This recent experiment falls in to the ‘me too’ category, but I’m still pleased with the result. I saw a recent blog article describing the use of an induction mic, essentially a coil of wire, to collect electromagnetic sounds from various bits of equipment. By wiring a coil or an inductor of some sort to a plug and amplifying the signal one can discover a new, hidden soundscape . Nicolas Collins has of course discussed this at length in Handmade Electronic Music and shows excellent examples of what can be found in the netherworld of electromagnetic radiation.

The coil I used in my experiment was retrieved from an eviscerated hard drive. .
My initial attempt to record its output failed, though. It turns out that this coil has a very low output, and I could not provide enough gain adjustment on the line/mic in of my computer. Better results were obtained using my USB audio interface as it has a hardware input gain adjustment. Soon enough I was capturing noises from my laptop harddrive and looping them in Pure Data. Eventually I sent the output of each loop through a filtered distortion, then through delays and reverb, as I usually do. The whole mess sounds like layers of fuzzy, synth-like feedback, but one of the loops captured some sort of a bump, for lack of a better descrition. This bump became the sparse bassline of this improv piece.
For your consideration: induction
pulsewidth-induction by ernst.pulsewidth