Soniccouture Geosonics

Soniccouture Geosonics [2 DVD] [Kontakt]

SAMPLING PLANET EARTH

Geosonics is a collaboration between legendary field recordist Chris Watson and Soniccouture.

Hundreds of hours of recording time, in some of the worlds most extreme and inhospitable environments, combine to form a library of rare sonic artefacts that cannot be found anywhere else.

Using this unique collection as a starting point, we created a wealth of sound design material ; waves and sampled textures which, when layered and combined with Watson's recordings create the most fluid, organic soundscapes ever.

To play sounds gathered from places like the North Pole or the Kalahari desert on a simple MIDI keyboard is a magical experience - only possible with Geosonics.

Geosonics Categories

Ice and Water Instruments

• 90 Sound Design Presets
• 15 Original Watson Recording Presets

Recorded during various trips to the North Pole, Iceland and other Arctic regions, this category features incredible recording feats such as hydrophone recordings from the inside of glaciers, micro-recordings of deep water shrimp fighting, and the calming blips of water freezing in realtime - known as 'pancake ice'.

Wires Instruments

• 97 Sound Design Presets
• 23 Original Watson Recording Presets

The recordings that inspired us to first approach Chris Watson, and ultimately led to Geosonics ; the incredible drone-scapes created by vast runs of wire in natural enviroments - 'Like giant guitar strings in the landscape', to paraphrase Chris. Contact mics attached to wire fences, sculptural installations or even power lines record changes in weather and temperature as stunning soundscapes. Chris Watson made many of these recordings during his residency at the Wired Lab in NSW, Australia, an artist-led organisation founded by Sarah Last. Inspired by the technique further recordings were made on overhead railway cables and simple farm fences in Cumbria, UK.

Wire recordings make fantastic material for sound design work - many of the pitched sample sets in Geosonics were made by processing the wire recordings to extract pitched sounds. Their high harmonic and noise content means that they sound great when filtered or shaped into percussion, too.

Swamp Instruments

• 67 Sound Design Presets
• 12 Original Watson Recording Presets

Recordings made in the swamps of Venuezela and Madagascar. Some of the most inhospitable recording environments of all due to the proliferation of tiny biting things. Chris used huge 100 metre runs of microphone cable to allow him to situate himself well away from the swamp life during recording.

Highlights include the Madagascan Tree Frogs & Banjo Frogs.

Wind Instruments

• 82 Sound Design Presets
• 15 Original Watson Recordings

Wind - silent in itself, it only reveals itself sonically once it hits something. Rushing in from the sea towards the Kalahari, it tears across the sand dunes and rips through desolate river beds. Watson buried hydrophones deep in sand dunes, repurposing the under-water recording devices to function in deep desert depths.

A hollowed out Acacia tree was fitted with minuature and contact mics in the 40 degree heat, and the musical moaning sounds of the wind in its trunk were captured. Melted holes in polar ice create feedback whines, and the railings on an abandoned air-base form the basis of a sinister sound-scape.

Sound Design & Preset Library

Pitched Sample Layers

In addition to the 65 original Chris Watson field recordings (4.7GB), Geosonics contains 140 tuned samplesets, for layering and sound design. This additional sample material is a combination of useful 'building blocks' such as sine waves, sawtooths and strings; as well as processed versions of the Watson recordings. These sample sets are essentially tuned versions of the original recordings - we used various DSP processes (spectral morphing, convolution, granulation) to 'forcibly extract' pitched, harmonic material that could be played chromatically on a keyboard.

Sound Designers

To create a large preset library (400 presets) with real creative depth, we decided to colloborate with some of our favourite sound designers. With such unique material to work with, we were curious to see what an 'All-Star' sound design team could do with it. The result does not disappoint, with many different takes on building atmospheric yet musical patches.

Library Specifications

• 6 GB library (with Kontakt NCW compression)
• Contains 4.7 GB original Chris Watson recordings
• 400 sound design presets by Ian Boddy, Biomechanoid, Martin Walker, Andy Wheddon, Soniccouture
• 140 sound design sample sets
• Custom Convolution IRs
• FOCUS mapping function
• 24 bit 48 khz stereo recording / sampling
• Compatible with free Kontakt Player 5 - VST AU RTAS Standalone

Chris Watson recording equipment:

• Transducers : C-ducer CP 2/8 stereo contact mikes DPA 8011 hydrophones as geophones DolphinEar Pro hydrophones DPA 4060 microphones  
• Recorders: Sound Devices 744T Nagra ARES Pll