Music Tech Magazine: Glimpse Found Sounds and Field Recordings
With music software and virtual synths so widely available now, many producers are turning to recording their own found sounds to give their tracks a unique personality. Reflecting this, London-based deep house producer Glimpse has teamed up with Loopmasters and put together a library of atmospheric field recordings captured while on tour.
Found Sounds And Field Recordings contains 133 24-bit samples divided into folders of Glitch & Crackle, Human, Metal, Piano, Places, Travel and Weather. From chattering apes at Sydney Zoo to airport tannoy announcements, there's a fair bit of variety across each category. For recording, Glimpse used an M-Audio hand-held with built-in stereo mics to give each sound a sense of space.
Although some of the sounds are presented dry, many are layered, looped and manipulated to create more usable textures in a musical context. This means there's subtle sidechaining on some parts, plus reverb and delay to make things more interesting.
On the more extreme sounds, such as those in the Metal folder, Glimpse has used his array of Moogerfooger analogue effects to create wild echoes and movement. Some of the recordings are exceptionally bad in that you hear rustling as the mic brushes against something or distortion as the input is overloaded. But this is all intentional, as these glitches are then looped and turned into subtle rhythms that would work wonders as the backdrop to a deep house or electronic track. One of our favourite folders is the collection of loosely captured piano parts, where we hear the haunting sounds of someone noodling away over beautiful chords with their foot on the sustain pedal.
Some may question why they would want to pay for a collection of raw recorded atmos sounds when they could capture similar audio themselves. Where this library ready shines, however, is in the more layered, manipulated parts, which expertly show how this kind of material can be transformed into something rhythmic and musical. NITM
MTM Verdict
An intriguing collection that could be used to give your tracks a unique, organic edge. 8/10
