First I’ll describe this backwards, as though it was created from a concept or idea (it wasn’t)

1. Imagine assembling a drum kit made of metal.
2. Imagine designing an algorithm to play that metal drum kit.
3. Imagine recording 14 hours of multitrack generative metal beats.
4. Imagine sifting through 14 hours of recordings and finding the gems.

This is exactly what I have been doing for a while now, but the recording process has been limited to only two days due to the nature of the algorithm: this drum kit is played by raindrops!

Now this idea is not unprecedented. If you remember AMB018 STRANGE RAIN I recorded multitrack textures of rain, by placing microphones inside objects such as metal bowls, pipes, waterphones, gas tanks etc… In that example, the algorithm is direct rain and as the objects were fully exposed, even light rain created a continuous texture or ambience.

For this upcoming library, the algorithm is sparser and the objects were chosen for deeper percussive impact, as you can see and hear in the video below.  I’ll explain how I came to discover this idea, but before I do that I’d like to present a challenge:

I did not find the idea for RAINDROP BEATS, it found me!

I discovered the idea for this library during the Xmas holidays, December 28^th to be exact. We had an unexpected Summer rainstorm sweep through, causing flooding and damage. But it also, by accident created an interesting sound. From my studio, I could hear this steady pounding drum beat. Were my neighbors having a party?? I went to investigate…

Turned out I had left a trashcan upside down in the porch, and by pure coincidence, it was directly underneath a crack in the clearlight roof. Somehow this drip was very steady, so I grabbed my recorder and put an MKH8050 inside the inverted trashcan, and also set up my MKH8040 pair to capture the general ambience.

Listening on headphones while recording, it really struck me how musical these sounds were. The steady pounding pulse from inside the trashcan provided a rhythmic reference, making the drips falling onto other junk and props feel like granular percussion. So I quickly set up all of the metal objects I had close at hand (bucket, milk can etc) and I left it recording.

After the rain ended, I loaded the 3.5 hours of raindrop recordings and listened to all of the variations. Immediately after a heavy shower passed the ambience would quieten down, but the pounding trashcan beat continued, presumably fed by the build-up of water on the roof. At this point I decided the idea was worth pursuing – I loved the bassy sound from inside of the trashcan.

A few comments on the drums. When I think of an old school trashcan, they tend to be very solid, but the one I had was a cheap import, made from fairly lightweight steel. I first bought it to capture IR sweeps inside, for the Metal IR Library. And it was the light gauge of the skin (base) of the trashcan that provided the initial resonance, as it was thin enough to act like a drum skin. But I discovered another useful aspect of this particular trashcan: it had a small lip or ridge around the outside, maybe 5mm high. Listening to some of the long takes, I noticed that the pitch of the trashcan would change over 30 minutes. As the water slowly pooled on its surface, the pitch would become deeper!

Next step: I wanted polyphony! I needed more trashcans! I headed off to the hardware store and after returning home spent the next hour arranging the three trashcans, and many more metal props. My metal drumkit and percussion ensemble were ready to play! Now I just needed some rain.

I waited. And waited. January passed with no rain – I was hand watering my vegetable garden every day. Six weeks later the weather forecast predicted major rain!

SEVERE WEATHER WARNING

HEAVY RAIN warning for Kāpiti-Horowhenua, Wellington 11:00 pm Friday 4/02 -11pm Saturday. Heavy rain may cause streams and rivers to rise rapidly, surface flood and slips also possible. Driving may be hazardous.

My batteries were charged, and at 5am I woke to the sound of rain, and quickly set up to record. This time I used three seperate trashcan mics MKH8020/8050/8020, plus the external stereo MKH8040 pair. I set my SD788T recorder rolling, had a quick listen and went back to bed. Every two hours I would swap batteries, and I  recorded throughout the day, until the rain cleared that evening.

From session two I recorded a total of 11.5 hours of multitrack raindrops!

At the time, the rhythmic interplay sounded wild on headphones, but listening in the studio the next day these raindrop beats seemed even more interesting. The three thuddy resonant trashcans were consistent and have a correlation in intensity, but musically their rhythms are decoupled. At times they lock into a beautiful pattern, but it may only last for a few bars before nature and gravity gently alters the pulse.

During very heavy showers the ‘dot would become a line’ as the raindrops would be so heavy that the pulse became a rumble. But after a heavy shower passed and everything settled down, the metal percussion started to sound like a mix of free jazz and gamelan.

Since then I have been playing around with the recordings, analysing them and tempo mapping the recordings, and from within these recordings I plan to output a collection of multitrack raindrop beats, and long loops. These can of course be mixed and used as ambiences, but there is another potential use that intrigues me.

These recordings are also a pattern library.
I have been playing around with using the asymmetrical patterns to trigger other sounds (via slice to MIDI, and via real time triggering) and I think there is much potential to use these patterns to generate ambient elements.

As a simple example, imagine designing a night ambience where each of the trashcan pulses is triggering a cricket chirp. While you ‘could’ spend time placing single chirps, or use a randomised algorithm, the gently random distribution of pulses from the raindrop beats could provide a naturally generated pulse pattern, which would be difficult to manually generate, and unlikely to take this form programmatically.

So an important part of this upcoming library and a motive for this creative challenge is this:

What unusual, inspiring ideas can you come up with? SURPRISE ME!

Some techniques I have been exploring:

– Using MELODYNE app (not plugin) to create a tempo map and apply it to other source material.

– Using resonators to sustain and tune individual hits (GRM resonator, MI Rings)

– Using ENVY to apply the envelope from RAINDROPS to other source material.

– Slice to MIDI and use that MIDI to ‘play’ other sounds and instruments.

– Using plugins such as a drum replacer or ATTACCO to trigger other sounds.

But these are just starting points… Have fun!
I look forward to hearing what you can come up with!

I have discovered an interesting anomaly when shipping HISSandaROAR COMPLETE!

Whenever someone upgrades to HISSandaROAR COMPLETE HD, I ship a 1TB hard drive using DHL… and I always include a gift, a photobook of NZ landscapes by Andris Apse. But last time I shipped, the staff at DHL mentioned that it would cost less to ship using one of their much larger boxes. I thought that seems odd, so yesterday when I shipped an HD for a Game Studio in Korea I asked, and they confirmed. As long as the box weighs less than 10kg (!) it will cost less to ship than my little package of the HD & book.

I mentioned this on Twitter, and a few comments later (Thanks Patrick) was wiser:
– Box that big is harder to lose, so it generates less of an insurance levy
– Boxes are easier to handle with robots

I measured their box – it is 33cm x 33cm x 33cm (13″x13″x13″) and I imagine air freight is charged by the cubic metre, so that box size would mean a 3 x 3 x 3 cube of boxes would perfectly fill one cubic metre of space.
Now I’m not going to fill a large box with bubble wrap (or even worse, those polystyrene beads) because that would be like exporting plastic pollution. But I tried using two beach towells as packing and that amount of bulk could work….

So in future, I will offer to become a personal shopper for new COMPLETE owners.
If there is something uniquely NZ that you would like, I can fill up your box with whatever you like – WETA collectibles, Grandalf hats, merino beanies, books, toys… anything within reason.
But not food or alcohol. I included some chocolate with one shipment a while ago, and it required a whole other set of declarations etc.. as it did effectively involve exporting food.

I am working with a Canadian studio at the moment to pursue this approach, so we can consider it a test case, and if it all proceeds without a hitch then I will offer this service to anyone ordering COMPLETE. Obviously, I am not offering to pay for expensive replica props from LOTR, but if that is what you’d like and it will fit in the box then I am happy to do any purchasing on your behalf and bill accordingly.

It isn’t often in life that you get more, by paying less!

Before we get to your Xmas present, as an Uncle of nine can I share the best Summer Xmas present strategy that I ever came up with? Go to a toy store, buy a small water pistol for each, plus one large super soaker gun…
On the day, distribute the small presents, but WAIT!
There’s one for me from Santa! What could it be?
Game on!
(It’s worth mentioning this strategy only works once. The following year: CHAOS!)

Your HISSandaROAR Xmas Present!

As 2021 draws to an end, inevitably it provides a chance to reflect on the year that has been, and while COVID has kept most of us isolating LOUDLY at home, it is your creative work that has helped express the zeitgeist and kept us all inspired & thriving. So, thank you for creatively contributing to our collective sanity and evolution!

Thanks also to everyone who has supported HISSandaROAR this year!
Accordingly, it is a pleasure to share a gift of some interesting new sounds with you. What sounds? Well, maybe it’s more fun to not know what’s in a present before you open it, and if that sounds like you then simply hit the direct download link below to access your free 24bit 96kHz Xmas Present.

Access these sounds via DIRECT DOWNLOAD:

2021 XMAS PRESENT – EXPIRED NOW
47 x 24bit 96kHz stereo .WAV files with UCS Metadata
550MB download > 857MB decompressed
But if you’d like some context as to how and why I recorded these particular sounds, then please continue reading…

CYMATICS?
Towards the end of 2021 it felt like my many separate creative interests were merging. For example, I have been slowly developing a cymatics project and a few months back acquired a large stainless steel tank, which I have set up outside and at times have filled with oobleck, slime, flour, food colouring and various props. But recent heavy rain filled it to the brim with water, so I had to manually empty it using buckets… Two sonic ideas became apparent:

First, I was reminded of how the sounds of exterior water splashes are so distinctive. They are not a sound that can be faked, or recorded on a foley stage. So the first half of the 2021 Xmas present is a useful collection of practical water splashes onto wood, concrete, windows & grass. I ended up recording quite a few variations on wood, and discovered a technique where I could get an entire bucket of water to land with a single impact (described as ‘vertical drop’) but equally some of the more complex splashes have beautiful attack – almost like an aleatorical percussion break!

Second, my stainless steel tank has beautifully deep resonance, which I have been activating using large transducers (more on that in 2022!) But I got to wondering how it would sound if the tank was inverted – upside down – with the mics inside it, thereby protecting them from getting wet. What would a splash sound like, impacting such a large rigid chamber, as though it’s a stainless steel drum skin? Would it still sound like water? or would it become a resonant metal impact sound? As a source of percussive impacts, could it be ‘played’ with water?
Have a listen to the video to find out:

PLANS FOR 2022?
Life during COVID seems to make time elastic. The last half of this year for me has involved a deep dive in many areas of my work, dominated by research & development. As with the cymatics project, I feel 2022 is going to be a year of converging projects where disparate techniques find their form in hybrid output.

For example, I’ve become mildly obsessed with contact printing and specifically cyanotype printing, which was invented as camera-less photography back in 1842 by English scientist and astronomer Sir John Herschel… As is paralleled in my sound & music exploration, I love the idea of re-evaluating and recontextualising old school organic techniques with more abstract digital processes… For my cyanotype exploration, an analogue film photo is developed and scanned, then digitally manipulated, output as a new digital negative, printed using cyanotype chemicals, physically manipulated and layered, scanned, digitally manipulated and animated, and then recomposed with music & sound.
Developing this creative practice has been an invaluable reminder of one core technique which I believe applies to everything: if you love something, give your full sustained attention to it, and it will reward you in ways unimaginable. Do it. Do it lots. Keep doing it. Thrash around & find the points of failure. Delay judgment about those failures, because they might not be failures at all. They may be sign posts, steering you towards something that no one else can imagine. Persevere.

In the realm of ideas, everything depends on enthusiasm.
In the real world, all rests on perseverance.
Goethe

My studio currently feels like it is in the best form of its existence, with MOTU AVB routing all of my synths, modular and outboard… And my digital arsenal feels similarly stable and evolved to my hybrid focus work. For field recording I’ve recently added a Sound Devices MixPre10-II, partly for 32 bit 192k multi mic recording, but also motivated by the SD ‘Musician’ plugin which is crucial to some of my projects for 2022 (but strangely seems to have had little coverage in the media). I’ll share a lot more on this, but for now I am consciously working towards New Year Osouji

We may not yet be out of the woods with COVID, but 2022 is going to enable a ‘post-war’ boom of creativity if I have anything to do with it! And specifically, with regards to HISSandaROAR, a series of large new sonic resources are approaching release:

SD050 FOLIAGE!
I started recording FOLIAGE back in August this year, and I am relieved to say it is very near finished. The final recordings to be made are now dependent on my garden. My crop of corn is chest height and is developing a lovely complex rustle, while the front lawn has been left untended and unmown, expanding the range of grassy foots and movement. During the holidays I will find some quiet moments to record these, along with some of the other plant textures I am growing. It amuses me, making discoveries like I am a small child. For example, did you know zucchini leaves are raspy, almost like sandpaper? And rhubarb sounds a bit like rubber? Currently all of the mandarins, limes, yuzu, and tamarillo in my greenhouse are flowering, and the scent first thing in the morning is exquisite. I wish I could capture some of the scent and include it with the eventual sound library!
SD050 FOLIAGE will be the first HISSandaROAR release for 2022.

SD051 = HISSandaROAR #100
Due to the erratic nature of Spring weather (130kmph winds!) forcing breaks from working on FOLIAGE, I will also soon finish another large sound design library, which will be the second release for 2022. It will also be the 100^th HISSandaROAR release, so it is personally satisfying to me that it contains some of the most gorgeous sounds that I have never heard before and I can’t wait to share with you!

EDU: SOUND EDITING 101

Early in 2022 I will also be launching an education initiative, building on the virtual intern concept from my blog, and essentially walking participants through the entire process of sound design for a feature film:
From the script to the final mix.

While access to tools is less of an issue nowadays, to help develop real-world skills I wish to go right back to the start and begin with Sound Editing 101 via an ongoing series of tutorials and discussion, with practical exercises working with sound to picture.

HOLIDAY PLANS?

Unlike much of the planet, Xmas holidays in New Zealand provide a welcome chance to enjoy Summer. Spending time outdoors, at the beach, hiking, eating, drinking in the sun… and occasionally cursing the damned cicadas for ruining potential recording opportunities!

2022 is also going to bring a major benefit for my sanity & for local noise levels. Transmission Gully is a major 4 lane 27km highway that has been in development for over 20 years (see this drone fly through video) and is due to open early in 2022. The major benefit for me is that it will provide a bypass for all traffic heading North from Wellington, basically removing 90% of the traffic that currently travels up SH1 near my suburb in Plimmerton. COVID lockdowns revealed just how quiet life can be with the absence of traffic, so this new motorway is going to turn my local hood into even more of a quiet, sleepy backwater. Just how I like it!

OK that’s about it for 2021. Thanks again for supporting my work at HISSandaROAR. I hope you have a relaxing holiday break, in preparation for a highly productive and creative New Year. Stay safe, stay sane and keep your batteries charged – you just never know when a recording opportunity may appear!

ps I don’t know what they were smoking back in VIctorian times but these bizzaro Xmas cards really take the cake!

bestest regards

Tim Prebble
Field Recordist/Sound Designer/Photographer/Foley Forager

Murphy
Floof/Tinsel Muncher