Thursday, September 21, 2006

WCWM - Robot ID

WCWM - Robot ID
September 21, 2006
[41 sec]



[ Download ]

Lyrics:

WCWM, 90.9 FM.
WCWM, 90.9 FM.

Williamsburg.
Williamsburg.

Williamsburg!
Williamsburg!
Williamsburg!
(Williamsburg!)

Wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh?
Wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh?
Wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh?

Influences: Stephen Hawking.
Instruments: DocTalker Text-to-Speech Suite; Wine Glass Click Sample; FruityLoops: 3x Oscillator, MIDI Guitar Harmonics, Percussion Samples.

I created this, along with two other recordings, as a gift to WCWM a few months after I graduated from William and Mary. During my last year there, I ran a radio show for two hours each week. The show had a premeditated playlist, focused on running two tracks in a row by the same artist (a twin spin!) to help convince listeners that the artists were worth really getting into. My thought process had been that if I liked one song, I might go download the song — but if I liked a couple songs, I might run out and buy an album. In a two-hour show, I averaged about 16 artists, divided into two-artist sets broken up by short PSAs. In preparing my playlists, I would premix each four-song set, carefully timing the transition from one song to the next so that the rhythm wouldn't skip a beat, and I generally tried to link the two artists in a set by lining up the key of the second and third songs. So, I might be OCD (OCPD?), but I like to think that my listeners benefited from it.

The high glassy clicking throughout the track is one of many samples I recorded of bumping wine glasses together in different ways (and, amazingly, not breaking any of them). In the interest of full disclosure, I believe that this sample in particular was of two wine glasses bumping bottom-to-bottom.

The Text-to-Speech vocals were generated by a program called DocTalker, released by Willow Pond Corporation in the mid-1990's. The melodies of the vocals were created by chance, by setting up the utility to use a random intonation. I played off those melodies to create the backing music.