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December 31, 2004
the tkdf project
many years ago, i was involved in an improvisational audio collage show on wxdu. personnel were typically jason!, ian rothwell, and me, although the cast rotated and we had folks come in and help from time to time.
ian is a very meticulous person and he taped every show. each tape was carefully labelled with the name of that week's show, the date, and the show number. at some point, he divided the tapes three ways and we each received a set. i believe we were supposed to sift through the tapes, identify the best sections, and possibly compile them in some kind of digitized form.
i've always intended to follow through with this project, but software (and motivation) has been an issue. i recently found a blog post about digitizing and editing old cassettes that finally pointed me in the right direction and i've got two apps that seem to work and have the features i need. Audio Recorder for sound capture, and Audacity for editing. Audacity has a visual representation of the sound waves, which I need for editing... i can't navigate sound without a visual. Just the way my brain works.
so last night i captured the first tape, show #4, recorded on may 31, 1996. this show may be so early that it's only ian... jason and i joined up after ian had done a few shows by himself, i think.
i always thought of it as unlistenable-- something that was immensely fun to do, but probably hell to actually hear on the radio. but as i sit here listening to this show, i find that i don't want to stop. it's more mesmerizing than irritating. i don't think it's because i was involved... i have no memory of this particular show, i don't even know if i was there when it was created. having done the show probably affected the way i listen to music in general... i know i probably have a higher than average tolerance for music that many people would consider to be "just noise". but much of what i am hearing right now isn't too far off from what i hear on xdu's playlist these days. it's kind of nice, actually.
i'm not sure how possible it will be to pull out sections of a show, but i think i still want to try to do that. i could also make entire shows available for download in mp3 form if anyone wants them.
i also have a lot of photos that i took during shows that i should scan. i was the main photographer, which means that i don't appear in many photos. that kind of pisses me off... because there were so few women working in audio collage at that time (maybe none?). because we never speak during the shows, without the photos, the people involved kind of disappear, there is no record of who was involved except in our own memories and the photos. i do have this one picture. it was taken by our old black & white webcam, reflecting off the minidisc player (a cool camera angle invented by jim haverkamp).
anyway, i'm hoping that i'll continue to follow through with this and come up with an end product that i could give to the station for our library. maybe it could even go on our playlist for a while-- that would be cool.
:|:
update: here's an excerpt from show #4. excerpt #1, 2.6mb, mp3 format, and just for jason! excerpt #1, 3.3mb, ogg format.
Posted by lisa at December 31, 2004 10:52 AM | TrackBack
Comments
"i recently found a blog post about digitizing and editing old cassettes that finally pointed me in the right direction and i've got two apps that seem to work and have the features i need."
Point me to that post, and I'll get cracking on my third.
Posted by: Jason! on January 1, 2005 04:04 PM
ok, so a) your comment won't post right away because i have to approve it first and b) you might get a server error but your comment probably posted anyway and c) previewing doesn't work so i've removed the preview button.