Offshoots Symphony Project 2010/11 Blog

2012-01-09T03:12:00.000-08:00

Hello and welcome to another belated installment of the Offshoots blog. As you may be aware the music is now finished. The album takes the form of one 43 minute piece in five parts. Generally the music is very ambient with some more rhythmic parts particularly towards the end.

The CD will be released on the first day of spring which will be 20^th of March (though this is not set in stone) and Offshoots will be holding a launch event, more details to follow. I have created a 6 1/2 minute sound clip consisting of an excerpt from each of the five parts which you can listen to/download here:

I have had some very positive feedback from the people i have played it to so far. This will be my first professionally pressed CD again self published but this time in conjunction with Offshoots who are kindly funding the pressing.

The cover art is a wonderful painting by fine artist Edward Foster called 'Song Of Paradise' as seen on the promo poster below. There will be a new poster with release dates etc soon.

There will be another blog nearer to release date. Thanks again to all the great people at Offshoots for their enthusiasm and support.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/L-J-Gregory/125437360862635

Myspace: www.myspace.com/randomleeaudio

Twitter: http://twitter.com/LeeJGregory

Offshoots: http://www.offshoots.org.uk/

2011-02-09T08:03:00.000-08:00

It’s been a while since the last blog. I moved house and had a lot of other commitments (including releasing my experimental CD and a concert last October) but have been working on the project intermittently throughout.

This has mainly consisted of cleaning up the recordings I made last spring and summer to prepare them for use as source sounds which will become the instruments used for the project. This means taking each recording and removing any unwanted sounds, such as cars, dogs and other incidental sounds as well as hiss/noise from the recording equipment. This can be very demanding and time consuming when working with long files such as those i made of dawn choruses. To do this I first use Steinberg Wavelab (a professional audio editing and mastering environment) to raise the gain (volume) of recordings and remove as much noise as possible using EQ. Most bird sounds fall between 100Hz and 15 KHz so removal of sound below and above these frequencies takes out low level hum and most car sound at the low end and while also removing any anomalous high frequency sounds. I made all of these recording using an Audio Technica AT825 field recording microphone, which is normally used for more near field (closer to the subject) recordings, a pre-amp to boost the gain of the incoming signal and a Fostex FR2-LE field recorder, which makes very good quality, though quite quiet recordings. This resulted in the recordings being quieter than I would have liked with the birds, which were often quite far away from the microphone. When I raised the gain of the recordings I also raised the gain of hiss/noise from the recording equipment. I removed as much of this as possible without distorting the sounds of the birds using Wavelab’s DeHisser. When working with lower frequency sounds such as frogs the process is similar; the recordings are made nearer to the subject so hiss is easier to remove though they are lower frequency so noise like car sounds are more difficult.

Izotope RX screen shot

...
When I’ve done as much as I can in Wavelab I use Izotope RX (a professional audio restoration software) to clean up remaining noise. This is where things get laborious as each second and often millisecond needs to be carefully examined and cleaned, which when working with files upwards of an hour takes a long time. Using this software I can see not only the volume but the frequency spectrum of all the sounds as a linear graphical representation. I can then use my ears and my eyes to identify issues. The software offers a number of useful tools to correct these issues like being able to isolate and delete very small areas in the frequency spectrum without affecting any other sounds. If unwanted sound occupies the same frequencies as sound you want to keep you can map the unwanted sound by using the Denoiser to analyse areas where the sound is isolated then highlighting the areas where sounds are mixed and just remove what you don’t want, with varying degrees of success. If it is not possible to satisfactorily clean up sounds you can delete small segments of the recording and use spectral repair (at a millisecond level) to reconnect the sounds at either side so you can’t tell they were ever there. This is excellent software which I recommend to anybody considering doing this kind of thing.

I have uploaded a 79 minute, 24bit soundscape recording, which I used these processes to prepare, of a dawn chorus made at Offshoots last June called ‘Soundscape 1’ here:

http://www.archive.org/details/LJGregory-Soundscape1offshootsDawnChorusSummer2010

It’s not always perfect but i like it and thought you might like it too!

This is a 2 minute mp3 clip from 'Soundscape 1'

Cubase screen shot

I am now nearing the point where I will begin composition, having cleaned up and prepared all but the bee recordings. I have also begun categorizing them in Cubase and have sympathetically processes some of the frog sounds using CDP (Composers Desktop Project). I have many ideas noted in txt docs regarding composition and arrangement of what i have now decided will be one long piece between 45 and 80 minutes long, depending on ideas, flow and stringent quality control! I hope to have it finished by the end of April/beginning of May.

The next (hopefully timelier) blog will be about and feature samples of the work in progress.

Thanks again to everybody who has helped with and taken an interest in this project.

You can download and listen to an earlier piece I created from recordings made at the site in February 2008 here:

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Lee%20Gregory%20(Randomlee)%22

To listen to my experimental works and pieces for this project as they appear go here:

www.myspace.com/randomleeaudio

Read the Preston Citizen article here:

http://www.prestoncitizen.co.uk/leisure/music/8204790.East_Lancashire_musician_s_symphony_of_nature/

Follow me on Twitter here:

http://twitter.com/LeeJGregory

2010-08-25T03:58:00.000-07:00

This is the fourth Offshoots Symphony blog. I have been away for part of the month so will focus on the Wildthings sound art family day which happened on Thursday August 12^th. My wife Joe, who runs Wildthings at Offshoots, helped me out, which was good as 20+ kids turned up on the day.

We all started with the veil of silence, where we all put our hands in the air and then as we floated our arms down silence fell upon us all and only the sounds around us could be heard.

Then we gave the kids paper, clip boards, pencils and coloured pencils and asked them to draw pictures of the sounds they could hear, either the objects making the sounds or how they think the sounds themselves might look. They created some wonderful images some of which are displayed here in a slide show:

View Photo Slideshow

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Joe then took them on a mission to go out and collect objects to make sounds with from the site and the

woods behind Offshoots while i set up recording equipment. I had intended to join them after setting up but they had all vanished into the woods and i could not find them! Fortunately they all returned safely a short while later with lots of interesting woodland instruments ranging from sticks and branches to nuts, leaves and stones in tubs.

Earlier in the day Joe and myself had written a little song for which the kids would use these instruments and vocalisations (in the end mostly vocalisations) to create the music. First we had a number of rehearsals; Joe led the song with the kids making sounds with their voices and instrument where appropriate. I then recorded three takes to go away and work with. It went really nicely. There is a rough demo of the song for you to listen to here:

On their return from the woods i first made recordings of the kids making sounds with their individual instruments. All these recordings had lots of sounds of children in the background, but whereas i would normally try to have everything else silent other than the sound being recorded, in this instance these extra sounds were great as the kids themselves were as much the instrument as the sounds they made with their objects. I will use these recordings to embellish the song we recorded for the album version.

Thank you to all the children and parents/grandparents/carers that turned up on the day, we had people come from an area spanning Nelson to Hebden Bridge, you were all wonderful.

In September i hope to make recording of bats which will feature in the next blog.

You can download and listen to an earlier piece i created from recordings made at the site in February 2008 here:

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Lee%20Gregory%20(Randomlee)%22

To listen to my experimental works and pieces for this project as they appear go here:

www.myspace.com/randomleeaudio

Read the Preston Citizen article here:

http://www.prestoncitizen.co.uk/leisure/music/8204790.East_Lancashire_musician_s_symphony_of_nature/

Follow me on Twitter here:

http://twitter.com/LeeJGregory

Many sincerest thanks to: Joe, Phil, Lisa, Alan, Jackie, both Eddie’s, Chris and the birds, frogs, bee’s and bats for their continued help, support and enthusiasm for this project.

2010-07-11T23:45:00.001-07:00

Welcome to the third Offshoots Symphony project blog. This month i have recorded bees and summer birds and have finished an initial stereo version of Spinner. The Preston Citizen wrote an article about the project after receiving our press release, (there’s a link at the bottom) and the Permaculture Association promoted my project in their June E-bulletin.

On the night of the 16^th of June i stayed over at Offshoots again with the intention of recording Owls in the night, summer birds at dawn and bees in the morning. It was a beautiful still, warm night and I had been told that the owls were very active the previous Friday when people had stayed over for a charcoal burn so I expected lot’s of owl activity. At ten past twelve there was a hoot, it was the only hoot, i stayed awake until about one thirty listening and recording but there were no more hoots. The owls obviously don’t want to be recorded! I will try again.
.

I woke with the alarm at four am and set up for the dawn chorus. This was wonderful, lots of twittering swallow, cooing wood pidgions, cawing crows and very little traffic. At around five thirty a blackbird sat at the top of a small tree near the bodging yurt and sang a series of beautiful varied melodies that went on for over half an hour. It was as if this amazing bird was performing just for me, giving me lots of great material to work with. This all lifted my spirits immensely after the disappointment of the owls the previous night.

Birds 17 June 2010:

At around eight fifteen Eddie Jackson, who is looking after the bees at Offshoots turned up to assist me with recording them. We donned out protective bee keeping outfits and set up the microphone over the first of the three hives at Offshoots. It was a very sunny morning and the bees were quite active. We made recordings of all three hives over a period of about forty minutes, the last and largest hive being the most active, and again got some great recordings. We tried to do this in as considerate and brief a way as possible as the bees prefer to be left alone and i got all the bee material i will need for the project. So a super successful night and morning overall.

Also this month i have developed my spinner track as far as i want to go with it before putting it into context with the elements that will surround it which will fill it with bird melodies which will interact with it’s rhythms and be a big part of it’s overall vibe. The final mix will be in surround, I have put a three minute stereo excerpt of it in its current form on my MySpace page and you can also listen to it here:

In august i will be doing a Wildthing Family Day sound art workshop at Offshoots on the 12^th of august which will be main feature of the next blog.

You can download and listen to an earlier piece i created from recordings made at the site in February 2008 here:

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Lee%20Gregory%20(Randomlee)%22

To listen to my experimental works and pieces for this project as they appear go here:

www.myspace.com/randomleeaudio

Read the Preston Citizen article here:

http://www.prestoncitizen.co.uk/leisure/music/8204790.East_Lancashire_musician_s_symphony_of_nature/

Follow me on Twitter here:

http://twitter.com/LeeJGregory

Many sincerest thanks to: Joe, Phil, Lisa, Alan, Jackie, both Eddie’s, Chris and the birds, frogs, bee’s and bats for their continued help, support and enthusiasm for this project.

2010-05-24T05:51:00.000-07:00

This is the second Offshoots Symphony project blog. Since the last instalment i have made recordings of Chris Barber, the rustic wood worker, and his Viking tall lathe and worked on music made of spinning wheels. I have also made a nice poster and earlier this week put together a press release with the help of Lisa Griffin, Offshoots project officer, who has just been really helpful generally, thanks Lisa.

I recorded Chris in the Yurt at Offshoots on the morning of the 7^th of May. We recorded in the yurt to minimise external noise (windmills and such!), which was just as well as just as we had finished setting up they started mowing the lawn on the bowling green next door! This was quite audible even inside the yurt so we had to turn everything around to face the opposite direction recording, using a direction mic to cut out the noise (small amounts of extreanious noise are removable in the studio). I made recordings of Chris using his Viking Tall Lathe and chopping and splitting wood. The tall lathe provided some good rhythmic sounds and varied as more of the wood was cut away, becoming smoother and more fluid and we got some good crisp sounds from the wood splitting.

Viking Tall Lathe raw audio mp3

I have also been working on music using the recordings of spinning wheels discussed in the last blog. The double treadle has a harsher sound with more percussive elements than the single treadle which is more ambient and has a longer, more drawn out rhythm. This will be down to the natural rhythm and spinning speed of the operators as much as the wheels themselves. After cleaning up the recordings (removing unwanted noise) i loaded all the recordings onto separate stereo tracks in Cubase (a software sequence/recording environment) then reviewed them individually choosing parts to work with, based on how the sounds felt and worked rhythmically, then removing the left-over sounds and manually (and minimally) quantizing (tightening up the rhythmic elements by moving them forward or backward in time slightly) the parts i had chosen to make them work better musically over time. These parts then become loops and breaks that will form the initial frame of the piece.

The piece will work by developing a number of spinning rhythms that will begin in the centre of a surround sound environment then lift off and pan around the space intersecting with each other to create rhythms within rhythms. i don’t want the piece to be too harsh rhythmically so i will use eq, and volume curves to soften the harsher elements . There will also be recordings of carders used incidentally during the piece.

Spinner work inprogress mp3 clip

Currently i plan to use this spinning track (provisionally called ‘Spinner’) and another rhythmic piece creates using the rustic wood working recordings i made with Chris at either end of a more expansive bird piece which will form part of each of them intertwining with their rhythms as it begins and ends.

In the coming weeks i will be making more recordings of birds as the soundscape has now changed since i last recorded (most notably by the blackbirds and swallows) and will finish the spinning piece.

On the 12th of August there will be a Wildthings sounds art workshop, as part of the Wildthings summer family days. Wildthings is a monthly kids club at offshoots run by my wife Joe and for this we will be working together, making recordings with the kids as well as other activities yet to be finalised; more info in the next blog.

You can download and listen to an earlier piece i created from recordings made at the site in February 2008 here:

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Lee%20Gregory%20(Randomlee)%22

To listen to my experimental works and pieces for this project as they appear go here:

www.myspace.com/randomleeaudio

follow me on Twitter here:

http://twitter.com/LeeJGregory

Again thanks to: Joe, Phil, Lisa, Chris, Alan, Jackie, Eddie, and all at Offshoots, the birds, frogs, bee’s and bats for their ongoing help, support and enthusiasm for this project.

2010-04-08T00:27:00.000-07:00

This is the first instalment of the L J Gregory Offshoots Symphony Project 2010/11 blog. The Offshoots Symphony is a sound art/acousmatic project running over the course of one year from March 2010 to March 2011. Over this period I will make sound recordings at and around the Offshoots Permaculture site in Burnley Lancashire which will be used to create acousmatic compositions which showcase the diversity of life and human interaction with that life in order to promote the site and permaculture and to further develop my abilities in field recording and acousmatic composition. Each instalment of this blog (there will be between 10 and 12, approximately one a month) will feature audio, video, photography, art and text relating to recordings and compositions made, completed and in progress during the period since the last instalment.

The music i create for this project will be very sympathetic to/celebrate the sound sources recorded as opposed to my experimental works which are about the sounds and not their causes and using/processing those sounds as rich textures for compositions not relating to their origin. In the same way that a painter uses paint to create images not relating to the source of their colour (yep my head is in the clouds but my feet are on the ground, one of the wonders of being tall!)

I made my first field recordings for the project on the 17^th & 18^th of March when i stayed overnight at the site to record common frog’s, tawny owl’s and the dawn chorus. I recorded the frogs in the late afternoon when the site had cleared of (noisy) people. It was quite sunny (which the frog’s like) and still (which my microphone likes) and i got about 40 minutes of great recordings. The frogs are active for around 3 weeks at this time of year to mate but only come to the surface if the sun shines! I made further recordings of the frogs on the 28^th of March and now have a developing library of audio patterns formed from their combined croaks from which i will begin to develop themes.

Common Frogs: raw audio excerpt mp3

It stayed still into the evening and the owls began to stir at around 10pm only the male/s though, presumably attempting to attract the females who, unfortunately, were either very quiet or quite disinterested on this occasion. The male tawny owl call is a harsher screeching twit to the female’s softer twoo! Maybe the females came out later as i fell asleep by midnight. Next time i will sleep through the day prior to arriving.

I was up bright and early at around 4.30am to set up for the morning birds. As the weather was still nice and Offshoots is sufficiently back from the road that the sound of cars is quite feint (at least it is this early) i managed to capture a good 90 minutes of wonderful dawn chorus including the calls of crow’s and songs of great tit’s, blue tit’s, robins, song thrushes, collared doves, wood pigeons, and black bird’s. On occasions later in the year i hope to capture (the sounds of) woodpeckers and migrating birds including swallows, chif chaf’s, willow warblers, spotted fly catchers and house martins who are all known to frequent the site. Whether these will become one large evolving piece of form several small pieces interspersed throughout the symphony i have yet to decide.

Dawn Chorus: raw audio excerpt mp3

On the 23^rd of March i made recordings of an Ashford double treadle spinning wheel operated by my wonderful (see very understanding) wife Joe (a qualified permaculture practitioner) at our home in Todmorden. I intend to combine these with recordings i made late last year of my friend Jackie Katanga operating her single treadle Ashford spinning wheel. Spinning is a traditional and sustainable skill taught in workshops at Offshoots which fits in with permaculture very well and provides interesting rhythmic possibilities in terms of composition. Other traditional skill to feature in the symphony will include bodging (the ancient art of the wood butcher) and bee keeping.

Spinning Wheel: raw audio excerpt mp3

In future instalments of this blog i will include information and media relating to further recordings and the process of using those recording to create music. In the summer i will be doing a children’s workshop with the Wildthings kid’s club, run by Joe, at the site, recordings of and from which will become another piece as children are as much a part of permaculture as compost, charcoal or stacking, as they are the future.

You can download and listen to an earlier piece i created from recordings made at the site in February 2008 here:
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Lee%20Gregory%20(Randomlee)%22

To listen to my experimental works and pieces for this project as they appear go here:
www.myspace.com/randomleeaudio

Follow me on twitter here:

http://twitter.com/LeeJGregory

Many sincerest thanks to: Joe, Phil, Lisa, Alan, Jackie, Eddie, Glen, Vince, Chris and the birds, frogs, bee’s and bats for their help, support and enthusiasm for this project, i promise i will do my upmost to produce something very special for you all.