neon colored device to my multi-track cassette recorder and raised the gain knobs.
This is not an artist statement as seen so much these days, this is just some information on the piece of music I did for Pan Y Rosas in May of 2014.
tracklist
01. phantomaton