Olympia WA ambient double bass sleep aid
Hey Isabelle! Wanted to send some good vibes your way on your birthday! Didn’t quite get this done in time but I hope you still enjoy it. I explain whats going on in the mini-episode itself. Love you! Cooper
I was able to go to one day of the Oly Old Time Festival, a yearly event celebrating American folk musics, and take a couple field recordings. There are three recordings of square dances, two of the family dance and one of the night dance. I enjoyed myself immensely, learned new perspectives from the workshops and came away very happy. Thank you to Emily, Erik, and Ruby.
This is the last part of the San Diego series. Two recordings from San Diego Zoo, one from behind the flamingo pen where me and Brianna fed the flamingos dog soaked in water (the watery tchick-tchick-tchick sound is the flamingos feeding). We caught sunset in Owen’s Aviary, which was amazing. The species in the aviary are: Bali Mynah, Black-naped Fruit-dove, Black-naped Oriole, Chinese Hwamei, Collared Finchbill, Collared Imperial Pigeon, Collared Imperial-pigeon, Collared Lory, Cotton Pygmy Goose, Dollarbird, Eclectus Parrot, Edward’s Pheasant, Emerald Dove, Fairy Bluebird, Fawn-breasted Bowerbird, Greater Necklaced Laughingthrush, Iris Lorikeet, Lesser Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, Malay Great Argus Pheasant, Mariana Fruit-dove, Metallic Pigeon,Metallic Starling, Nicobar Pigeon, Papuan Mountain-pigeon, Red-billed Malkoha, Red-tailed Laughing Thrush, Spotted Laughing Thrush, Sulawesi Green Imperial-pigeon, Victoria Crowned Pigeon, White-bellied Imperial-pigeon, White-breasted Kingfisher, White-breasted Wood Swallow, White-eared Bulbul, White-eared Catbird, White-rumped Shama, and White-throated Ground-dove. Also in this episode is tecolote (owl in Spanish) canyon, which was around where we stayed. My parents and I went for a hike around sunrise, so birds were super active then too.
This is part two of three of our trip to southern California. About halfway in the middle of our trip we drove out to LA to see my aunt Deanna and uncle John. They met us in Griffith Park, and took us to Chinatown for dinner and to see the Thiên Hậu Taoist Temple. You can hear all the fans they had running to circulate air, as well as a huge standing bell that was being struck during our visit.
I went with my family (Mom, Dad, Isabelle, and Brianna) to San Diego for the holidays, and got some good field recordings. I’m going to put them in the shows in the order I recorded them in, which presents some challenges, especially with the overall narrative. The two field recordings in this episode are from silver strand beach and from San Diego bay, where we spent a couple hours out on the water. You’ll hear waves, winches, and the voices of all those present (which makes it a little less sleep inducing this week, sorry, we’ll get back to no voices this week). When I was taking the field recording on silver strand, the sun was setting, we got there just in time to see it approach and go under the horizon line, which meant a whole lot of deep oranges and blacks and maybe some grey-green around the edges, and as the sky got darker the street lights came on and the stars started poking through. We saw Venus!
I found my halloween recordings! My recording device attaches a date to each recording, which is always in the year of 2007. It’s almost like digital preemptive time travel. I was searching for files to delete to free up space on my computer and found my old recordings! Hurrah! There are two big field recordings in this episode, one was my initial walk from around the capitol blvd bridge over I-5 through south olympia, down past the fountain by the capitol, and into a restaurant on 4th ave. The second doesn’t really follow a route, but stays in south olympia the whole time. Listening back, there weren’t many “trick or treat”s but that’s what I remembered. There were a lot of “thank you”s though, and a hearty rendition of jingle bells, as well as a “stop being so rude.” I started playing in Hospice this last week and have my second attempt tomorrow. Wish me luck!
I went through some old home videos (the source of the fuzz you’ll here in this) and picked out 54 different soundclips, which I plugged into my computer so it could choose between them at random. As always when I give my computer the ability to make all the choices it surprises me with what it gets attracted to. About half (~25) of the soundclips made it into this episode I think, and I’m only basing that on things I didn’t hear. There were a number of clips that only played once and a number that were played very many times despite all being equally likely to appear. I also played electric bass for this episode exclusively! Although this is for my Dad’s birthday, I’d also like to dedicate this episode to my sister and mother as well.
Unfortunately all of my halloween field recordings were lost in the sands of time, so I had to take more field recordings this week. I decided to go the mall for some field recordings in the food court and outside the movie theater. I also took a walk on Kenyon st. going away from the mall and onto Harrison, you can hear someone ordering fast food in the episode. Malls are strange places; the mall here in Olympia is hardly any different than the malls I've been to in Illinois, Wisconsin, Colorado, and New York. Much like airports, they all have sounds in common. They exist on the same plane of reality and then you walk outside and it's something completely different, only unlike an airport you don't emerge into a different place, it's just your local neighborhood again. Wild!
In honor of the KAOS fall pledge drive (our goal of 10k was met!!) I added more voices to the pledge drive randomizer and reworked the whole think a little bit. KAOS is made up of amazing community members who don’t get anything for djing, not even: 1. money, 2. internet points, 3. exposure-bucks, 4. status, etc. Just people who want to bring good music and content to their local community. Do people listen to the radio less than 10 years ago? I have no idea, but we all still get calls when we have a good show which I think is DA BOMB. I put into my computer 30 different clips of people pitching on air, and let the computer pick which ones to play. Shoutout to Ruby Ru for her support, and dj superloser and dj fLeXiN u$a for inspiration for my own show. I was out recording halloween sounds of trick or treating and leaves and stuff, but I need to edit them before they get on the show just in case they’re super wake-up inducing, but I still wanted to do something for halloween. So I made a wind patch in pure data out of some hipass/lopass filters, oscillators and noise generators to make it sound october-y, and brought in a bag of leaves to rustle on the mic. During the show I’d record about 5 minutes, slow it down 33.333% (which brings the pitch down a fourth), record over it again, and then slow it down again, etc etc and the results turned out kindof spooky, but not in a wake me up inside way.
Short show this week, also NEXT LIVE SHOW NEXT TUESDAY @ SPITE HOUSE IN SEATTLE: https://www.facebook.com/events/911842465875980/
I took some rain sounds before the radio broadcast of some October rain. When I got inside to edit them, I loaded them up and thought "wow the sound of the small droplets onto the surface of the large puddles sounds really cool! I should go out and get more of that sound!" but by the time I figured that out, it had stopped raining. Anyway, if you're in the area come and say hi, the house is a hop skip and jump away from the west side koibito.
I went to Oktoberfest with my parents for the first time in a number of years this last weekend and had a lot of fun. Good food, and if you sign up to be a designated driver you get free soda and coffee. This episode was a little departure from the norm. Live show coming up next week @ the hobbit hole: https://www.facebook.com/events/524870038300370/permalink/525620701558637/
(See the part one summary)
I have two episodes in one here: One is all bass and one is all field recordings. It’s like choose your own adventure. I needed to meditate on some stuff last week, and so I chose to do the show unaccompanied (for the most part, I did cheat a little bit halfway through with the help of my sister Isabelle). I haven’t done this in quite a while! I used to do this much more when I first started out doing the show. Contained within are some coded messages, and like I said before the live broadcast, it’s devoted to my sister and mom. (Last week I helped my sister move into college! Yikes!) I felt that it was nice to put some large constraints on the show, so this week I did only field recordings. I’ve been sitting on a surplus of field recordings for a little bit, so this was a good way to use a good amount. Featured in the first half are recordings for Brianna’s first big horse show out here in Washington, as well as Brianna’s grandpa’s 90th birthday picnic and Brianna’s grandpa mowing the lawn to celebrate the end of summer. The second half of the show is ~2 minutes worth of sound randomly taken from the back catalog of field recordings I’ve taken (>24 hours) by my computer and looped on top of itself in a teleidoscopic fashion. What is a teleidoscope? It is a kaleidoscope which uses a big lens instead of beads and bits and glass for the source material for the mirror-mandala. This way it uses the outside world for the image. Did you know there is a kaleidoscope underworld that all meets at the Brewster Society Kaleidoscope Convention every June? (Named after Sir David Brewster who is the inventor of the kaleidoscope). They’ve figured out how to use mirrors in such a way that the seen image is a three-dimensional orb or polyhedron instead of a flat bicycle wheel sort of thing. Their website specifically talks about ergonomics of the kaleidoscope which enable extended viewing time.
I've been thinking about getting a stethoscope to try and capture body sounds, but pressing my ear up against someone works well. I just have to edit out the gurgly noises, and I'm left with some breaths and clicks and faint thumps. Maybe a stethoscope would get heartbeats better. Also in this episode was the current night sounds from that previous Wednesday, still some crickets around.
I was walking past the local skatepark downtown and was drawn in by the sounds. I asked the kids there if they were ok with me recording them and they all got up and started skating to make more sound! Dope! Thank you James, JJ, Jo Jo, Jacob, Dalton, and Greg for skating. And then just down the street as me and Brianna were recording the fountain at Heritage Park, Chris came over and asked what we were up to, and after we told him we were recording for Lullaby Utopia, he asked “so it’s like human interest mixed with music?” and I was like “well yeah actually it is I guess.” Later he was like “once I started listening it sounded like a drum circle” but I didn’t get that on the recording unfortunately. I told Jake to send me some drums, and he did, but I completely messed up the mix and so I had to cut out ~20 minutes worth, but he’s still on a lot of the show thankfully. You can here the unedited show on the 89.3 KAOS website (https://www.radiofreeamerica.com/show/lullaby-utopia-kaos-community-radio).
I played a company picnic for my Dad’s workplace with my good friend/mentor Steve Luceno and my sister got some recordings of it which you can hear in the third third of the show. I programmed all the recordings she took and was hoping it would select the piñata getting beat but it never got around to it (she ended up with 2+ hrs of recording and there was room for maybe 40 minutes worth when it was layered on itself). Maybe it’ll make it onto the show some other time. I also programmed three chords for it to switch between in the second half, but it only ever got around to 2 of them in the entire hour that the program was running. Yet another statistical anomaly on this show I suppose.
Another Isabelle travelogue episode, she is with my mom in Chicago and you can hear the annual cicadas in the recordings she sent back. (They are not the every 17 year cicadas, but a different species [every continental state has 4 or more species of cicada]). I’m really happy that they’re out there and that they are sending love from all of us back here in Olympia. Field recordings in this episode include but are not limited to: Cicadas, thunder, birthday parties, dogs, kids walking backwards, pool, and crazy 8s.
Since there were no field recordings last week, there’s a wealth of them this week. There was an owl hanging around our place whose hoots I stole. Judging from online video comparison I think it’s a great horned owl, but if you think otherwise please let me know at lullabyutopia@gmail.com. Did you know that owls have some of the most proportionally large ears in the animal kingdom? I was thinking of including a picture of their ears, but that might be something to find on your own. They also have one ear higher than the other so they can be more precise when gauging where it is vertically, as well as face feathers in a dish shape that channel sound towards their ears. They can control the depth of that dish in order to change at what distance their hearing is focused on. Crickets are also starting to be noisier this time of year, and we had a magnificent thunderstorm last week.
No field recordings this week, just a medley of different things. I attempted something vaporwave-y the first half but it just ended up sounding like what I usually put out, and it opens up towards the second half. There's a little clipping here and there due to me having the line into the recording software up too loud.
Brianna here! For this week I joined Cooper in the studio to make a special episode for my dad. He is thankfully okay, but he was in a serious car accident while headed back from a work trip earlier this week. Even though he called us right away to keep us updated, it was still a very scary experience for everyone who loves him (and certainly a scary experience for him, too!) I have a poem that I wrote for him and Cooper brought in some field recordings that would best fit my dad- and they're all taken at his house! You'll hear sprinklers, water fountains, and wind chimes. We love you so much Dad! -Bri and Cooper
My and Brianna kayaked out to hope island, which has a campsite only accessible by boat. We were hoping to get a spot but all the sites were taken, so we sat on the beach and felt bummed out for a while. During which I took a field recording!
I got a haircut!Around this time last year I recorded lakefair, and that was around when I started doing the show. I did it again.
Semi-live this time (had to prerecord it because I’m playing shows in the Olympia Free Jazz Festival!). The Fourth of July parade in Oakville featured a number of Brianna’s family members as well as a crowd which outnumbered the population of Oakville.
For fourth of july my family went out to eat sushi, and my mom ordered the “mexican roll,” which along with the hotdogs I had for lunch seemed just about the most American meal ever. We went to the 3rd of july fireworks show, which you’ll hear right of the beginning of this episode, and I was able to catch 3, maybe 4 languages, which you’ll hear if you listen closely (there’s other stuff going on). Also in this episode, samples from Lewis Jordan’s “When the Time Comes,” and Joe Mailhot’s live version of a tune he wrote in 2000 which he didn’t name the name of when he played on Free Jazz with Fred this last Monday. If he did say the name I missed it. He was talking about how he had Syd Potter to thank for starting his compositional career. You can hear that live show for about a week longer before the archive expires here: https://www.radiofreeamerica.com/show/free-jazz-with-fred-2-kaos-community-radio, and you can find out more about the Olympia Free Jazz Festival here: https://www.facebook.com/olympiafreejazzfestival/ You can see Lullaby Utopia live and learn how I do my process for the show Sunday July 14th at St. Martins.
This year I went to three whole graduation ceremonies, two that my sister isabelle was in (whose traveloges you can hear in past episodes), and one that I played in. One was for Capitol High here in Oly, one for South Puget Sound Community College here in Oly, and one for the Freedom Education Project of Puget Sound (https://fepps.org/). Of the three, my favorite was the SPSCC one which you can hear here on the show! Don’t worry I cut out all the boring speeches it’s just all the families cheering in all their own unique different ways. My mom says “way to go peanut.” We also had some thunderstorms out here which is still a little bit unusual for Western Washington I think. It’s only the second field recording I’ve gotten since I’ve been out here, if I was in Wisconsin I’d probably have over a hundred by now. The computer programming this time was a little more involved than usual, I feel like I keep pushing myself more and more. This is also the first show featuring a foot pedal I was able to hook up to my computer to control events without taking my hands away from the bass. Cool. If you have any sounds that make you sleepy or happy or both you can send them to lullabyutopia@gmail.com and I’ll play them on the show. See you next week!
IF YOU HAVE FIELD RECORDINGS TAKEN ON ANY OLD RECORDING DEVICE (including phones) OF A GOOD PLACE, PLEASE SEND THEM TO lullabyutopia@gmail.com
It’s been too long since I last had Christopher William Wolter on the show so I thought I’d ask him to do me a favor. You might have already figured out Lullaby Utopia is a large scale simulation, but down here we also play video games too. Some of the NPCs (non-player characters) have started thinking for themselves! They’re going through a rather angsty phase but the scientists/game designers don’t care what they think as long as they think for themselves. When I asked the head scientist, Maralindorothy Burnosamastein what she thought about it she said “it’s a necessary part of growing up.” Also the sprinklers are on! We have special night-time ones.
There were two things that happened this last week, my good friends Kylie and Chris got married! To each other! And I stole the sounds from the ceremony! Or rather Brianna did, because I was honored to be able to PLAY FOR THE CEREMONY! What are you kidding me? That’s boss! Thanks for trusting me with potentially ruining everything Kylie and Chris! The other thing that happened was Brianna’s birthday, so the second half of the show is a super special surprise from me and her families to her. About three hundred of her siblings and parents all called into the radio station at once, and you’ll be able to here them.
I found a field recording that I thought I lost! The landing from Madison in it’s entirety, from before we touch down to when I get out of the airport, and then a long field recording from around where I live where there’s a abandoned railway. I always fly with this special airline “Sunbeam” out of Seattle where the sides of the plane are all clear glass (probably some sort of plastic but it looks like glass) and they only schedule flights where you’ll see a sunrise or a sunset. I guess they recoup the costs of those things by not serving soda, but you can bring your own which I do. Over the course of the field recording, the sky goes from sunny to dark (I took pictures during which are in the attached image). And the trail/rails where I was walking you can still find people who catch freight in and out of Olympia and if you stop to talk to them, they’ll cook you a can of beans over their campfire and tell you about jobs they’ve worked in Kansas City, and all the best (FREE!) things to discover across the US. I waved hello to a couple folks here and there, but I didn’t want a whole lot of talking in the recording so I just kept to myself mostly.
Some neighbors were celebrating Cinco de Mayo so I stole some of their music with my recording device! Don't tell anyone! Also in this episode is procession of the species, a local parade here in Olympia WA. You won't find any marching in formation in this parade, it's all pretty freeform. Incidentally, I use stock photos for the images I post when I announce the show: when I searched for "parade" all the top results were Russian military parades. Next week some more long-form field recordings I think.
This will be the last show featuring field recordings from Madison, there’s a couple things that I put on the backburner, mainly Procession of the Species (a parade in my hometown Olympia, WA celebrating Earth Day), so expect some of that next week. I managed to get a small field recording in the car of rain while I was waiting for my buddy Jake to pick up groceries. I tried to do very many things with one small recording, which is a little different than what I usually do. There’s a brief field recording from my visit with my mentor Richard Davis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Davis_(bassist)), as well as some synth stuff too.
I had a wonderful time in Madison reconnecting with Musician friends and teaching at the Richard Davis Foundation for Young Bassists conference. And I played a live show at the Alchemy with Left Field Compatriots Alex and Jake where we tried integrating the “Phonelines Stress Me Out” patch from Lullaby Utopia into the show. Thank you especially to Isaac Suprenant, one of the first people to listen to this show, Aaron Gotchberg and Delane Doyle for your guys’ support, feedback and real talk. No recordings from the show unfortunately, but I did return with some recordings from the bass conference as promised. The bass conference was another resounding success, thank you to Ben Ferris and Catherine Harris for all the hard work that you guys do to put it on. Some more plane sounds in this episode. Flying is becoming a different experience the more I do it. The Seattle, Milwaukee, Madison, Chicago, etc. airports all remain remarkably the same, the planes are pretty much the same since I was growing up, the same sounds, procedures. And at the end of it you’ve gone across the country in very little time, which holds a good amount of significance/weight. It’s like a bigger, more expensive, more inconvenient stargate portal. Still really cool.
My compatriot Jacob Bicknase was in town this week and we played a lot together during that time. Me and Jake were both part of Left Field Quartet in Madison WI a little while back (https://leftfieldquartet.bandcamp.com/releases). My sister sent me the first of a series of field recordings she is taking of her trip to New Zealand, the first being Seatac Airport of [con]course.
When I took the field recording at the narrows bridge it wasn’t exactly sleep inducing. The coal trains were running underneath, the sound of the cars going over the bridge end was loud and obnoxious, and some dude rode what looked like a razor scooter with a lawnmower engine attached by. I had the idea to change this raucous soundscape into something more mellow so I transcribed those three elements, the cars taking the longest. Had I had more time I would have also transcribed the big trucks passing too, (maybe I’ll return to it later). I slowly add in all the elements until it’s completely electronic, and randomized.
I’ve written a more detailed overview of what I did which you can find here:https://www.cooperschlegel.com/lullaby-utopia/2019/1/25/1-31-19
First 40 minutes in honor of MLK.
Lots of patterns! I tried to make them clear, but let me know if you have questions.
Special treat this week, 4 music machines from Marsh's free museum that go back all the way to the 1800's! And boy howdy a couple of them sound like they're 100+ years old.
More Elaine Radigue-style experimentation. No field recordings this time, but I tried to make it more sleepy especially in the second half.
There’s an embedded message in the first half and the second is an impression of Elaine Radigue’s music.
First episode where everything besides my bass is scripted in pure data. Also first episode where after I start playing I don’t stop until the end. This episode ended up being less divided into sections than others. I had trouble falling asleep to last week’s episode so this one is tailored more for that.
More pure data patches,possible titles for sections include:-stampede of dudleys-land ho-alex ain’t got nothing on me
Since this was not a live show I was able to get away with more overdubbing, and a shorter show.
Started off with an old tune of mine, "Nightflower Moonrise," and then continued with my first attempt at real-time pitch detection in pure data which cases the timbre to shift from piano to orchestra with a few samples of Ravel. Later there's also a sample of Crumb's Vox Balaenae.
Two field recordings this episode: one from NYC-based dramatist Christopher William Wolter containing his short piece "Shipwrecks." Chris is a longtime collaborator (some of our older stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RC5zZAdB1c). The other is of the Weyerhaeuser Comm lot by the water in downtown Olympia. I got a lot of weird looks from the people who work there for standing against the fence apparently doing nothing.The second half of the show I used a simple pd patch I made which responds to sound input with white noise output. It sounds like playing against the wind.See you next week.
Fooling around with more random number generators in pure data, also tried to change the piano sample I’ve used a number of times into something completely new
Experimenting with running two tracks at slightly different speeds; the white noise in the beginning and the synth halfway through
Used processed tracks from audacity. The last minute is the same as before but unprocessed
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