This is another absolutely amazing video from sound designer/composer Diego Stocco:

Few weeks ago I visited a luthier looking for instruments parts, I had an idea in mind for an instrument I wanted to build. My curiosity was to hear the sound of violin, viola and cello strings amplified through the body of a double bass. I came up with a quadruple-neck experimental “something” that I thought to call Experibass.

To play it I used cello and double bass bows, a little device I built with fishing line and hose clamps, a paintbrush, a fork, spoons, a kick drum pedal and a drum stick. I hope you’ll like it!

Thanks to luthier John Wu for providing me the parts, even though I warned him that I was probably going to create a “monster” : )

You can see more details at Stocco’s Behance portfolio site. See Stocco’s Vimeo site for more examples of his musical sound design.

Sound designer and composer Diego Stocco created this beautiful showcase of his work, Music From A Tree.

Stocco explains his technique:

In the garden of my house there’s a tree with lots of randomly grown twigs. It looks odd and nice at the same time. One day I asked myself if I could create a piece of music with it.

To tune the tree I picked a fundamental note and tuned the twigs by trimming them with a pencil sharpener. I used two Røde NT6 and a NTG-2 as microphones, combined with a customized stethoscope.

I recorded the tracks live on a Pro Tools LE system. I didn’t use any synthesizer or sampler to create or modify the sounds. All the sounds come from playing the tree, by bowing the twigs, shaking the leaves, playing rhythms on the cortex and so on.

To tune the tree I picked a fundamental note and tuned the twigs by trimming them with a pencil sharpener. I used two Røde NT6 and a NTG-2 as microphones, combined with a customized stethoscope.

More information and photos at Stocco’s Behance page.

Amazing work. Leave a comment with your thoughts!

Music From Sand is another wonderful video that demonstrates the creative sound design of Diego Stocco:

Explains Stocco:

I had some sandbags in the backyard that I used in November during a rainy day. I was moving them to a different spot when I heard the noise of the sand. I thought that maybe I could try a new sound design technique so I bought some piezo film transducers and started to experiment with them.

Production The entire track is created only out of tuned sand tones. No additional sounds or waveforms.

I emphasized the inner notes of the sand grains and mapped them on a sampler as a series of instruments. The grooves are all played live with various techniques, including taping two piezo films to my fingers.

I’d like to dedicate this work to Mike Oldfield. When I was a child I listened to his music and it opened my mind. That experience triggered my life passion to create the means to access sounds we’ve never heard before.

Check out this page for more details on Stocco and Music From Sand.

Let me know what you think of this in the comments!

Recently we highlighted the work of sound designer and composer Diego Stocco, who has created a collection of amazing promo videos, like The Burning Piano, that offer audio/visual explorations of his work.

If you’re into sound design, you’ll want to check out his new composition, Music From A Stapler, that was created entirely created by sound designing the noise made by a little spring inside a stapler.

Stocco sampled the stapler with a custom technique and used it to create a multi-velocity virtual instrument. 

“The raw noises have been reshaped into new different forms as expressive playable sounds,” notes Stocco. 

You can give it a listen here.

This video, The Burning Piano, captures a sound design session of sound designer and composer Diego Stocco, who wins the Synthtopia Shiva Award for Awesomely Destructive Creation. 

Stocco explains:

I sampled sounds and noises while the piano was burning.

Since I only had one take I recorded as much material as possible. Initially I was pointing the gas flame lighter directly at the strings and I was playing single notes, but eventually the fire started to burn the hammers and other parts of the piano and at that point the strings were exploding because of the temperature. Later during the day I moved the piano and recorded additional sounds with the rests of the burned strings. I also used a hammer to pull the heated strings.

I’m not a professional videomaker, my focus is on sounds and music. I’m actually creating new playable sounds out of objects and customized instruments with innovative recording techniques. I put together this video by using pictures and portions of videos I took while I was recording, then I composed the soundtrack entirely with the sounds created out of this session.

Here’s another one of his fascinating promo videos, Lumosonic:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Stocco explains:

One day I had a bunch of stuff over my desk, and I was looking for something, accidentally I hit a light bulb and the sound captured my attention. So I decided to try recording the tiny and weak sound of the internal filament. I bought some other light bulbs (different Watts and sizes) and sampled an entire range of playable sounds.

Stocco’s work on these promos is amazing; the sound design, the compositions and concepts all work together really well, and the results are inspirational. 

You can check out more of Stocco’s promos at his Vimeo site. 

Diego Stocco is a sound designer and composer who works as Director of Sound for Epic Score, a Los Angeles-based music production company. His sound design credits include work for Nokia, BMW, Samsung, Panasonic and General Motors. And – as if he wasn’t busy enough – Stocco is one of the creative geniuses behind Spectrasonics’ Omnisphere virtual instrument software, which he presented earlier this month at the AES show in San Francisco.

via Retrothing