Pacman - memory erased
Aug 29, 2022, 12:25 PM
"The idea of obsolete sounds made me think about how these sounds would exist without a perfectly preserved digital recording – only as memories. With this as inspiration, I tried to think of an audio treatment that could represent the way our memories distort and fade as time passes.
"As we tend to reinforce and preserve memories by repetition, I decided my set up would begin with a “dub style” delay with a midi controllable, valve amplified stereo delay unit . This meant that the unit would generate a single repeat of the sound played in, which would then be fed back into its input. Between output and input I added a bitcrusher automated so that each run through the feedback loop would be resampled at progressively lower sample rate, whilst also automating the delay via MIDI so that the repeats became slower and slower. My concept was that these modifications would represent the distortions that gradually become introduced to our memories over time.
"What you hear in the piece is a single play through of the Pacman theme - all the following sounds are the feedback loop described above fading and shifting until something almost entirely unrecognisable appears. There is a moment I love shortly before the conclusion where an unexpected melodic flourish appears seemingly from the ether, suggesting to me a new musical idea springing from the fading memory of the old one."
Composition by Simon Duck.
This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening. Explore the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds
"As we tend to reinforce and preserve memories by repetition, I decided my set up would begin with a “dub style” delay with a midi controllable, valve amplified stereo delay unit . This meant that the unit would generate a single repeat of the sound played in, which would then be fed back into its input. Between output and input I added a bitcrusher automated so that each run through the feedback loop would be resampled at progressively lower sample rate, whilst also automating the delay via MIDI so that the repeats became slower and slower. My concept was that these modifications would represent the distortions that gradually become introduced to our memories over time.
"What you hear in the piece is a single play through of the Pacman theme - all the following sounds are the feedback loop described above fading and shifting until something almost entirely unrecognisable appears. There is a moment I love shortly before the conclusion where an unexpected melodic flourish appears seemingly from the ether, suggesting to me a new musical idea springing from the fading memory of the old one."
Composition by Simon Duck.
This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening. Explore the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds