This album has been something of a work in progress... in fact it would probably still be in progress were it not for the fact that it's out-lasted the technology used to record it.
It all began with us messing about with an experimental freeware music programme called i2SM, which basically creates a MIDI audio file based on any picture you load in the program. The program analyzes the image pixel by pixel, turning their brightness, color and saturation values into musical notes - turning images into music.
Of course, you get a lot of unco-ordinated sqwarks and dischords, but amongst them some pieces of rather good randomly produced music, which can be edited as samples and used to build up a more listenable piece.
The idea for this album evolved from a piece we made from a single location photo....the idea gradually formed that perhaps we were tapping in to the spirit of the place, which was expressing itself through music. Fanciful ? Probably... but when was that ever a reason not to do something.
Further locations were visited, photos taken, and the process taken a step further by recording ambient sound at the locations and mixing them into the finished tracks - all but one of them feature natural sounds, sometimes its just a background hum and barely noticable, in other cases its an integeral part...but it's there, an extra layer of the spirit of the place (perhaps).
i2SM was sadly never developed further, and wont work on anything later than XP. We hung on for longer than most, but eventually it was necessery to upgrade, so that was that. Otherwise we'd probably still be recording tracks based on it.
Spirit Of Place also spawned a spin-off website, now known as the Wearside Psychogeograpy Club : https://spiritofplace.weebly.com/
The track entitled Spirit Of Place - A Psychogeographical Sound Journey consists of all 11 pieces edited into one long piece.
It all began with us messing about with an experimental freeware music programme called i2SM, which basically creates a MIDI audio file based on any picture you load in the program. The program analyzes the image pixel by pixel, turning their brightness, color and saturation values into musical notes - turning images into music.
Of course, you get a lot of unco-ordinated sqwarks and dischords, but amongst them some pieces of rather good randomly produced music, which can be edited as samples and used to build up a more listenable piece.
The idea for this album evolved from a piece we made from a single location photo....the idea gradually formed that perhaps we were tapping in to the spirit of the place, which was expressing itself through music. Fanciful ? Probably... but when was that ever a reason not to do something.
Further locations were visited, photos taken, and the process taken a step further by recording ambient sound at the locations and mixing them into the finished tracks - all but one of them feature natural sounds, sometimes its just a background hum and barely noticable, in other cases its an integeral part...but it's there, an extra layer of the spirit of the place (perhaps).
i2SM was sadly never developed further, and wont work on anything later than XP. We hung on for longer than most, but eventually it was necessery to upgrade, so that was that. Otherwise we'd probably still be recording tracks based on it.
Spirit Of Place also spawned a spin-off website, now known as the Wearside Psychogeograpy Club : https://spiritofplace.weebly.com/
The track entitled Spirit Of Place - A Psychogeographical Sound Journey consists of all 11 pieces edited into one long piece.