Experimental Project

Field Recording, MaxMSP, and Iannix

Planning stage

In my 3rd year of university, I had an 'Experimental Music' module. We were tasked with creating a project based on what we were most interested with when looking at various experimental sound artists.

I was very inspired by a sound design artist called Zimoun, who made an art installation where a microphone is pointed at a log of wood which is infested with wood worms. The sounds of the wood worms is amplified so that they can be heard chewing on the wood.

I was really interested in the concept of recording sounds of insects that usually are not audible to the human ear, or that we just don’t notice, as well as nature recordings in general.

My aim was to make a project that could play as part of an exhibition, with a visual element to it as well.

Getting the recordings

I booked out a Sennheiser MKH 60 P48 Shotgun Microphone and a Tascam (DR-100 MKII) and took them to Greenwich park. I ended up recording ring necked parakeets, crows, Egyptian geese, foxes, as well as puddle splashes and other more ambient sounds to break up the harsh animal calls.

Next I wanted to record more soft percussive sounds to, again, break up the harsh sounds of birds and fox cries. I am incredibly interested in mycology, so I bought a cheap contact mic and gathered a selection of mushrooms with different textures and densities to bring home. I then used various tools such as needles and small paint brushes to see what sounds I could make by dragging them across the pores and gills of the mushrooms.

MaxMSP and Iannix

In class, we had looked at some iannix projects in and I was very keen to find a way to include a visual element to my project, and then program it into max to add some processing to the audio. I found 3 pictures of mushrooms, and used their physical characteristics to map out where I wanted my triggers and routes to go. The mushrooms characteristics also would dictate which audio clips I used, and how they were processed.

I made 3 different max patches, one for each image, so that each one could act in a different way, and have different effects on the audio.

(More detail below)

The Final Product

(and technical explanations)

Here you can watch the full showreel of this project! Please continue to read below for detailed technical explanations of my workflow using MaxMSP and Iannix.

Mushroom 1

The first picture was of bioluminescent mushrooms. I mapped out the routes in circles around the mushroom’s caps, and put a trigger at the point where the cap’s outline met the stem. In Max, I wanted to have each trigger programmed to play a specific sound. With the help of my tutor, the starting section of my patch was made using iannix objects and a bpatcher which played back the audio contents of a folder. A Coll object was used so that I could input the number assigned to the triggers in iannix, and pair them with the specific sound I wanted.

Due to this picture being of bioluminescent mushrooms, I wanted to use a mix of shotgun mic recordings and contact mic recordings, and pick out the most unusual, alien sounding clips.

After that I needed to include the audio processing into the patch. I used the Ableton quartz reverb object to give an even more alien atmosphere. I wanted some variation in the reverb, so I picked an iannix cursor and noted down the range of x coordinates that it moved between. I used a scale object to show the changing of the coordinates onto a slider, because I found that this helped me be able to visualise what was happening so I didn’t get confused. I then scaled this onto the distance object in the quartz reverb section. The result of this means that when the cursor goes to the left side, the distance of the reverb is low, and when the cursor goes to the right, the distance is higher. I also adjusted the bpatcher dials so that the pitch of the samples played were able to vary, which makes it sound more unusual.

I used a message object to tell the iannix project to change the speed to 0.25 when it was played, so that the sounds didn’t play too rapidly and become overwhelming.

The final step was to add in a looping ambience track which I made in logic, and connected to a main play switch so that it played at the same time as the iannix sounds.

Mushroom 2

The second picture was of a mushroom called chicken of the woods. This mushroom is commonly found and is considered a safe species to cook and eat. I wanted the atmosphere of the audio to reflect this so I decided to only use the percussive contact mic sounds, as well as the puddle recordings, because they all sound very calming and simple.

Since this is a shelf mushroom, I mapped out the routes as lines going along each shelf, with triggers at each end.

My max patch was very similar to the previous one, with a bpatcher and a Coll object playing specific sounds when specific triggers were hit by the cursor.

For this patch, I decided to have each end of a single shelf to play the same audio clip, so they were played at even intervals. The combination of all the different lengths of mushroom shelves would make some very interesting rhythms.

In terms of audio processing, I kept this one very simple with just an ableton prism reverb object mixed at 0.2, giving subtle reverb and warmth to the audio.

I also made and included another looping ambience track to match the atmosphere of this image.

Mushroom 3

The 3rd and final picture was a birds eye view of a single fly agaric mushroom. This is a very well known species and it is highly toxic and can cause hallucinations. Because of this I wanted the audio to have a more haunting and unsettling atmosphere.

In Iannix, I only mapped out one route which was a large circle going around the outside of the cap. I put triggers on many of the white spots and made the cursor very wide so that it would reach them as it went around.

In this max patch, I used a slightly different bpatcher, that would play a random sample when each trigger was hit. I made it so that samples could only repeat after 4 others were played.

I added in an ableton shimmer reverb object to do the audio processing. Similarly to the first mushroom’s patch, I noted down the range of the x values of the cursors coordinates, as well as the y values. The x values were scales to change the mix of the reverb, while the y values were scaled to shift the pitch.

Finally, I made one more looping ambience track and added that in.

Evaluation and Final Thoughts!

I am very satisfied with how my project has turned out. There are still a few minor problems, for example, on the 3rd mushroom’s max patch, some of the samples get cut off mid way and I was not able to figure out why this was.

If I was to do this again, I would consider more carefully how the seasons affect the wildlife sounds I am able to record. I would like to go back in the summer and make another attempt to record insect noises, since I think the theme of recording usually unseen and unheard creatures is very interesting (I originally wanted to record insects, like in the Zimoun piece).

My intention for this piece would be to have it played as a showreel at an art installation. If I was to do this, I would need to improve the video that I created as a showreel, making sure each image was the same size, but since the main focus of this project was the audio I didn’t do that this time. I would also need to fix the issue causing the samples to cut off midway in the 3rd mushroom section.

I have struggled to get to grips with using max in previous projects, but I feel like I have improved a lot and have been able to program these patches to do exactly what I wanted them to do, minus some occasional issues.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse