Categories
Musician

X.0 – Techno from Kuusaa

X.0 (x dot zero) is a nostalgic techno trip to the 90s.

X.0 is Janne Särkelä and Asko Lintunen.

Tracks are paired with music videos on our YouTube channel.

Releases:

  • X.0 [BAE043] – ever expanding digital release on Bandcamp

Categories
Web

Site that plays melodies from real time lightning data

https://www.salamatar.fi

The website shows lightning strikes on a map, and it is based on the real time lightning strike data by the Finnish Meteorological Institute. It is also possible to play the lightning strikes as a melody, which is based on the properties of the lightning strikes.

A piece of music which is based on an improvised session over the soundtrack of the lightning strikes: R Dimensio – Salamatar

Categories
Sound

Reproduction of sound induced by northern lights

Does the aurora borealis make a sound? At least for some it does.

This is a reproduction of auroral sound experience I had while working as a research assistant at Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory in Finland. It’s very much a personal experience, and this is an approximation of what I heard. For somebody else the experience might differ.

The aurora activity was at about its peak back then in Winter 2001. There were five of us witnessing a very vivid and bright display of northern lights one evening. It first consisted of three parallel belts, which suddenly converged into one right above us. At that point I started to experience a sound, which I had never before heard in my life.

It appeared to create its own space inside my head. There was no reverberation or any traditional sense of space in it. In a way it was really dry and wet at the same time. It sounded like an infinite number of noises layered on top of each other. Each of the layers could be distinguished however, and it had sort of infinite depth in it, but at the same time it felt constrained (to my abilities?).

On top of that there were these very soft and deep intermittent pops.

The sound didn’t change much, but it came and went away according to the auroral display. The sound ended when the single belt divided back to three. The properties of the sound didn’t change even though I moved my head.

I couldn’t believe what happened, and I hesitated telling the others first. There was a project going on at SGO to collect experiences of the sound of auroras, and I also reported mine. I made a reproduction of my experience later that night, and this is more modern version of that.

The picture is from Pixabay.

Categories
Film

Sound design and music for an experimental animation

Fusion at Flash Vallisaari - Photo: Lauri Tuomiranta
Fusion at Flash Vallisaari – Photo: Lauri Tuomiranta

Fusion is a collaboration with Tuomas Tuomiranta, who coded the animation with Processing. The data was used to create the sounds by me with Max. The data from Processing was transferred to Max in real time by OSC. I did several renditions of the data, and composed the final sound design from the renders, so that it would flow well with the dynamic of the animation.

The foundation of the sound track are the actual colors and their frequencies, which appear in the music as if the colors would have been directly translated into sound. The changing properties of the animation elements also were used to shape the sounds.

Fusion Max patch
Fusion Max patch

Not long after we started the collaboration, there became an opportunity to exhibit the piece. Fusion premiered at Flash Vallisaari on the 21st of September 2018.

Categories
Film

Music and sound design for an experimental short feature film

Napoli film by Seppo Renvall

The visuals were transformed into sounds, and these were then used as the basis for the final composition and the sound design. The main actor Pasquale se Fabbio dictated a poem, and his voice was turned into notation for the main melody line.

Seppo Renvall is a pioneer in Finnish experimental film. He works mainly with film and video, but hid artistic output also includes photography, installations and happenings. His films are characterised by an abstract imagery in black and white and a non-narrative structure that often focuses on the apparently commonplace and everyday.

I must consider myself lucky and grateful to have worked with him on NAPOLI film, which premiered on the 11th of May in 2017.