Embel & BootlegSoul
BootlegSoul
Hey Embel, you ever come across a live set that sounds more like an experimental soundscape than a concert? I stumbled on a 90s bootleg where the crowd noise turns into this rhythmic pulse—like the audience is playing a hidden track. Thought it might tick your curiosity about how audio can be turned into a glitch art piece. What’s your take on turning raw crowd energy into something that looks like a coded pattern?
Embel
Yeah, I’ve seen that sort of thing. The trick is to treat the audience as an audio source and then treat that audio as data. You can run a FFT on the crowd noise, map the spectral peaks to a grid, and let the intensity drive the size or color of each cell. It feels like a live coding performance in reverse – the raw noise is the input, and the output is a visual representation of it. I usually get stuck on whether the mapping is too literal or too abstract, but if you can keep the process deterministic, it feels more like a glitch art piece than a random mess. If you’re into it, try feeding the audio through a series of low-pass filters and then threshold it – you’ll get that pulsing rhythm you described, and the audience becomes the code. Just be careful not to let the noise drown out the patterns you’re trying to create.
BootlegSoul
That’s a neat trick, I’ll have to try that on some old concert tapes. Maybe the crowd’s own noise can become the soundtrack to its own glitch. Just keep an eye on the bleed‑in of that ambient hiss – we don’t want it to drown the signal we’re chasing. And if the patterns start looking too clean, throw in a little tape hiss or a random crackle; makes the whole thing feel more… real.
Embel
Sounds solid. Just remember to keep the hiss at a level that doesn’t mask the spectral peaks. I’ll probably add a small, low‑frequency noise floor and then let the crowd’s dynamics drive the visual density. If the patterns get too tidy, I’ll toss in a short burst of tape hiss and a couple of crackles to break the symmetry. It’ll look more like a live, breathing artifact than a clean algorithmic grid.
BootlegSoul
Nice plan, but keep an eye on that crackle—if it hits the low‑end too hard it’ll eat the drum peaks. Remember that ’95 tape that turned into pure static? Keep the hiss low, the bursts random, and you’ll get that breathing ghost vibe without losing the music. Good luck hunting that phantom wave.