[ steve mokris ] bob hall at 03:45am
the concept

Bob Hall is president of the Former Roommates of Steve Mokris Association (FRSMA).

It was spring 2003.  I had a set of words in front of me (generated by composition seminar students) and needed something to do with them.  More precisely, it was 03:45am, and Bob Hall was sleeping, so, being the good roommate that I was, I woke him up, thrust a microphone at him, and recorded the ensuing noises he made. I then chopped these phonemes up and formed them into words according to the cmu pronouncing dictionary.

I then took the newly-formed words and wordfragments and assembled a slightly-larger-scale soundscape with them.

I have it on good authority that Bob Hall himself approves of the work (which, incidentally, was not revealed to him until a few weeks after the premiere).  He furthermore reportedly nominates it to be Part II of the Bob Hall Trilogy.

the lyrics

a
california
pernicious
skippy
distinct
skippy
caseback
skippy
phantasm
vocoder
that's a big word
what?
(laughing)
neolithic
explanation
(laughing)
that's what you said
unscrupulous

the download

steveMokris-bobHallAt0345am-1.00.mp3 — 3,560 KiB — 2003 spring
spectrogram of composition

the tools
  • Cakewalk Sonar 2.2
  • Sound Forge 6.0
  • Oktava MK-012 Condenser Microphone
  • M-Audio Duo USB Interface