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!
Tuesday, 22 February 2011
Thursday, 17 February 2011
Sound-A-Day 17.02.2011
Oh well, it happened again. I heard the birds singing outside my windows, realised it's nearly morning and I still haven't uploaded a sound!
Spent most of the day today making some patches in Massive. It's an incredibly powerful synth, and absolutely great sound. You can get pretty good analogue-ish sounds, and even pretty decent string modelling out of it. But really it excels in making super clean digital goodness.
Probably my favourite thing about it is the performer modulation channels. With all the different curves you can choose from, its possible to get some really complex sequences going. There are a couple things that niggle me about it, especially concerning the LFO's and envelopes, but really it sounds mega!
Here's a little looper I made earlier today. It's just a stand alone patch, recorded straight out of the box. The screen shot above should give a pretty good idea of whats going on, better than my usual terrible explanations anyway!
MASSIVE COMB LOOP by Noisy Neighbour Sound
I'm in the middle of making some large sound banks, including some for Massive. I'll be sure to put em up online when they're done for anyone who is interested.
Spent most of the day today making some patches in Massive. It's an incredibly powerful synth, and absolutely great sound. You can get pretty good analogue-ish sounds, and even pretty decent string modelling out of it. But really it excels in making super clean digital goodness.
Probably my favourite thing about it is the performer modulation channels. With all the different curves you can choose from, its possible to get some really complex sequences going. There are a couple things that niggle me about it, especially concerning the LFO's and envelopes, but really it sounds mega!
Here's a little looper I made earlier today. It's just a stand alone patch, recorded straight out of the box. The screen shot above should give a pretty good idea of whats going on, better than my usual terrible explanations anyway!
MASSIVE COMB LOOP by Noisy Neighbour Sound
I'm in the middle of making some large sound banks, including some for Massive. I'll be sure to put em up online when they're done for anyone who is interested.
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.
Tuesday, 15 February 2011
Sound-A-Day 15.02.2011
Wow, what a tiring day!
Been working really hard on a couple things since I got up, and my ears are warn out! But I feel quite accomplished. Made a lot of progress in a track I'm currently midway through and made a lot of headway in debugging another Reaktor patch I'm planning to put up here.
It started out as an idea a friend and I had for a grid style sequenced synth, for fast live improvisation. Similar to a monome interface, and a TB303 in tone. It works out really well, but I decided to ramp it up a couple notches. Have built in some resonant MS20 style filters, and some very gnarly FM too. Just been busy today working on control lanes for all the parameters. I did start this patch a while ago, but ran into some issues I just couldn't get my head around. Sometimes a bit of a break can really help, made a lot of progress today.
The interface is still a little bland perhaps, but here are some pics of it so far,
View A:
View B:
It's pretty nifty so far, a lot of fun to use and surprisingly versatile. The pics don't give away too much, so here's a little loop from it.
GRID-LOOP-1 by Noisy Neighbour Sound
It can sound far more straight up, and less twangy/bendy/weird, but I like the idea of having the possibilities to really mess with the sound contained within the instrument itself. Far easier to navigate. Anyway, should be up and downloadable in a day or so!
Been working really hard on a couple things since I got up, and my ears are warn out! But I feel quite accomplished. Made a lot of progress in a track I'm currently midway through and made a lot of headway in debugging another Reaktor patch I'm planning to put up here.
It started out as an idea a friend and I had for a grid style sequenced synth, for fast live improvisation. Similar to a monome interface, and a TB303 in tone. It works out really well, but I decided to ramp it up a couple notches. Have built in some resonant MS20 style filters, and some very gnarly FM too. Just been busy today working on control lanes for all the parameters. I did start this patch a while ago, but ran into some issues I just couldn't get my head around. Sometimes a bit of a break can really help, made a lot of progress today.
The interface is still a little bland perhaps, but here are some pics of it so far,
View A:
View B:
It's pretty nifty so far, a lot of fun to use and surprisingly versatile. The pics don't give away too much, so here's a little loop from it.
GRID-LOOP-1 by Noisy Neighbour Sound
It can sound far more straight up, and less twangy/bendy/weird, but I like the idea of having the possibilities to really mess with the sound contained within the instrument itself. Far easier to navigate. Anyway, should be up and downloadable in a day or so!
Monday, 14 February 2011
Sound-A-Day 14.02.2011
So, another week, another post.
This ones something a bit different, and a nice thing to try. I've found on of the most fun ways of learning your way round a piece of kit or software is to make a track using nothing else. It's an excellent method of discovering each things strengths and weaknesses.
A while back I got myself a copy of the Arturia ARP2600 emulation, and although I've used it a few times, and really enjoyed it, I haven't really had the time to get deep into it, which is certainly something it deserves. So this evening I figured I'd see what I could get out of it.
One of the really nice things about it is the built in sequencer, means that you can open it up in standalone and get a nice riff looping. And of course, because it's software, you can open more that one instance at a time. So I thought rather than loading it into a host program, why not just open it a load of times in standalone mode?
I managed to built a pretty cool looping pattern of drums and bass line, although it did take a fair few efforts to get everything really tightly synced. Once it was all running nicely though it was brilliant fun to jam about.
Once I'd got all the parts ticking along nicely, I recorded each part and arranged them into a structure in Logic. There's very little else going on, all sounds are from the ARP, with only an additional reverb on the high melody part, and a touch of overall compression.
ARTURIA-ACID by Noisy Neighbour Sound
So hopefully the mix isn't too terrible, still having to rely exclusively on headphones!
I really like this plugin, it has an awesome sound, and really fun to use, relatively CPU light to boot. One thing I think would make a great addition would be, rather than each instance opening separately, that they open within the same program. You would then be able to patch between multiple ARPs, which to be honest, would be amazing!!!
Incidentally, if anyone is interested in remixing the parts, or just fancies playing with the patches, let me know and I will bundle up the patch files for download. Alternatively, if you don't have this particular plugin, I can make a folder of the individual parts in WAV format.
This ones something a bit different, and a nice thing to try. I've found on of the most fun ways of learning your way round a piece of kit or software is to make a track using nothing else. It's an excellent method of discovering each things strengths and weaknesses.
A while back I got myself a copy of the Arturia ARP2600 emulation, and although I've used it a few times, and really enjoyed it, I haven't really had the time to get deep into it, which is certainly something it deserves. So this evening I figured I'd see what I could get out of it.
One of the really nice things about it is the built in sequencer, means that you can open it up in standalone and get a nice riff looping. And of course, because it's software, you can open more that one instance at a time. So I thought rather than loading it into a host program, why not just open it a load of times in standalone mode?
I managed to built a pretty cool looping pattern of drums and bass line, although it did take a fair few efforts to get everything really tightly synced. Once it was all running nicely though it was brilliant fun to jam about.
Once I'd got all the parts ticking along nicely, I recorded each part and arranged them into a structure in Logic. There's very little else going on, all sounds are from the ARP, with only an additional reverb on the high melody part, and a touch of overall compression.
ARTURIA-ACID by Noisy Neighbour Sound
So hopefully the mix isn't too terrible, still having to rely exclusively on headphones!
I really like this plugin, it has an awesome sound, and really fun to use, relatively CPU light to boot. One thing I think would make a great addition would be, rather than each instance opening separately, that they open within the same program. You would then be able to patch between multiple ARPs, which to be honest, would be amazing!!!
Incidentally, if anyone is interested in remixing the parts, or just fancies playing with the patches, let me know and I will bundle up the patch files for download. Alternatively, if you don't have this particular plugin, I can make a folder of the individual parts in WAV format.
Friday, 11 February 2011
Sound-A-Day 10.02.2011
Well ok, so it's not really the 10th. Still playing catch up from earlier this week. Probably will have to break my golden rule of not posting on the weekends. Ah well, my bed, I'll lay in it!
Well, here's a new sound for the 10th anyway. I'll be honest, I had no real goal when I started out on this, just a few things I wanted to try.
First off, Lucy bought herself a very swanky new lens while we where in London. It's a macro lens which is designed for very close up detailed shots. It looks absolutely stunning. I don't think she was best pleased with my first response when she demonstrated it though. The motors in it are really noisy, so straight away I asked if I could record it.
The next thing I wanted to try is also based on a photography idea. You may have noticed from the pics I upload that I'm really into HDR stuff. For those who aren't familiar with the technique, essentially it involves taking several shots of the same thing with different exposure settings. When you combine them together the result is an image with an exaggerated dynamic quality, hence HDR (High Dynamic Range) I thought it might be interesting to try the same thing with audio.
I used a clip-on contact microphone, and recorded the lens doing a failed focus. I did about 20 different recordings, each time with the mic on a different part of the lens and camera body, hoping that the amount of stuff between the mic and motor would create a nice range of filtering.
Then I spent quite a while trimming all the different samples exactly to size, before opening them into Logic for Merging together. The result was actually better than I expected, because the recordings gave such a wide frequency spectrum, you can get really aggressive with filtering and EQ. The only downside of course is the exaggeration of line hum etc.
Still, I didn't really want to just upload a nice recording of a servo, that's a bit dull. So next up I decided to just go to town on the sound inside Soundforge, making particular use of the Plugin Chainer. Something I've been getting into more and more since starting this blog.
TWISTING MOTORS by Noisy Neighbour Sound
There is a lot of editing done to this, more that is worth going into detail over. Most notable however is probably the time stretch, can never have enough time stretch!
Well, here's a new sound for the 10th anyway. I'll be honest, I had no real goal when I started out on this, just a few things I wanted to try.
First off, Lucy bought herself a very swanky new lens while we where in London. It's a macro lens which is designed for very close up detailed shots. It looks absolutely stunning. I don't think she was best pleased with my first response when she demonstrated it though. The motors in it are really noisy, so straight away I asked if I could record it.
The next thing I wanted to try is also based on a photography idea. You may have noticed from the pics I upload that I'm really into HDR stuff. For those who aren't familiar with the technique, essentially it involves taking several shots of the same thing with different exposure settings. When you combine them together the result is an image with an exaggerated dynamic quality, hence HDR (High Dynamic Range) I thought it might be interesting to try the same thing with audio.
I used a clip-on contact microphone, and recorded the lens doing a failed focus. I did about 20 different recordings, each time with the mic on a different part of the lens and camera body, hoping that the amount of stuff between the mic and motor would create a nice range of filtering.
Then I spent quite a while trimming all the different samples exactly to size, before opening them into Logic for Merging together. The result was actually better than I expected, because the recordings gave such a wide frequency spectrum, you can get really aggressive with filtering and EQ. The only downside of course is the exaggeration of line hum etc.
Still, I didn't really want to just upload a nice recording of a servo, that's a bit dull. So next up I decided to just go to town on the sound inside Soundforge, making particular use of the Plugin Chainer. Something I've been getting into more and more since starting this blog.
TWISTING MOTORS by Noisy Neighbour Sound
There is a lot of editing done to this, more that is worth going into detail over. Most notable however is probably the time stretch, can never have enough time stretch!
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!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)