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Re: tricking sound editors and other forced randomizations



I recall doing this awhile back, prior to my soundforge days. If you open
the file 
in a lower grade player it will usually work.  Try opening it in windows
media
rack or whatever crappy wav player you may have that came
with windows (there's always at least one!).  'course, back when I first
did this I had a super-dooper 486 dx/2 running windows 3.1. so 
programs would try and play anything without much resolve 
before hand....

   -David-

On Thu, 24 May 2001 01:27:17 -0700 "Rick Walker (loop.pool)"
<GLOBAL@cruzio.com> writes:
> Hey gang,    I read in the really thought provoking sound design 
> supplement
> to a recent Electronic Musician Magazine, that one could
> rename a text file or jpeg file as a .wav file (or .aiff file for 
> you
> mac-ies out there) to create some interesting random noises.
> 
>    I just tried doing this in sound forge and
> got this prompt:
> 
> "The file you tried to open is not a Wave file or contains an 
> unrecoverable
> error.
> A valid RIFF tag could not be found in the specified file."
> 
> I had just tried taking a .txt file, copying it, and renaming it 
> with a
> ".wav"  extension.
> Does anyone know how to trick the sound editor into recognizing a 
> text or
> jpeg (or any file for that matter).
> Please don't tell me that it can only be done on a Mac.  I will have 
> to
> shoot myself and what a mess that would make.
> 
> I promise that I will loop the results so that this post will remain 
> on
> topic ;-)
> 
> Rick "I back up everything now" Walker
> 
> PS  Speaking of that devil:   How's about a little fascinating 
> thread on how
> to use randomization (or deliberately misusing a program)
> to create interesting sounds (or artifacts, as I like to call
> them...............I think of these discoveries as sound bites from 
> long
> lost
> civilizations in the future).
> 
>      If anyone is game,    I'll go first:
> 
>   In the PC program Sound Forge ( a digital editor) there is a bar 
> above the
> visible
> screen that shows you where you are in the sound file (this is in 
> case you
> are looking at a very blown up portion of a sound file but you want 
> to keep
> track of where you are in the entire file).    It is immediately 
> above the
> numbers that tell you exactly where you are in the sound file
> and immediately below the name of your file at the top of the 
> document.
> It in effect is a scrub bar and is represented by a simple line
> that moves and shows you where you are as the file plays.
>     If, while the file is playing, you go up and grab that bar with 
> your
> cursor, you can interrupt the flow of the playback, by alternately 
> dragging
> back and letting it go. You can create really interesting stuttering 
> noises
> which each create a transient ( that can be reedited in a beat 
> splicing
> program like ReCycle or the brilliant new program REASON from the
> Propellerheads people).     What I do is open up my
> Sound Forge file and scrub it, improvisationally while 
> simultaneously
> rerecording the file into Wave Lab or Cool Edit Pro (because, 
> unfortunately,
> Sound Forge will not let you open and play a document while you 
> record it
> into another one, or at least I haven't discovered how to do it..
>     For Looping, a trick I use is to 'jam' with this effect for as 
> long as
> it is fun to do so.   Then go back and listen with my eyes closed 
> and my
> finger on the marking button (control M on the PC).   Anytime 
> anything
> really cool happens I put a marker down.    Once I'm finished
> I'll go back to my marked spots and determine if there is anything 
> there
> that would qualify as an interesting loop and pick the most 
> interesting one
> (survival of the fittest?).    I've gotten a lot of good results 
> with this
> method and frequently have people ask me, "how did you design that 
> sound"
> which is, perhaps the coolest thing that a sound designer could ever 
> hear.
>     Any other cool methods?
> 
>