Gabriel’s Unnamed Noise Project

Since he was old enough to sit upright in my lap and watch me tinkering on the computer, my youngest has had an intense fascination with music, of all forms. I often find him sitting at my computer for hours on end, with a copy of Live open, contenting himself with sliding the audio tracks around and adding his own effects (which he rightfully refers to as “remixing the audio”). It’s not much of a stretch to imagine that he would be fond of music, but the real shock came when I found him remixing my noise tracks, and discovered that he was just as interested in noise as he is in traditional music.

So, I got the idea that he should start working on his own noise project. I intend to keep tabs on the project here. So far the lineup has been fairly straightforward. I’m acting as engineer and co-producer (also handling the initial mixing and mastering duties), while Gabriel does all the performances, co-produces and pretty much dictates everything else (bossy, that one), as well as doing some post-production remixes. His big brother Sean has been assisting in some of the performances and doing some live effect manipulation during recording.

It warms the cockles of my heart. Everything is going really well so far in terms of recording, but the real joy comes in seeing the imagination of a young mind, completely and utterly unfettered by the constraints of convention; simply making noise for the sheer joy of making noise. There’s no stigma. There are no apologies. He beats a mic’ed board with shoes then says “Alright, Dad. It’s in the red, but it needs COMPRESSION.”* Words simply cannot describe my awe.

* – Paraphrased, of course.