Freesound Forums

The discussion thread for the 2nd Collab Dare (The Lost and Found Tapes)

This is the place for comments, feedback, complaints, etc in relation to this dare.
Basically, if it is not an entry submission or a vote, it belongs here!

My first thought is that a musical piece could be built from anything, and then everyone just has to throw in some heavily-processed versions of the uploaded sounds (1 from each uploader). That would be kind of pointless, though, wouldn't it?

Shouldn't there be a restriction on what all else can be used in the musical piece in addition to the uploaded sounds? For example: nothing else is allowed. Of course, you can create any sound from any other sound, given a small enough piece to start with (like a single sample ). So along those lines, wouldn't it be more fair to say you have to use at least 1 second or 50% (whichever is smaller) from each used sound (up to the required usage, anyway)?

Or maybe we could all simply agree that the goal is to use the samples we choose in such a way that as many of them as possible are recognizable as having come from their raw form, and then we vote accordingly based on who does the best job of putting together something that is both listenable and best achieves that goal?

I haven't done this dare stuff before, so excuse my neophytishness. I am still reluctant to build musical compositions like this, and may simply not participate. But on the other hand, maybe I could fit the samples I choose into an existing Analog Box circuit that I already plays music, replacing the oscillators with samples. Yeah, that's the ticket. That should be pretty easy.

zimbot wrote:

My first thought is that a musical piece could be built from anything, and then everyone just has to throw in some heavily-processed versions of the uploaded sounds (1 from each uploader). That would be kind of pointless, though, wouldn't it?

Shouldn't there be a restriction on what all else can be used in the musical piece in addition to the uploaded sounds? For example: nothing else is allowed. Of course, you can create any sound from any other sound, given a small enough piece to start with (like a single sample ). So along those lines, wouldn't it be more fair to say you have to use at least 1 second or 50% (whichever is smaller) from each used sound (up to the required usage, anyway)?

Or maybe we could all simply agree that the goal is to use the samples we choose in such a way that as many of them as possible are recognizable as having come from their raw form, and then we vote accordingly based on who does the best job of putting together something that is both listenable and best achieves that goal?

I haven't done this dare stuff before, so excuse my neophytishness. I am still reluctant to build musical compositions like this, and may simply not participate. But on the other hand, maybe I could fit the samples I choose into an existing Analog Box circuit that I already plays music, replacing the oscillators with samples. Yeah, that's the ticket. That should be pretty easy.

The thing is all such rules sometimes get a little technical for some people. I do see your point, and after reading the original thread again, I think that's what AlienXXX meant. You cannot use any other sample but the ones uploaded for this dare (namely, the ones tagged collab-2). You can, however, use any number of effects and processing to these uploaded samples.
Judging by the participants and the previous dare entries, I think everyone (well, except for a couple of us) is pretty good about keeping the samples recognizable in the compositions, so I think you'll be happy with the final results.

Just to make it official - Puniho and I (hello there grammar police; although I hope you saw my full-form of Puniho and me in that thread ) are going to be partners for this dare.

@zimbot

Only samples tagged with 'collab-2'can be used for this dare.

I think there are some really high quality and music-ready samples already submitted. Others will probably require a bit more effort to be integrated in a musical context.

People have taken the time to look up tapes, digitalize and submit samples. It is important we
respect that effort, however, since we are already at over 70 samples, it would be unreasonable to ask or expect pieces to contain every sample submitted.
Asking participants to take at least one sample from each uploader is both a means to say thank you to everyone who contributed samples and also a way to introduce some challenge into the dare - it means people cannot simply pick the samples that are easy to work with, they will have to use some of the difficult ones too.

It is always a bit difficult to decide on the rules: "what is too specific/restricting?", "what is too technical?", "If there are no rules at all, what is the point?"
The point of this dare was / is to get people to look and and listen to tapes again. To understand that tapes do add something to sounds recorded on them (noise, hiss, saturation, loss of dynamics...)
When was the last time you listenned to a tape?
Old tapes can be used as sources of sounds.
New sounds can be recorded to tape as a means to give them some lo-fi processing.
By publishing the rules a few days ahead of the sample submission deadline, I hope i am giving you all a chance to even add something to the sample set if you think it would be useful for your composition.

In relation to effects and processing, I have only put up the restriction that you cannot emulate tape saturation - we are working with real tape sounds, lets respect that!
It gives you the option of going really low fi and keeping your piece full of noise, hiss wow and flutter.
Or you can go the opposite way and decide to see how far you can clean-up and 'correct' sounds from old tapes.
You can even decide to do as you suggested and base your sounds on individual wavecycles from those samples and build everything from scratch - Realistically this would probably be too much work and very difficult to get things in tune, etc. However, taking tiny snippets of sounds and building something different is the principle of granular synthesis/processing. There is no shortage of virtual synths and effects to do that.

Previous dares have shown that people can be really creative. i am always amazed at the diversity and quality of pieces submitted. I am sure this time will be no exception.

Thanks for the explanations.

http://thisisnthappiness.com/post/39961135027/audio-cassette-anatomy

Lots of new sounds uploaded to my pack:

http://www.freesound.org/people/Puniho/packs/10811/

Interesting hearing the submitted sounds so far, and the way some people - including myself, are digging out ancient and obscure noisy tapes, while others are making new recordings that sound to my ears almost pristine by comparison..! It will be very interesting to hear what everyone makes of them.

I have not yet listened to the sounds posted yesterday by jeff and yourself.
But from what had been uploaded up to yesterday when I logged off, I know we have a wonderfully diverse set of samples.

I don't know about you guys, but this has made me think about tapes again and in a different light altogether. - there are many more things I will want to try but most likely will not have time to do so before the sample upload deadline. (So many sounds... so little time!...)

Just ran a search now. With two and a half days to go we are already up to 100 samples!
I do not think we have had a dare before that had been so sucessfull at collecting samples
Thanks to everyone who has uploaded !

All samples that I know of are moderated.

Bliss, you had a sample that got stuck. Not sure if the tech team managed to release it yet.
if not you can re-upload. PM me and I will approve it.

Other than that, no more samples tagged with 'collab-2', please

It is now time to create your wonderfull pieces!

ALRIGHT!!!

Here they are, organized and organized again:

The mojomills TAPE Collection!

Look for packs labeled "mojomills TAPE" for eligible samples for Collab Dare 2.

I put them into separate packs because it's a very large collection.
This way, I can always update new TAPE sounds in the future without making people download one big pack.
And do watch the tape noise; when you start stacking sounds, it will be multiplied and become louder.
Throw on a few filters to clean it up.

A VERY Special thanks to AlienXXX for watching over all that is.
Without you, we wouldn't be here.

Enjoy guys!

I'm not sure I'll be participating in this Dare, but if time allows, I may upload a quick solo entry.
We'll see.