This is a pretty funny one to share.
I spent the day reworking a couple old tracks that I was planning to play in a live set I have coming up. One of them had a lot of fast break edits going on, with all manner of daft effect processing going on.
I figured I may as well continue in that vein as I reworked the track and stumbled across a cool sound which I figured I may as well continue with a bit.
So this sound actually started life as a kick drum from an Amen break, there's a whole load of stuff done to it, it's hard to remember the exact order I worked in, so wont go into too much detail.
WARNING SIRENS by Noisy Neighbour Sound
It's been EQed and compressed, then I used some stacked comb filters to give a weird twangy resonance to it, pretty high feedback dialed in with a little bit of automation on the delay time.I rendered that out before loading it into a sample and adding some loop points to get it repeating at a cool point. Messed about with pitch and speed till it was getting pretty siren sounding. Again, I rendered that out before loading it into Absynth for a bit of final tweaking. Tried it across the keyboard till I found a note that worked best. Rendered again before opening in sound forge to EQ a little bit and add a reverb.
I was hoping to get a sort of space ship warning siren, like the type that goes off in a sci fi film when the enemy ship is near by. Think I did a pretty good effort!
Showing posts with label Sinister. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sinister. Show all posts
Wednesday, 30 March 2011
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
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!
Wednesday, 2 March 2011
Sound-A-Day 02.03.2011
So carrying on from the previous post. I have been wanting a modular synth for ages. It's full on gear lust of the highest order. Just thinking about spending my day patching and tweaking makes me smile.
The trouble with gear lust though, is that not only can it be incredibly distracting, it also makes you less appreciative of what equipment you do have. Sometimes to the point where you haven't even explored half to possibilities of one piece of kit.
But today, I found this can be a bit of a solution to keep the wanting at bay. I've got a Novation KStation synth, and while its not exactly a Buchla 200e, it's still pretty versatile and fun to use. So I decided I'd really try and push it, get the strangest and most complex sound out of it that I could manage. An attempt to really explore all the functionality of it.
The patch is using all 3 oscillators. Osc 1 is generating a sin wave, Osc 2 and 3 are both generating Square waves, and combined for FM. The output of Osc 1 and 2 are also run into the ring mod. Osc 1 is getting pitch modulation from the Mod Envelope, and Osc 3 is getting pulse width modulation, also from the Mod Envelope. Osc 2 is getting pulse width modulation from LFO 1. All sources are running through the 24db filter. The filter is on full resonance, and the cut off is being modulation by LFO 2.
I took the headphone output and routed it through a noise gate and back in through the mic input to get some feedback going. I allowed just a small amount of signal back through at the mixing stage. I also used it as the modulator for the Vocoder which gets some really interesting timbres going. Tweaked with the settings a bit, and dialed in a bit of delay, chorus, and reverb.
So that was sounding kinda cool, so I recorded a few runs out into sound forge. Next I messed about with the settings some more, mostly on the filter to get a few different squawks and squeaks out of it, and recorded these too.
Finally I opened these all into Logic and messed about with them, turned them into soundscape type thing. Lots of pitching down and heavy reverb. Here's the result.
KSTAT SOUNDSCAPE by Noisy Neighbour Sound
I really like this one, exactly what I set out to do. Something really abstract, complex, and not at all typical of a small VA synth. It's certainly given me some food for thought, and some more ideas of things to try with it. While its still not a 2500 or a Synthi 100 it's more than capable of making some great weird sounds, what more could I ask for?
The trouble with gear lust though, is that not only can it be incredibly distracting, it also makes you less appreciative of what equipment you do have. Sometimes to the point where you haven't even explored half to possibilities of one piece of kit.
But today, I found this can be a bit of a solution to keep the wanting at bay. I've got a Novation KStation synth, and while its not exactly a Buchla 200e, it's still pretty versatile and fun to use. So I decided I'd really try and push it, get the strangest and most complex sound out of it that I could manage. An attempt to really explore all the functionality of it.
The patch is using all 3 oscillators. Osc 1 is generating a sin wave, Osc 2 and 3 are both generating Square waves, and combined for FM. The output of Osc 1 and 2 are also run into the ring mod. Osc 1 is getting pitch modulation from the Mod Envelope, and Osc 3 is getting pulse width modulation, also from the Mod Envelope. Osc 2 is getting pulse width modulation from LFO 1. All sources are running through the 24db filter. The filter is on full resonance, and the cut off is being modulation by LFO 2.
I took the headphone output and routed it through a noise gate and back in through the mic input to get some feedback going. I allowed just a small amount of signal back through at the mixing stage. I also used it as the modulator for the Vocoder which gets some really interesting timbres going. Tweaked with the settings a bit, and dialed in a bit of delay, chorus, and reverb.
So that was sounding kinda cool, so I recorded a few runs out into sound forge. Next I messed about with the settings some more, mostly on the filter to get a few different squawks and squeaks out of it, and recorded these too.
Finally I opened these all into Logic and messed about with them, turned them into soundscape type thing. Lots of pitching down and heavy reverb. Here's the result.
KSTAT SOUNDSCAPE by Noisy Neighbour Sound
I really like this one, exactly what I set out to do. Something really abstract, complex, and not at all typical of a small VA synth. It's certainly given me some food for thought, and some more ideas of things to try with it. While its still not a 2500 or a Synthi 100 it's more than capable of making some great weird sounds, what more could I ask for?
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.
Wednesday, 16 February 2011
Sound-A-Day 16.02.2011
Yawn!!
Wow, I should really get into the habit of doing this earlier in the day. But I always get so involved in things I'm working on, that before I know it, it's 3 in the morning and I haven't uploaded anything yet!
Oh well, I'm sticking to my rule that the day hasn't ended for me until Ive gone to sleep, so it's still the 15th!
Today's sound was a first attempt at something that has been going in my head for a while. I'm really into exploring old broken down buildings. It's fascinating to see how the building decays without people inside it, taking care of it. What I love most of all is the ambiance of it, the unusual and often sinister environment is very compelling, especially in the early hours. Ir's amazing how responsive your ears get in that situation, the slightest unexpected sound can really put you on edge. While the most I ever encountered was a cat, I've often wondered how I would feel walking through an old empty hospital for example, and hearing the most terrifying noise echo through the halls.
SINISTER HALLS by Noisy Neighbour Sound
Here's my first attempt at making that type of sound. I think maybe its a bit overkill. But still in the right ball park. It started off with me making "creepy" noises into a microphone. The classic ghostly WwwwOOOOooos and so on. Once I'd got a few I was happy with, I started to apply some pretty heavy filter effects to adjust the timbre of my voice. Next these where run through a Spectral Delay type patch in Reaktor. I played around with this for a while, trying to get a fairly subtle effect out of it, recording the output as I went. This recording I opened in Soundforge, a touch of time stretch, and a small amount of editing to just smooth everything a bit. Then finally into logic for a bit of EQing and a healthy dose of Lexicon Reverb.
Would like to have my monitors to reference this on. Needs just the right amount of low end, which I suspect is lacking at the moment. Will have another go at this one I think, since I have a pretty clear idea of the noise I'm after, and this isn't quite it.
Still, I do like it a lot and is certainly on the sinister side of things.
Wow, I should really get into the habit of doing this earlier in the day. But I always get so involved in things I'm working on, that before I know it, it's 3 in the morning and I haven't uploaded anything yet!
Oh well, I'm sticking to my rule that the day hasn't ended for me until Ive gone to sleep, so it's still the 15th!
Today's sound was a first attempt at something that has been going in my head for a while. I'm really into exploring old broken down buildings. It's fascinating to see how the building decays without people inside it, taking care of it. What I love most of all is the ambiance of it, the unusual and often sinister environment is very compelling, especially in the early hours. Ir's amazing how responsive your ears get in that situation, the slightest unexpected sound can really put you on edge. While the most I ever encountered was a cat, I've often wondered how I would feel walking through an old empty hospital for example, and hearing the most terrifying noise echo through the halls.
SINISTER HALLS by Noisy Neighbour Sound
Here's my first attempt at making that type of sound. I think maybe its a bit overkill. But still in the right ball park. It started off with me making "creepy" noises into a microphone. The classic ghostly WwwwOOOOooos and so on. Once I'd got a few I was happy with, I started to apply some pretty heavy filter effects to adjust the timbre of my voice. Next these where run through a Spectral Delay type patch in Reaktor. I played around with this for a while, trying to get a fairly subtle effect out of it, recording the output as I went. This recording I opened in Soundforge, a touch of time stretch, and a small amount of editing to just smooth everything a bit. Then finally into logic for a bit of EQing and a healthy dose of Lexicon Reverb.
Would like to have my monitors to reference this on. Needs just the right amount of low end, which I suspect is lacking at the moment. Will have another go at this one I think, since I have a pretty clear idea of the noise I'm after, and this isn't quite it.
Still, I do like it a lot and is certainly on the sinister side of things.
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