Listen to Podcast on Soundcloud
Story
Ready to take a “trip” on the The Georgetown Loop Railroad? Your journey starts at Devil’s Gate Depot as you stand between the cars and hear the sounds of this historic narrow gauge train as it rounds a tight bend. Things morph from there… enjoy the psychedelic ride.
Production Notes
Field Recording Notes
I recorded these field recordings on The Georgetown Loop Railroad which is about 45 miles West of Denver.
- Date & Time: December 7th, 2014
- Location: Georgetown Loop Railroad, Georgetown, CO | Departing from Georgetown Devil’s Gate Depot
- Recorder: Zoom H2N
- Format: 44.1kHz/24bit 120 degree stereo
The engine and a passenger car
My view as I recorded these sounds
A view out the window as we go over the VERY tall Devi’s Gate bridge
A view of Devi’s Gate bridge from the ground
A car in the yard being restored
A view inside the passenger cabin
“one of Colorado’s first visitor attractions. Completed in 1884, this spectacular stretch of three-foot narrow gauge railroad was considered an engineering marvel for its time. In 1973, the Colorado Historical Society began restoring the railroad as part of its 978-acre Georgetown Loop Historic Mining & Railroad Park.” More here… http://georgetownlooprr.com/.”
I’ve lived in Colorado since I was 7 and had never been on this train! They have all sorts of themed runs (Octoberfest, Dinner trains, Big Horn Sheep Festival…) and I highly recommend you try it you come out Colorado way. We took the “Santa’s North Pole” adventure 12:40pm run.
While I was not allowed to travel between cars (because it’s a narrow gauge and runs along mountain drop offs and on high bridges), they allowed me to stand outside the closed door of the car between cars. This being the case I got some AWESOME recordings isolated from other passengers for the most parts. Lots of great wheels squeaking, flexing of the old cars, coupler noise, and sometimes engine noise.
Instrumentation & Performance Notes
I used only the
Elektron Octatrack. I configured the machine to use 4 tracks made up of 3 field recordings from the session mentioned above each with their own insert effects. One track was used twice with a different set of effects. I also had the Octatrack configured to use track 8 for two master effects.
After setting up the patch for the Octatrack, I rehearsed the piece a few times experimenting with different effects, expressive morphs, and notes. I then recorded the piece in one real-time pass without edits.
The piece begins with the raw field recording of the train as it goes around a tight turn. It’s just such an amazing set of sounds I wanted to offer the listener context and a taste of the harmonic content of the original source material before I took things to another place. I then manually play and improvise from there performing the notes in chromatic mode and heavily manipulating the field recordings as the piece progresses.
Near the end of the piece I’m using effects like comb filters to create what sound almost like long tremolo strings. Another fun thing for me was manipulating rail noise through a comb filter and delay and then changing the delay time (which changes pitch) to create what almost sounds like an arpeggio of pizzicato strings notes.
It was a super fun piece to create and perform as the train field recordings offered some amazing harmonic content! I’ll most likely revisit these source samples in a future episode.
Listen to Podcast on Soundcloud
39.706098
-105.697504
Like this:
Like Loading...
![Track 06 "When the Wales Take Back the Ocean" - Story: As humans and their technology have evolved, they have encroached more and more on the domain of the whale and other sea life. Of course the whales have been evolving as well - and - unbeknownst to us, they have been patiently plotting and waiting for the right time put things back in balance. Listen as a group of humpback whales execute phase 1 of their plan to take back the ocean. Science: From "Seismic Surveys Negatively Affect Humpback Whale Singing Activity off Northern Angola" (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0086464) "Discussion...The presence of oil and gas exploration activities in this region and globally, and the potential acoustic impact that anthropogenic noise sources may have on sensitive species are increasing areas of study and concern for industry, governments, biologists and conservationists [23], [25]. The intense pulses produced by seismic surveys clearly have the potential to cause direct or behaviourally mediated physiological harm at close distances [34], but more subtly at longer distances there exists the potential of disturbing animals and altering important behaviours, as well as masking acoustic signals and negatively affecting communication. ... It appears that whales are ceasing to sing, or moving to other areas to sing when seismic surveys are being conducted in relatively close proximity. We emphasize that this is documentation of disturbance of a breeding display for a baleen whale on a breeding ground, and thus has implied potential for affecting mating behaviour and success." Artist Notes: The entire piece was improvised and recorded in one real-time pass using only the Octatrack's unique an expressive capabilities, built-in-effects and ability to morph. The piece was recorded with a Zoom H2N with no edits (after much rehearsal). The fun and challenge of this piece was to see how far I could take a handful of similar recordings to tell a story and to go well beyond the sonic character of the source material. So I start off quite organic, and end quite "horror show". Instrumentation & Instrumentalities: The ONLY source audio for this piece is from public domain recordings of humpback whale song and vocalizations. The samples were loaded into multiple tracks on an Elektron Octatrack Dynamic Performance Sampler.](https://newecho.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/006-when-the-whales-take-back-the-ocean.png?w=245&h=245&crop=1 "006 When the Whales Take Back the Ocean")
