Fireworks make an interesting sound. Especially the huge rockets that light the sky. When they crack, they boom. They are so loud and instantaneous that what we hear mostly is the reflections and reverb echoing across the earth around them. I am not sure that I have ever heard anything as powerful.
About 3 years ago, I set up some recording equipment to capture this. Fortunately, where I live now is very close to a high school where they have a big fireworks display every year. Because of this, the microphones were placed just outside of our window on the 2nd floor and aimed toward the display. I captured about 45 minutes of sound, then spent several weeks editing the sounds into individual wav files of different categories. Some of these sounded more like kick drums, some were closer to snares. Some of the crackle sounded like cymbals or percussion. Some of these were grouped as single hits and some of these were grouped as clusters of multiple hits.
After everything was organized, I was able to select a group of sounds and sequence rhythms out of these. In order to have the songs sound more dynamic, I used as many as 30 different sounds within a single song. So even though there are only a handful of types of sounds, the overall feeling of the rhythm patterns sound a lot more organic rather than sequences of samples. I have been working on this album ever since I initially recorded the Fireworks. Originally, it was just a couple of songs, then it became an 6 song EP... now it is 9 songs.
These rhythms create the backbone of my new album, simply called Fireworks, which will be released this Spring/Early Summer. Most of the instrumentation accompaniment consists of bass guitar, various string machines, synths, and vocals.
This is a separate album from the one that I am releasing this February: "The Noise is only Temporary".
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