Frogs by Randy Dempsey

Starting with a field recording of frogs at dusk, I stretched the audio files until the croaking of the frogs became individual staccato sounding percussive implosions with sustained drone sounds interspersed throughout the audio file. There were long silences where the frogs had once paused which worked out to be natural starting and stopping points for all the tracks in this collection. Now at this point I converted the stretched audio files into Midi Data files in order to assign symphonic instruments to these enigmatic tracks. Each song uses the same midi file for every instrument in the song, editing only for starting and stopping points within the track and pitch-shifting by whole octaves for the range of the various instruments in the symphony. The timing of the midi notes came with their own tempo changes that I simplified for a slightly smoother performance.

Listening to each track individually illustrated the portions to include and exclude until the compositions were able to reveal themselves by playing all 50+ tracks at once. Listening to these songs repeatedly while sleeping allowed my subconscious surrealistic tendencies to come forward with a series of final edits that were only subtractive, leaving the original performance of the frogs more or less intact. Only the tempo of the individual notes were altered by the original audio stretching and smoothing out of some of the songs' many tempo changes. Because the pitch changes were always in full octaves, any dissonant or inharmonic content was present in the frogs original performances. I am not sure what else to call this novel approach other than Surrealistic Sound Sculpture.

As always, enjoy!

Randy Dempsey

I have been a Fine Artist, Industrial Designer, Exhibit Designer and a Professional Brewer in my day.

Throughout it all I have maintained a project studio for recording and composing original music for my own amusement.

As a fine artist I am a Surrealist.
Surrealism drives my musical bus as well.

This makes my music very personal.

Enjoy.

randy-dempsey.com