Electronic Music: Creativity and Sound was an intro course in e-music composition and sound design using ProTools. For my final project I created a short series of pieces titled “Meditation Machines,” which explored how commonplace mechanical sounds, typically regarded as noise pollution, could be reinterpreted as spiritual meditations. For this piece I took a continuous recording of a vending machine in Bennington’s wooden, creaky academic center, and challenged myself to use this as my only input material. I employed equalizers and comb filters to highlight frequencies emitted by the machine’s fans, compressor, and airflow. The result is a juxtaposition of emotional harmony with hollow, dissonant machinery. My professor suggested the piece had a choral quality, as if I’d made the machine “sing.” This piece is on the longer side (over 7 minutes) given its intentionally meditative quality, though things get interesting starting at the 50 second mark after establishing the environment.