So, truth be told I made this one early Sunday morning, not today, but who's counting really?
This came from a thread on a forum I like to visit from time to time called "We are the music makers". Great site for geeking out over AFX and SP, also general web trash. There is also a sub forum dedicated to discussing music making.
Someone had started a thread on there about making an Acid track in 30 mins, full thread is HERE It's well worth having a look as there are some pretty cool tracks to listen too.
I'm absolutely terrible at finishing tracks, I will sit for hours tweaking and changing something over and over again. While I KNOW I should just take a step back and go "OK, it's finished!" sometimes I just cant. Decided that trying to make a track in such a short amount of time would be a good exercise for me.
First step was making a acid line. Fired up the SH101 and using the built in sequencer I tapped in some notes, without paying too much attention to what I was playing in. Did this a couple times till I had a line rolling that I liked. Turned out with 10 beats per bar, ah well, something different...
I left that looping and tweaked the synth till I had a tone I liked, hit record and ran through the sequence a couple times with different filter settings. Trim them to loop at the right length, done!
Next step was the drums. I've been working on a 808 style drum machine patch in Reaktor, so as good a chance as any to try it out in a track. Programmed in a straight forward pattern on the kick, snare, and hats, a couple off beats on the rim shot, 16th Maraca rhythm, finished!
The next thing the track needed was some kinda theme or hook. Figured some big stab type synth patch would work well. Found an old Jupiter style synth from Reaktor 2, loaded that up, tweaked it about a bit till I had the sound I liked, few notes in the Piano Roll, hmmm OK that's cool....
Running low on time now... should get the structure sorted. Best thing about acid is that it doesn't need to do a lot. For me it's more about having a good tight groove, a few simple lines working well together. All I needed to do was an easy build up, drop, a few extra sounds, drop out, finish. Didn't take long to get this part done, wow 4 mins?? hmm need a couple more bits.
Put a couple low notes in to cycle each repeat nicely, used a patch I made in carbon 2, thick moog-ish saw type patch. Chuck that into some reverb for fullness, yikes, 5 mins left!!!
Next I loaded up a multi sample patch I made of the PE1000, short plucked type of sound. Made a little pattern, into some delay, what else?
Last up, just wanted a sound to lead into the main section. Connected up the Monotron, turned resonance to full, fast lfo to the cutoff, and recorded myself winding down the lfo rate. Chop that up and nudge about till its sort of in time. Also dug out an old recording I took of a rave horn, drop that every so often, old school! Nice =D
Put the Waves C1 compressor and L2 limiter on the master bus, quick effort at "mastering" the track (ahem...), Save, Render, Done!!
Here it is in all its glory..
TEN STEP ACID by Noisy Neighbour Sound
Well, to be honest, I took somewhere around 40 mins total. Even so, that pretty good going for me! Would like to say that some of that time was spent getting annoyed at the power supply for the SH101, was making an irritating hum which I ended up just leaving. You can here it when the acid line starts.
Funny thing is, there's not really anything I'd like to change even if I had the time to do so. Perhaps I just regard the track as throw away, and so don't really care how it sounds. But strangely enough, I really like how it sounds!
Either way, I hope this will help me to finish the tracks I do care about! Would recommend the exercise to everyone, see what you can make in half an hour.
Showing posts with label SH101. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SH101. Show all posts
Monday, 28 March 2011
Thursday, 24 March 2011
Sound-A-Day 22.03.2011
Well, once again a bit of catching up to do!
Has been a full on last few days. Not only have I been slaving away on finishing several tracks for things, but also getting prepared for a gig at the start of next month. I've also spent a lot of time trying to find myself a new job. Funds are running low and it's getting pretty desperate! A couple possibilities though, so fingers crossed.
A few sounds to upload though, here's the first.
Was just noodling about with the 101, running it into my laptop and processing it pretty heavily. Not really any particular aim, just having fun! I'd just finished the first steps for a patch idea I had. The concept was a constantly updating buffer which takes the input signal, scrubs forwards and backwards at different speeds, and then refreshes itself and starts again. I thought it could be quite a fun way of creating some sort of interactive sound art thing.
Anyways, I'd combined that with a delay and reverb effect which are being faded in and out to create swells of sound. Then I mapped a bunch of parameters to a midi controller, and ran some heavily modulated SH101 lines through it.
As I said, just doodling really, but luckily enough Id remembered to hit record, and this is one of the sounds that came out:
HEAVY-PROCESSED-101 by Noisy Neighbour Sound
I wish I had recorded the dry signal too in order to offer up some comparison. At the moment its quite difficult to tell exactly what is coming from the scrubbing and what is the effects.
This is something I hope to finish up into a download though, so you can try it out for yourselves. Its not so much musical as sound scape I suppose. Good for intros and breakdowns though!
Has been a full on last few days. Not only have I been slaving away on finishing several tracks for things, but also getting prepared for a gig at the start of next month. I've also spent a lot of time trying to find myself a new job. Funds are running low and it's getting pretty desperate! A couple possibilities though, so fingers crossed.
A few sounds to upload though, here's the first.
Was just noodling about with the 101, running it into my laptop and processing it pretty heavily. Not really any particular aim, just having fun! I'd just finished the first steps for a patch idea I had. The concept was a constantly updating buffer which takes the input signal, scrubs forwards and backwards at different speeds, and then refreshes itself and starts again. I thought it could be quite a fun way of creating some sort of interactive sound art thing.
Anyways, I'd combined that with a delay and reverb effect which are being faded in and out to create swells of sound. Then I mapped a bunch of parameters to a midi controller, and ran some heavily modulated SH101 lines through it.
As I said, just doodling really, but luckily enough Id remembered to hit record, and this is one of the sounds that came out:
HEAVY-PROCESSED-101 by Noisy Neighbour Sound
I wish I had recorded the dry signal too in order to offer up some comparison. At the moment its quite difficult to tell exactly what is coming from the scrubbing and what is the effects.
This is something I hope to finish up into a download though, so you can try it out for yourselves. Its not so much musical as sound scape I suppose. Good for intros and breakdowns though!
Friday, 4 March 2011
Sound-A-Day 04.03.2011
Here's something a bit different.
Something that has always interested me is generative music, but I've never really tried to make anything like that so I thought I'd give it a bash.
What I found hardest was finding the balance of input. As in how much is the patch doing completely autonomously, and how much is from my suggestion.
I started off by building a fairly simple sample based drum machine, which I split into 3 parts. One sequencer lane for the kick, one for snare, and a third for percussion noises. Next I spent a couple hours making short snappy drum sounds with an SH101. Made about 50 in total, I also made one straight up kick drum sound, and one snare sound.
I loaded the kick and snare into their own sample modules, and the remaining samples all got loaded into one sample module. I also built a automation channel for sample selection. This meant that I could sequence a solid Kick Snare pattern and allow the percussion to wander around.
Next I made a couple of randomising LFO's which sync to the main clock. One of these was assigned to percussion sample selection, the other to percussion sample pitch.
Finally I built a comb filter and ran the entire drum mix through it. I assigned another Tempo synced LFO to control the pitch of the comb filtering. Put the output through a heavy compressor, and that's about it for the drums.
This was sounding pretty cool, but needed something more to make it a bit more musical.
I loaded up an old FM synth I built a while ago, and sent the trigger from the snare pattern into the gate of the synth. Then another random LFO to control the FM interval. Finally I built a pretty complex macro for controlling the pitch of the notes played based on a few other things going on in the patch. Ran this through the compressor too, which gave quite a nice side chain style pumping.
Lastly, I brought up the recorder box, hit record and then pressed play, this is what came out.
GENERATIVE 1 by Noisy Neighbour Sound
Pretty cool I think. Reminds me quite a bit of Autechre, although a long way from the complexities they have in their music. Some similarity for sure though. I do really like its completely emotionless mechanical quality, definitely something I couldn't have written if I had tried, but I do feel that I still could have had less involvement in the composition. Certainly going to give this another try!
Something that has always interested me is generative music, but I've never really tried to make anything like that so I thought I'd give it a bash.
What I found hardest was finding the balance of input. As in how much is the patch doing completely autonomously, and how much is from my suggestion.
I started off by building a fairly simple sample based drum machine, which I split into 3 parts. One sequencer lane for the kick, one for snare, and a third for percussion noises. Next I spent a couple hours making short snappy drum sounds with an SH101. Made about 50 in total, I also made one straight up kick drum sound, and one snare sound.
I loaded the kick and snare into their own sample modules, and the remaining samples all got loaded into one sample module. I also built a automation channel for sample selection. This meant that I could sequence a solid Kick Snare pattern and allow the percussion to wander around.
Next I made a couple of randomising LFO's which sync to the main clock. One of these was assigned to percussion sample selection, the other to percussion sample pitch.
Finally I built a comb filter and ran the entire drum mix through it. I assigned another Tempo synced LFO to control the pitch of the comb filtering. Put the output through a heavy compressor, and that's about it for the drums.
This was sounding pretty cool, but needed something more to make it a bit more musical.
I loaded up an old FM synth I built a while ago, and sent the trigger from the snare pattern into the gate of the synth. Then another random LFO to control the FM interval. Finally I built a pretty complex macro for controlling the pitch of the notes played based on a few other things going on in the patch. Ran this through the compressor too, which gave quite a nice side chain style pumping.
Lastly, I brought up the recorder box, hit record and then pressed play, this is what came out.
GENERATIVE 1 by Noisy Neighbour Sound
Pretty cool I think. Reminds me quite a bit of Autechre, although a long way from the complexities they have in their music. Some similarity for sure though. I do really like its completely emotionless mechanical quality, definitely something I couldn't have written if I had tried, but I do feel that I still could have had less involvement in the composition. Certainly going to give this another try!
Monday, 28 February 2011
Sound-A-Day 25.02.2011
Well, I did it again!
As I may have mentioned previously, I am currently unemployed having quit my last job. One of the wonderful things about being unemployed is the amount of free time you get to working on the things you love. One of the downsides is it's all to easy to loose track of where in the week you are. I thought that Friday was Saturday, and therefore not a sound-a-day day... oh well.
So as way of apology, I hope you'll accept a nice track instead of just a sound. After all, a track is made up of many sounds, talk about value for money!!
This is a track from an EP I released late last year as a free MP3 download. Just a fun little side project I had been busy with. One way I find really nice to write music is just to get a few synths running together and jam about with things. The EP was a few of those jams, edited and arranged into more coherent tracks. Not my usual style of output, but I still really love these tracks, and so I hope you enjoy it!
ROT13 TRACK4 by Noisy Neighbour Sound
If you fancy checking out the rest of the EP, you can download it for free HERE
As I said, it's all ideas that started from jams, so expect drifting tuning, rough mixing and all the rest, but I like that aspect, bit of the charm for me, especially considering how particular I normally get with tracks.
As I may have mentioned previously, I am currently unemployed having quit my last job. One of the wonderful things about being unemployed is the amount of free time you get to working on the things you love. One of the downsides is it's all to easy to loose track of where in the week you are. I thought that Friday was Saturday, and therefore not a sound-a-day day... oh well.
So as way of apology, I hope you'll accept a nice track instead of just a sound. After all, a track is made up of many sounds, talk about value for money!!
This is a track from an EP I released late last year as a free MP3 download. Just a fun little side project I had been busy with. One way I find really nice to write music is just to get a few synths running together and jam about with things. The EP was a few of those jams, edited and arranged into more coherent tracks. Not my usual style of output, but I still really love these tracks, and so I hope you enjoy it!
ROT13 TRACK4 by Noisy Neighbour Sound
If you fancy checking out the rest of the EP, you can download it for free HERE
As I said, it's all ideas that started from jams, so expect drifting tuning, rough mixing and all the rest, but I like that aspect, bit of the charm for me, especially considering how particular I normally get with tracks.
Monday, 7 February 2011
Sound-A-Day 07.02.2011
Pffff, unbelievably stressed out today!
So following on from Friday, as I mentioned one of my monitors decided it was time to die, and did so. I managed to arrange someone to repair it for me thanks goodness, and bought myself a lovely new pair of headphones to keep me going in the mean time.
Get home and get back into a couple projects I've been working on. Just getting into it when wooop, PC crashes.. ah bugger. No worries, saved not so long ago, can redo the things Ive just done. Restart, reload project, 5 minutes later booof, down she goes again. Repeat this process for the entire duration of yesterday and today.
Trying to make anything in 5 minute stints is pretty much impossible, it's driving me round the bend, not to mention the sheer amount Ive got on at the moment. So much work I need to be doing! STRESSSSssss..
Well, I'm certain that a complete back up and reformat/reinstall is on the cards for tomorrow, that'll be fun!
Anyway, not wanting to be a sore bod all day, I've still managed to get something together for sharing which feels somewhat appropriate.
It's a short little fun track I made a using more or less no computer at all, only running a couple sequences. All sound sources are analogue, and with the exception of the compression, all processing is external too.
Since a few people who check this blog are folks from www.watmm.com, I thought I'd put something together especially for them, something with more than a little Aphex influence...
ZEBRA-CUSTARD by Noisy Neighbour Sound
Well, hope you enjoy it. In all honesty it is really fun to have a break from a computer and make music on outboard kit, I hope to be back on the DSP tomorrow, wish me luck!
So following on from Friday, as I mentioned one of my monitors decided it was time to die, and did so. I managed to arrange someone to repair it for me thanks goodness, and bought myself a lovely new pair of headphones to keep me going in the mean time.
Get home and get back into a couple projects I've been working on. Just getting into it when wooop, PC crashes.. ah bugger. No worries, saved not so long ago, can redo the things Ive just done. Restart, reload project, 5 minutes later booof, down she goes again. Repeat this process for the entire duration of yesterday and today.
Trying to make anything in 5 minute stints is pretty much impossible, it's driving me round the bend, not to mention the sheer amount Ive got on at the moment. So much work I need to be doing! STRESSSSssss..
Well, I'm certain that a complete back up and reformat/reinstall is on the cards for tomorrow, that'll be fun!
Anyway, not wanting to be a sore bod all day, I've still managed to get something together for sharing which feels somewhat appropriate.
It's a short little fun track I made a using more or less no computer at all, only running a couple sequences. All sound sources are analogue, and with the exception of the compression, all processing is external too.
Since a few people who check this blog are folks from www.watmm.com, I thought I'd put something together especially for them, something with more than a little Aphex influence...
ZEBRA-CUSTARD by Noisy Neighbour Sound
Well, hope you enjoy it. In all honesty it is really fun to have a break from a computer and make music on outboard kit, I hope to be back on the DSP tomorrow, wish me luck!
Thursday, 27 January 2011
Sound-A-Day 25.01.2011
WOW!! Well, what can I say.. I'm terrible and I'm really sorry!
In my defense however, I've actually been really poorly the last few days. Dragging myself to work each evening taken it out of me, and I just needed to crash each night. Feeling much better now though, you'll be pleased to know.
So, it appears I have some catching up to do, no worries, I have some sounds ready for you're eager ears!
This one is another Monotron noise, again using the SH101 as an input into the filter. This time I recorded the sound into sound forge and added some further editing. Thanks to a Doppler plugin, the result came out as a kinda old school sci fi space ship whizzing by. I like it!!
Fly by by Noisy Neighbour Sound
Really made me think a lot about the really old approaches to sound design, before computers and digital processing. I'm in the mood for trying some tape loop experiments now, haven't done that for years! Just need to track down my old tape machine......
In my defense however, I've actually been really poorly the last few days. Dragging myself to work each evening taken it out of me, and I just needed to crash each night. Feeling much better now though, you'll be pleased to know.
So, it appears I have some catching up to do, no worries, I have some sounds ready for you're eager ears!
This one is another Monotron noise, again using the SH101 as an input into the filter. This time I recorded the sound into sound forge and added some further editing. Thanks to a Doppler plugin, the result came out as a kinda old school sci fi space ship whizzing by. I like it!!
Fly by by Noisy Neighbour Sound
Really made me think a lot about the really old approaches to sound design, before computers and digital processing. I'm in the mood for trying some tape loop experiments now, haven't done that for years! Just need to track down my old tape machine......
Monday, 24 January 2011
Sound-A-Day 24.01.2011
Monday evening means back on with sound a day!
Super busy weekend, got loads to be getting on with! I had hoped to have my first Reaktor patch available for Download today, but alas, it wasn't to be. Still a few bugs to iron out before I feel happy exposing it to the world, and need to rope in a favour for hosting it too!
I also made the first small steps into a very big new project which should be unfolding as the year progresses. Don't want to reveal too much just yet. Enough to say that it's involving a few other people who I'm very excited to be working with. I'll be sure to document the whole thing on here.
Enough about that, here's a sound for today..
A friend John was kind enough to lend me his Korg Monotron for a few days. What an awesome little toy it is! The filter on it's own is an absolute blast, really great for just making a good old racket. I've got to get one of these things myself, especially to rip it open and mod it!
In spite of its very resonant filter circuit, I wanted to try and get something a touch more subdued and moody from it. I didn't get along with the tiny touch keyboard so well, but still wanting to keep it analogue, so I decided to use the AUX input for the filter and ran the SH101 through it. The 101 is playing a slightly filtered random note pattern, with just a touch of ENV mod on the cutoff. The monotron has a medium resonance setting and a very slowly sweeping LFO on the cutoff. This then goes into a nice metallic reverb patch from the Lexicon plugins.
Monotron Atmosphere by Noisy Neighbour Sound
Really nice full sound. I think its amazing just how great 2 very simply pieces of kit can sound. Without wanting to sound like a snob, but there's something about analogue.. just has that sound!
Super busy weekend, got loads to be getting on with! I had hoped to have my first Reaktor patch available for Download today, but alas, it wasn't to be. Still a few bugs to iron out before I feel happy exposing it to the world, and need to rope in a favour for hosting it too!
I also made the first small steps into a very big new project which should be unfolding as the year progresses. Don't want to reveal too much just yet. Enough to say that it's involving a few other people who I'm very excited to be working with. I'll be sure to document the whole thing on here.
Enough about that, here's a sound for today..
A friend John was kind enough to lend me his Korg Monotron for a few days. What an awesome little toy it is! The filter on it's own is an absolute blast, really great for just making a good old racket. I've got to get one of these things myself, especially to rip it open and mod it!
In spite of its very resonant filter circuit, I wanted to try and get something a touch more subdued and moody from it. I didn't get along with the tiny touch keyboard so well, but still wanting to keep it analogue, so I decided to use the AUX input for the filter and ran the SH101 through it. The 101 is playing a slightly filtered random note pattern, with just a touch of ENV mod on the cutoff. The monotron has a medium resonance setting and a very slowly sweeping LFO on the cutoff. This then goes into a nice metallic reverb patch from the Lexicon plugins.
Monotron Atmosphere by Noisy Neighbour Sound
Really nice full sound. I think its amazing just how great 2 very simply pieces of kit can sound. Without wanting to sound like a snob, but there's something about analogue.. just has that sound!
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