reinstrumentation

paul mccartney played bass with his face on the white album - with a simple tweak of eq its possible to simulate a variety of instrumentation via vocals. or take the sound of driving on a gravel road which could easily be mistaken as a crowds applause. substitution of sounds gives things a more surreal, magical quality. take a piano and use it as a drumset by cutting its attack/decay to match a more percussive instrument, and the drumset pitchshifted along a scale as though it were a piano - i guess this has already been done to some degree with keyboards, but that was only the very beginning of what is possible. what if a song was re-arranged dependent upon the global locality, so that if it were played in japan it would be made with japanese instruments, brazil with brazilian, so on... in our modern digital era the possibilities are, for all intents and purposes, endless.

sinewave lockgrooves

vinyl records have some interesting possibilities. one simple idea for all those minimalist listeners out there is taking a series of lockgrooves (an endlessly playing loop) at interval throughout the entire width of the vinyl. most lockgrooves ive heard are at the center of the record, giving you only a short duration for the needle to make a complete loop - but there is a change in duration as you progress outward toward the edge.

lets assign a waveform, say a comforting sinewave, to each lockgroove - the modulation frequency could apply directly to the duration of the loop; uninterrupted. as you listen to the loops nearer the center of the record, the modulation rate increases, and the resulting frequencies are higher in tone. this record could be used as a template for future, more elaborate loops, with the same durations/vinyl cutting setup.