The source came from some experimenting I was doing with machine sounds. I started putting one sound next to another and it began to make me think of putting together some sort of hi tech machine. Then I got to imagining what would be the sound of assembling the most complex machine there was. The result is the first recording in the playlist above.

I recorded two balloon pops: one was in the hallway outside my apartment—fun for the neighbors; the second was in a long corridor outside the theater at the ETC. The first, when convolved with the machine sounds, created a reasonable reverb for putting together the machine in a normal room space. The second seemed comically exaggerated, as if trying to be quiet while constructing the machine in a large auditorium.

The experimental impulse response recordings were a sample of a staccato note on an upright bass, and the end of a timpani roll. (Actually, this to me would pass as the end of a timpani roll, however it was actually just some experimenting with a bow on the bass.) Using the bass produced an interesting percussive texture with the original timbre. The “timpani” seemed to conjure a more abstract result—something I could see using in an ambient piece or as source material in sound design.