Sometimes all it takes is a silly idea. A "I wonder what happens if?" type moment. I had one this evening which turned out really well.
Was curious what would happen if you used the same signal for both carrier and modulator inputs on a Vocoder. Only with one of them playing in reverse. So what the hell, lets give it a go!
I took a chunk of vocals out of an anime series I'm quite into called "Serial Experiments Lain" and made 2 sample channels. Loaded the same sound into both channels but reversed the playback of the carrier signal. Ran them into a Vocoder and hit play...
Well, weird to say the least. Definitely some crazy harmonic stuff going on, but all goes a bit too fast to appreciate. For the second attempt I figured Id use granular channels rather than plain samplers. After playing about with the playback speed I ended up settling with a very slow playback speed and a pretty large grain size. It gives a really nice rhythmic overtone I think. Finally a large reverb and done!
INVERTED-VOCODER by Noisy Neighbour Sound
I really like this one! Really simple process to do, and such a cool result. Something I'm going to try and build into a self contained patch of sorts. What would be great would be to combine it with the real time scrubbers I mentioned a couple posts back, and some real time time stretching (time time?). A sound scape generator that works by vocoding yourself with yourself in reverse, could be cool!!
Showing posts with label Ambient. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ambient. Show all posts
Thursday, 24 March 2011
Sound-A-Day 23.03.2011
So, carrying on from the last one in a way.
Another sound made by sending an outboard synth through some heavy DSP type things. Different out come though.
This time I was playing with the Monotron. For some reason I really like noodling with it. I think the fact that it has such a simple interface, and immediate too, makes it a real joy to just mess about with! The sound is great, if it's the type of sound you're after, but not today!
I thought it would be fun to try out making some dark drone and ambient effects with it. In a way, I had in mind the idea of real time sound tracking almost. As I said, the interface is incredibly immediate, so it would be cool to alter the sound enough to make it suitable for some real dark thriller sound track and be able to play along to the visuals. I think with a bit of practice it could be surprisingly effective.
The Monotron is running into Reaktor, and straight into a Spectral resynthesis patch I built. This straight away has a massive affect on the tone. Really lush over tones and weird harmonics. With the LFO on the monotron going at full whack, and the resonance right up you get some really out there tones!
After that it's just a big old reverb patch from the Space Designer instrument, still one of my favourites! Then I just hit records and started tweaking. Most satisfying was quickly flicking the cutoff down to get a hit out of the resonance. Nice big Spectral twang!!
MONOTRON-DRONE by Noisy Neighbour Sound
Another sound made by sending an outboard synth through some heavy DSP type things. Different out come though.
This time I was playing with the Monotron. For some reason I really like noodling with it. I think the fact that it has such a simple interface, and immediate too, makes it a real joy to just mess about with! The sound is great, if it's the type of sound you're after, but not today!
I thought it would be fun to try out making some dark drone and ambient effects with it. In a way, I had in mind the idea of real time sound tracking almost. As I said, the interface is incredibly immediate, so it would be cool to alter the sound enough to make it suitable for some real dark thriller sound track and be able to play along to the visuals. I think with a bit of practice it could be surprisingly effective.
The Monotron is running into Reaktor, and straight into a Spectral resynthesis patch I built. This straight away has a massive affect on the tone. Really lush over tones and weird harmonics. With the LFO on the monotron going at full whack, and the resonance right up you get some really out there tones!
After that it's just a big old reverb patch from the Space Designer instrument, still one of my favourites! Then I just hit records and started tweaking. Most satisfying was quickly flicking the cutoff down to get a hit out of the resonance. Nice big Spectral twang!!
MONOTRON-DRONE by Noisy Neighbour Sound
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!
Thursday, 17 March 2011
Sound-A-Day 17.03.2011
Carrying on from yesterday I suppose,
So yesterday I had a bit of a fail after trying out an idea I had for a Reaktor patch. Didn't work out nearly as well as I hoped, but not to feel discouraged I decided to have another look and see what I could get out of it before calling it a total loss.
A bit more successful today!
So the patch is essentially a wave table style source running through a delay and reverb. I decided to try out a different delay module to before, used one of the grain delays instead. I also redesigned a better feedback circuit which had more accurate control over spill. The grain delays are great because of the pitch shifting options. The synth has more or less become some hybrid wave table/feedback pitch shifting effect now..
I redesigned most of the envelope settings and also made the tracking through the wave table smoother. Suddenly the sound was a lot smoother sounding, and far more usable.
I ended up using some step sequencers assigned to each parameter, and a button to step through the sequence rather than running. By entering lots of random values into the sequencers and stepping through I could hit upon lots of different sounds, one completely different from the last. Very satisfying to do!!
I think I might try and turn this patch into something of a dark abstract sound scape generator. Set very slow random modulations to the sequencers and so on, might be interesting.
So I recorded the output of the synth, and loaded that into Absynth for some extra tweaking. I layered 2 different sounds with filters to accentuate the parts I liked and remove the clashing bits. Finally a bit of reverb and it's done.
PITCHSHIFT ERROR by Noisy Neighbour Sound
Pretty cool sound I think, not the greatest ever, but I feel happy to have got something out of what was yesterday a failed effort!
So yesterday I had a bit of a fail after trying out an idea I had for a Reaktor patch. Didn't work out nearly as well as I hoped, but not to feel discouraged I decided to have another look and see what I could get out of it before calling it a total loss.
A bit more successful today!
So the patch is essentially a wave table style source running through a delay and reverb. I decided to try out a different delay module to before, used one of the grain delays instead. I also redesigned a better feedback circuit which had more accurate control over spill. The grain delays are great because of the pitch shifting options. The synth has more or less become some hybrid wave table/feedback pitch shifting effect now..
I redesigned most of the envelope settings and also made the tracking through the wave table smoother. Suddenly the sound was a lot smoother sounding, and far more usable.
I ended up using some step sequencers assigned to each parameter, and a button to step through the sequence rather than running. By entering lots of random values into the sequencers and stepping through I could hit upon lots of different sounds, one completely different from the last. Very satisfying to do!!
I think I might try and turn this patch into something of a dark abstract sound scape generator. Set very slow random modulations to the sequencers and so on, might be interesting.
So I recorded the output of the synth, and loaded that into Absynth for some extra tweaking. I layered 2 different sounds with filters to accentuate the parts I liked and remove the clashing bits. Finally a bit of reverb and it's done.
PITCHSHIFT ERROR by Noisy Neighbour Sound
Pretty cool sound I think, not the greatest ever, but I feel happy to have got something out of what was yesterday a failed effort!
Monday, 7 March 2011
Sound-A-Day 07.03.2011
Unfortunately no weekend photos this time. I've got a pretty brutal deadline to meet for some tracks I've been working on, and just simply couldn't afford to take time away from working on that.
Doesn't mean that I don't have time to keep up on the blog though. I figured when I started this that there would be moments when I'm really busy, but I also promised myself that I would keep this up!
So today's sound is something along the same lines to a thing I did last week, making dark modern scary sound effects and atmospheres. As I mentioned then, one of the things that really comes to mind with that type of sound is string effects, almost mandatory for scary films.
This time around I thought that rather than starting with synthesised ones, I'd begin with a string sample and see where I can take it.
DARK TWISTED STRINGS by Noisy Neighbour Sound
The sample came from a CD of Elgar's Enigma Variations, a piece called Nimrod, which if you're not familiar with I really recommend you check out. I opened the sample in Sound forge and got to work with the EQ, just trimming away the frequencies that I didn't want, low stuff especially since I planned to put that in myself later on. Once that was nice and tidy I topped and tailed it, and then loaded it into Absynth, as usual, in one of the granular channels. Loads of messing about with the various parameters, little bits of pitch shifting as well. I was aiming to get something atonal with the characteristics of strings, but without being instantly identifiable as such.
Next I opened up Reaktor and got to work on making the low end stuff. Initially I tried using Steam pipe, since I thought that it would complement the string sound well, but I just couldn't get quite the right sound. I ended up using Carbon 2. Using all 3 oscillators with some heavy modulation, and the Band Reject filter. A bit of chorus, managed to get a nicely brooding angry synth sound.
I then recorded this out, and again EQed in Sound forge before loading into Absynth. I spent quite a while getting the two sounds to mesh together in the right kinda of way, and lots of small little automation tweaks in the envelopes to keep things flowing properly. Last up a bit of light filtering and some reverb.
I really like this sound, definitely dark and creepy. I'd like it more if there where less granular artifacts perhaps, but that more down to my heavy handedness than anything else.
Now back on with these tracks! I've got to have 12 minutes of audio, all written, mixed, mastered and ready for sync by Thursday!!? Wish me luck!
Doesn't mean that I don't have time to keep up on the blog though. I figured when I started this that there would be moments when I'm really busy, but I also promised myself that I would keep this up!
So today's sound is something along the same lines to a thing I did last week, making dark modern scary sound effects and atmospheres. As I mentioned then, one of the things that really comes to mind with that type of sound is string effects, almost mandatory for scary films.
This time around I thought that rather than starting with synthesised ones, I'd begin with a string sample and see where I can take it.
DARK TWISTED STRINGS by Noisy Neighbour Sound
The sample came from a CD of Elgar's Enigma Variations, a piece called Nimrod, which if you're not familiar with I really recommend you check out. I opened the sample in Sound forge and got to work with the EQ, just trimming away the frequencies that I didn't want, low stuff especially since I planned to put that in myself later on. Once that was nice and tidy I topped and tailed it, and then loaded it into Absynth, as usual, in one of the granular channels. Loads of messing about with the various parameters, little bits of pitch shifting as well. I was aiming to get something atonal with the characteristics of strings, but without being instantly identifiable as such.
Next I opened up Reaktor and got to work on making the low end stuff. Initially I tried using Steam pipe, since I thought that it would complement the string sound well, but I just couldn't get quite the right sound. I ended up using Carbon 2. Using all 3 oscillators with some heavy modulation, and the Band Reject filter. A bit of chorus, managed to get a nicely brooding angry synth sound.
I then recorded this out, and again EQed in Sound forge before loading into Absynth. I spent quite a while getting the two sounds to mesh together in the right kinda of way, and lots of small little automation tweaks in the envelopes to keep things flowing properly. Last up a bit of light filtering and some reverb.
I really like this sound, definitely dark and creepy. I'd like it more if there where less granular artifacts perhaps, but that more down to my heavy handedness than anything else.
Now back on with these tracks! I've got to have 12 minutes of audio, all written, mixed, mastered and ready for sync by Thursday!!? Wish me luck!
Tuesday, 1 March 2011
Sound-A-Day 01.03.2011
Maybe it's just that I'm getting soft in my old age, but more and more recently I've become increasingly interested in pads, nice thick chords and involving chord sequences.
I'm sure I didn't used to be like this, I was more obsessed with mashing breaks to infinity and back (which I still am) than getting all emotional and stuff...
Still, whatever the reason, I like pads, and today's sound is exactly that, a nice pad part.
I've spent most of this evening working on a commission track for a short film, which thankfully has a pretty easy to understand brief, and conveniently requires some pad sounds. I wanted to create a soft warm atmosphere, quite relaxed and contented type of feeling, and because of the setting of the film, a little bit of texture or grain as well.
DUSTY PADS by Noisy Neighbour Sound
The sound is made using a patch I made in Reaktor, built around a comb filter for a kind of Karplus-Strong style synthesis. However, rather than using the noise as an exciter only, I thought it might be worth allowing some of it through the filter chain to fuzz the edges. I think it works quite well. There's a lot of subtle modulation in the patch in an attempt to keep it interesting, but without getting excessive, and just a little bit of saturation too. The reverb is coming from one of the Lexicon PCM plugins.
Maybe it's a bit of an easy way out, but I think that a good pad sound can do so much for creating atmospheres. With something complex like NI's Absynth or Green Oak's Crystal, you can make some really abstract, uncomfortable environments, or with more standard methods, some really soft and comfortable ones. To be honest though, I think this is one area where analogue shines through. The pure power of an analogue polysynth is just incredible. All the tiny impurities, distortions and so on all combine to make a really rich sound, something very hard to do with digital kit.
I'm sure I didn't used to be like this, I was more obsessed with mashing breaks to infinity and back (which I still am) than getting all emotional and stuff...
Still, whatever the reason, I like pads, and today's sound is exactly that, a nice pad part.
I've spent most of this evening working on a commission track for a short film, which thankfully has a pretty easy to understand brief, and conveniently requires some pad sounds. I wanted to create a soft warm atmosphere, quite relaxed and contented type of feeling, and because of the setting of the film, a little bit of texture or grain as well.
DUSTY PADS by Noisy Neighbour Sound
The sound is made using a patch I made in Reaktor, built around a comb filter for a kind of Karplus-Strong style synthesis. However, rather than using the noise as an exciter only, I thought it might be worth allowing some of it through the filter chain to fuzz the edges. I think it works quite well. There's a lot of subtle modulation in the patch in an attempt to keep it interesting, but without getting excessive, and just a little bit of saturation too. The reverb is coming from one of the Lexicon PCM plugins.
Maybe it's a bit of an easy way out, but I think that a good pad sound can do so much for creating atmospheres. With something complex like NI's Absynth or Green Oak's Crystal, you can make some really abstract, uncomfortable environments, or with more standard methods, some really soft and comfortable ones. To be honest though, I think this is one area where analogue shines through. The pure power of an analogue polysynth is just incredible. All the tiny impurities, distortions and so on all combine to make a really rich sound, something very hard to do with digital kit.
Thursday, 24 February 2011
Sound-A-Day 24.02.2011
Ok, here's another sound along the same ideas as the previous one. But very different sounding still, same mood though I think.
This one, to be honest, started out as a bit of messing about with Carbon 2. Just making some classic snarly bass sounds. Was playing with the Band reject filter cutoff and found this sort of sweet spot where the synth just let out this awesome growl type of sound. Not especially musical, but really cool effect.
I recorded the output, and opened it up in Soundforge. Did a bit of EQ to hopefully accent the growl a bit more. Next I put that into Absynth, in one of the granular channels. Made an envelope for controlling the Grain Speed and size, a bit of pitch modulation and a bit of amplitude modulation.
That's more or less it, nothing too fancy I guess, but I really like the result!
DIGI-GROWL by Noisy Neighbour Sound
This one, to be honest, started out as a bit of messing about with Carbon 2. Just making some classic snarly bass sounds. Was playing with the Band reject filter cutoff and found this sort of sweet spot where the synth just let out this awesome growl type of sound. Not especially musical, but really cool effect.
I recorded the output, and opened it up in Soundforge. Did a bit of EQ to hopefully accent the growl a bit more. Next I put that into Absynth, in one of the granular channels. Made an envelope for controlling the Grain Speed and size, a bit of pitch modulation and a bit of amplitude modulation.
That's more or less it, nothing too fancy I guess, but I really like the result!
DIGI-GROWL by Noisy Neighbour Sound
Sound-A-Day 23.02.2011
Phew, playing catch up once again! Dear oh dear..
Truth be told I've been feeling pretty dry the last couple days. I've just recently finished creating and compiling a huge amount of sounds into a portfolio for a couple job applications. Its really taken it out of me, trying to keep thinking of new ideas to try for 3 days solid. Yesterday I just didn't even want to look at a computer screen!
Today, however, is different! Well and truly back on it. Had an idea of something I wanted to try, or rather a mood I wanted to create, and all of a sudden the ideas started coming. Wanted to try and make some really dark, modern, abstract noises. Hopefully to build up into some ambient tracks. I have a pretty clear image in my head of what I'm after which would be a little difficult to describe, but hopefully the sounds will help.
The first one was an attempts at combining a couple different things. I think the 2 things that jump out in my head first when I think about dark ambient sounds are clangorous gong type noises, and dissonant plucked string chords. Both can be really effective and I thought it would be fun to try and combine them. I built a little patch which is based around a couple different synth ideas. The first being a bank of sine oscillators which are all running through ring modulation, to make the gong part. The other is a comb filter with various different colours of noise to excite it. Then a couple envelopes to control the amplitude of each section, and some LFO's routed to various places to give it some movement.
The result sounded pretty cool, maybe a bit more metallic than strings, but not bad. I recorded myself playing a few random chords, chucked the whole lot through a big reverb, and pitched the whole lot down by a few semi tones to size it up.
METAL HORROR HITS by Noisy Neighbour Sound
I think the result is pretty cool, definitely dark and ambient. I could probably do with experimenting a bit more with the chords I'm playing as some sound considerably better than others. I think the 3rd is probably my favourite.
Truth be told I've been feeling pretty dry the last couple days. I've just recently finished creating and compiling a huge amount of sounds into a portfolio for a couple job applications. Its really taken it out of me, trying to keep thinking of new ideas to try for 3 days solid. Yesterday I just didn't even want to look at a computer screen!
Today, however, is different! Well and truly back on it. Had an idea of something I wanted to try, or rather a mood I wanted to create, and all of a sudden the ideas started coming. Wanted to try and make some really dark, modern, abstract noises. Hopefully to build up into some ambient tracks. I have a pretty clear image in my head of what I'm after which would be a little difficult to describe, but hopefully the sounds will help.
The first one was an attempts at combining a couple different things. I think the 2 things that jump out in my head first when I think about dark ambient sounds are clangorous gong type noises, and dissonant plucked string chords. Both can be really effective and I thought it would be fun to try and combine them. I built a little patch which is based around a couple different synth ideas. The first being a bank of sine oscillators which are all running through ring modulation, to make the gong part. The other is a comb filter with various different colours of noise to excite it. Then a couple envelopes to control the amplitude of each section, and some LFO's routed to various places to give it some movement.
The result sounded pretty cool, maybe a bit more metallic than strings, but not bad. I recorded myself playing a few random chords, chucked the whole lot through a big reverb, and pitched the whole lot down by a few semi tones to size it up.
METAL HORROR HITS by Noisy Neighbour Sound
I think the result is pretty cool, definitely dark and ambient. I could probably do with experimenting a bit more with the chords I'm playing as some sound considerably better than others. I think the 3rd is probably my favourite.
Tuesday, 22 February 2011
Sound-A-Day 21.02.2011
Well, I think in all fairness I've been really lucky so far. Without a doubt, my home Internet connection is the worst service I have ever encountered. Connection is intermittent to put it mildly.
Last night was one of those days when connection doesn't stay up for even a minute. Will upload the sound from yesterday today.
So continuing with where I was at last week, making sounds with NI Massive, here's another nice one I thought I would share.
It's still a relatively complex patch but quite different from the previous one. It's using the performer channels to move through wave table positions which creates the chord sequence. Another performer channel controlling the filter cutoff which creates some nice movement in the filter. The noise generator is also running through the filter and gives a little bit of dustiness to the overall timbre.
FOND MEMORY by Noisy Neighbour Sound
The reason I like this one is a bit different from usual I guess. As I said, it's not an especially complex patch or some esoteric production method. But to me it sounds really evocative, although of what I'm not quite sure! I love those moments when you find a synth patch or odd little sound that has enough character that a track almost writes itself around it. I really like when that happens, it's like being a producer and a musician all at once!
Last night was one of those days when connection doesn't stay up for even a minute. Will upload the sound from yesterday today.
So continuing with where I was at last week, making sounds with NI Massive, here's another nice one I thought I would share.
It's still a relatively complex patch but quite different from the previous one. It's using the performer channels to move through wave table positions which creates the chord sequence. Another performer channel controlling the filter cutoff which creates some nice movement in the filter. The noise generator is also running through the filter and gives a little bit of dustiness to the overall timbre.
FOND MEMORY by Noisy Neighbour Sound
The reason I like this one is a bit different from usual I guess. As I said, it's not an especially complex patch or some esoteric production method. But to me it sounds really evocative, although of what I'm not quite sure! I love those moments when you find a synth patch or odd little sound that has enough character that a track almost writes itself around it. I really like when that happens, it's like being a producer and a musician all at once!
Thursday, 10 February 2011
Sound-A-Day 09.02.2011
Coffee is pretty much the life bringer in this house. We get through so much it's probably not healthy, but how else are you supposed to survive on 4 hours sleep a day?!
The only downside is when you've drunk a bit too much and not slept enough, and get that strange dizzy sensation. Very odd feeling indeed. So I decided I'd make a sound that is supposed to represent that feeling.
Suitably enough, it started out as a recording of a filter coffee machine. We attached some contact mics to it and recorded while it was brewing, lots of nice spitting and squirting noises. The other thing about contact mics is that they'll pic up ambient noises in an odd way too. The recording has a few cars driving past which, when heard as resonance through a coffee maker, sounded rather cool as well.
So I took the recording, and edited out my favourite parts, then made them into a sample map and loaded it into Metaphysical Function in Reaktor. As well as it's built in modulation, I also patched in a couple extra LFO's to control sample selection and so on. Dialed up an interesting patch and recorded the output.
Next that got loaded back into Soundforge. I used a very slight frequency shifter, and a slight auto pan effect, just to warp the sound a little further. Finally I used the time stretching function to enhance the sense of disorientation I was aiming for.
DIZZY-CAFFEINE-HEAD-SPIN by Noisy Neighbour Sound
Really pleased with this one, not far off the sound I was going for at all. Sounds extra effective through headphones.
Incidental, I got my new headphones for while my monitors are being fixed. Ended up getting some Beyer Dynamic DT990s. Absolutely love them! Comfy and crystal clear, highly recommend them to anyone looking for a pair of good open backed cans, here's a pic I took, super HDR, because that's how they sound compared to my last pair!
The only downside is when you've drunk a bit too much and not slept enough, and get that strange dizzy sensation. Very odd feeling indeed. So I decided I'd make a sound that is supposed to represent that feeling.
Suitably enough, it started out as a recording of a filter coffee machine. We attached some contact mics to it and recorded while it was brewing, lots of nice spitting and squirting noises. The other thing about contact mics is that they'll pic up ambient noises in an odd way too. The recording has a few cars driving past which, when heard as resonance through a coffee maker, sounded rather cool as well.
So I took the recording, and edited out my favourite parts, then made them into a sample map and loaded it into Metaphysical Function in Reaktor. As well as it's built in modulation, I also patched in a couple extra LFO's to control sample selection and so on. Dialed up an interesting patch and recorded the output.
Next that got loaded back into Soundforge. I used a very slight frequency shifter, and a slight auto pan effect, just to warp the sound a little further. Finally I used the time stretching function to enhance the sense of disorientation I was aiming for.
DIZZY-CAFFEINE-HEAD-SPIN by Noisy Neighbour Sound
Really pleased with this one, not far off the sound I was going for at all. Sounds extra effective through headphones.
Incidental, I got my new headphones for while my monitors are being fixed. Ended up getting some Beyer Dynamic DT990s. Absolutely love them! Comfy and crystal clear, highly recommend them to anyone looking for a pair of good open backed cans, here's a pic I took, super HDR, because that's how they sound compared to my last pair!
Thursday, 3 February 2011
Sound-A-Day 03.02.2011
So I'm always interested in trying to make robotic and mechanical sounding music, and one of the things I like to do is use recordings of servos and other types of electrical motors. No exaggeration, I have folders full!
This sound started out as an attempt to synthesize the same type of sound, although I ended up getting quite sidetracked.
The sound started off as something resembling a servo, but I decided to try playing about with it in Absynth, I've really fallen in love with the Granular sampling features it has.
I thought it might be fun to try and turn the servo noise into something a little more atmospheric, and Absynth is always great for that type of thing. The servo noise got time stretched with an envelope changing the time parameter. That then runs through a Low Pass filter with a very fast LFO modulating the cut off frequency slightly, to give a bit of colour to the sound. Next it's going through a frequency shifter set very low, which is what causes the gating, and finally through a panning delay effect.
GATED FREQ SHIFT SERVO by Noisy Neighbour Sound
It's not quite what I had in mind when I started, but I guess that's just how it goes sometimes. Still came out with a pretty nice sound, more musical than atmospheric perhaps, but that's maybe not such a bad thing!
This sound started out as an attempt to synthesize the same type of sound, although I ended up getting quite sidetracked.
The sound started off as something resembling a servo, but I decided to try playing about with it in Absynth, I've really fallen in love with the Granular sampling features it has.
I thought it might be fun to try and turn the servo noise into something a little more atmospheric, and Absynth is always great for that type of thing. The servo noise got time stretched with an envelope changing the time parameter. That then runs through a Low Pass filter with a very fast LFO modulating the cut off frequency slightly, to give a bit of colour to the sound. Next it's going through a frequency shifter set very low, which is what causes the gating, and finally through a panning delay effect.
GATED FREQ SHIFT SERVO by Noisy Neighbour Sound
It's not quite what I had in mind when I started, but I guess that's just how it goes sometimes. Still came out with a pretty nice sound, more musical than atmospheric perhaps, but that's maybe not such a bad thing!
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!
Friday, 7 January 2011
Sound-A-Day 07.01.2011
Something a little different today, something a little longer than usual. It's a short percussive track I began a little while back. It's more of an experiment with some percussive sounds than a serious composition, but never the less, I still like it a lot.
With the exception of the pad part, all the sounds in this track are samples taken from a home made percussion instrument, built by Henry Collins. The instrument consists of a small wooden resonant box, with contact microphones fitted inside. Mounted to the box are various items of scrap metal, nails, screws, guitar strings, springs and so forth. These can be plucked, struck, bowed etc to produce various different percussive effects. The pad sound is a fairly simple patch made on a Novation K Station polysynth. I'm particularly proud of how well the synth sound compliments the drones recorded from the percussion box when played with a bow. The reverb effect is from the Lexicon PCM Native bundle, amazing sounding reverbs, definitely my favourite for this type of music.
Perc-Jam by Noisy Neighbour Sound
Although written with the main intent of trying some new techniques, I do really like this track. I think the key to a good ambient track is to provide a subtle sense of atmosphere, while still retaining a certain level of ambiguity, as though giving the listener hints about the intended mood, but also leaving it open for interpretation.
Its certainly something I'm getting more and more interested in. I hope to try more things along this vein, and in working on this track I've got a load more ideas for things to try in the future.
Again, special thanks to Henry for letting me use his awesome instrument!
Tuesday, 4 January 2011
Sound-A-Day 04.01.2011
Something a bit different this time around. While yesterdays post was a bit of experimenting with some really new things, today's is more about appreciating the old. I personally don't buy into the Analogue Vs Digital argument. Both can sound great in my opinion, and both play an important part in modern electronic music.
One thing that old analogue synths are great for, is making very simple patches sound incredibly full and warm. I imagine it's because of the slight modulations in pitch and amplitude that such circuitry causes. Regardless, for pad sounds especially, it can sound awesome!
This is a short looping pad made using a very old Korg PE1000. Since it has no Midi connections, I created a multi sample patch inside Reaktor. I decided not to attempt to recreate the filter, since the filter on the PE1000 is pretty unique and would've been hard to emulate. The only thing I did add was a small Macro to allow for scaling note input. This means you can control the amount of "detune" from subtle fullness to atonality.
The multi sample instrument was then ran through 2 separate effect chains. One with a reverb setting, and the other with a very slight frequency shift and delay.
Drifting-Pad by Noisy Neighbour Sound
I really like this pad, It has a nice simplicity to it, but the slight variations in the tone make it involving too. One of my favourite albums is "Selected Ambient Works" by Aphex Twin. Its full of great warm pads, and I hoped to capture something similar. I'm pretty pleased with the result.
(Image credit: Veerle Pirson)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)