The price of (high tech music making) obsession

All the musical kit I’ve ever owned (more or less), in rough order of acquirement. The vast majority I don’t have any more – selling stuff on, etc, but I don’t dare think about how much I’ve spent over the years…

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Lazy TV composers: Bowed Oil Can

Far be it from me to rant about stuff, but can I just make a little plea to the world’s TV and film composers to please stop using ‘Bowed Oil Can’ from the 1998 Spectrasonics Distorted Reality sample CD?

I know it’s a lovely sound and everything, but really, there are other sounds that can conjure up the desolate wastes of the artic, the Sahara desert, outer space, a criminal with intent, etc, etc.

Most of the time they don’t even bother changing the pitch, the lazy sods!

This is the sound right here.

I hear it on a weekly basis…I don’t keep notes or anything, but it’s on anything from CSI to David Attenborough, horror films to nature programmes, even documentaries about quantum mechanics, you name it, it’s been used!

I might have to do a track where I use just this sound and mangle it in everyway possible as a pointless exercise in proving something to a largely indifferent world of TV composers. Don’t think that’ll stop me though!

Once you’ve heard it you’ll hear the damn thing everywhere.

edit: another nice and therefore, overused, sound is the waterphone – another staple of horror films.

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