Sex and Devils [disquiet0008-voice]

*warning* - This is a fairly silly piece. (If you like it, though, you might also like this.)

This was another mission for the Disquiet Junto group. The brief was: "You will select a single sentence (or extended, self-contained clause) from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. It is Franklin's own Junto Society that provided the name for our association... Whether you use the provided MP3 or you elect to record a section yourself, you will use that recording as the sole audio source material in your work. You can do with it as you wish -- cut it up, slow it down, process it, otherwise transform it -- so long as at some point, the sentence/clause is comprehensible to the listener. You will not add any other sounds. "

I cut up the sentence I liked best from the the Librivox recording, and I made all the instruments and sounds on a Korg Electribe SX. All the bass parts are from the word "beast" (mostly just the "b" sound), and most of the drum parts are individual breaths. I cut seven breaths out of the sentence, and used them all as sort-of drum sounds at different points. I cut out a few individual words and stitched a couple of sentences together in Audacity, but everything else was done on the Electribe. Everything that doesn't sound like a voice is the result of the Electribe's effects (mostly Mod Delay, Grain Shifter, Distortion and Compression).

My idea with this piece was to strip almost all seriousness away from it, and explore all the qualities of the vocals, the words and the sounds in the recording of the sentence.

Apologies to Benjamin Franklin and the entire United States of America for any offense caused.


The underlying vocal sample is from this public-domain recording of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, from LibriVox:

http://www.archive.org/details/franklin_autobio_gg_librivox ;

Text made possible thanks to:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20203/20203-h/20203-h.htm#XI ;

(The sentence I used was: "The multitudes of all sects and denominations that attended his sermons were enormous, and it was matter of speculation to me, who was one of the number, to observe the extraordinary influence of his oratory on his hearers, and how much they admir'd and respected him, notwithstanding his common abuse of them, by assuring them they were naturally half beasts and half devils.")

I took the image from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Benjamin_Franklin_by_Joseph-Siffred_Duplessis.jpg ;
and manipulated it in the GIMP.

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

Disquiet Junto