noises

it's the trip

2008-11-12T10:02:00.001-08:00

ambient triphop

2008-11-10T13:28:00.000-08:00

heyo

so, unfortunately, boomp3 seems to be down, so I can't post my track, but I'll describe it, and if you find yourself salivating for more, email me and I can send you the mp3.
The track has 5 fundamental parts: the drum loop, the cello, the rhodes piano, the 303, and the sitar. These are made from a total of 8 samples. The drum loop is cobbled together from samples of a snare, open hi hat and closed hi hat from three loops on free-loops.com, and the kick drum is actually a recording of the subwoofer of a car going by -- it seemed appropriately lo-fi for the genre.
The piano line is based on a three-chord jazz progression (I think this was originally a 4-bar loop, but since I cut it up beyond recognition anyway, I don't think it matters. I imported it into reason as a simulated rhodes electric piano, and played some close chords and melodies (all within 7 semitones), which gives it a nice dark feel.
I took a sample of a cello playing a legato note in Bach cello suite 1 in G, and used that as the template for my cello section, which plays only a and e throughout the piece, providing a stable foundation. I removed some of the bowing noise by compressing the sample and running through an eq, which gives it a cleaner tone, then I dirtied it by downsampling.
I found a really cool 303 acid loop on free-loops.com, but it was a little busy, so I could only sample out some pretty short notes. I used this to emulate a 303 on the NNXt, and played a little bouncy bass rhythm to give the track a little more texture and trippiness.
Finally, I sampled a sitar droning on and then applied a filter which I manipulate throughout the track to make it a little more space-y.
there is no vocal track, because I was unable to decide what I wanted the vocals to be -- my top choice right now is a loop I have of a female jazz singer scatting, but I was having trouble making work in any way other than the original loop. I'll keep playing with it, and maybe by the time boomp3 can host tracks again, there will be a vocal part added.

Also, if anyone knows of other sites on which I could host stuff, please let me know.

Thanks,
n

house in a minor, take 2

2008-10-29T10:22:00.000-07:00

so I think the bug with the previous posting was the way I migrated the track from .wav to .mp3 -- i think this one should work:
Boomp3.com

house music

2008-10-27T20:12:00.000-07:00

for electronic music, i made a house track in reason. it's a little on the downtempo end of things -- 115bpm. i used a funky two bar bass loop with some syncopation, a pretty standard house/disco drum beat, a delayed synth chromatic scale to bring in some tension, a steel-drum feeling two-bar synth melody, and a reverbed synth adaptation of the progression from palchelbel's canon (put in A minor). it's almost all in pentatonic A minor, with a few Fs thrown into the steel-drum line

Boomp3.com

edit: it appears there is some error accessing the track on boomp3 -- i've reloaded it and it still doesn't seem to work -- I've emailed it to Chris, but email me if you want a copy. my apologies -- does anyone know of another site on which I could try to host my files?

2008-10-13T06:38:00.000-07:00

This is an etude in tempo modulation synchronized over 4 loops:

Boomp3.com

It's based on the click file in four loops, one at C, one at D#, one at F#, and one at G. There are two effects, convolver and very long delay. The tempo increases as the track goes on, until it abruptly stops. As tempo increases, pitch increases as well.

This is an etude in pitch modulation on individual loops:

Boomp3.com

This is made of the same four clicks starting at the same pitches, with a stereo mix so that one loop is 100/0 l/r, one is 67/33 l/r, one is 33/67 l/r, and one is 0/100 l/r. Each one is modulated with the k-pitch midi controller, resulting in low thuds and high clicks as the knob is turned. I found it difficult to control the pitch with a fine grain -- I think changing the output mode from ln, (o, 200) to something exponential might give me more control over pitch within an octave, or I may need to use a different midi control for later work.

This is an etude in panning:

Boomp3.com

This starts out with different section of the same clicks as before, with all loops @ 50/50 l/r, but then each loop is panned across the channels to match the setup in the previous track (100/0, 67/333, 33/67, 0/100). Then they are panned so they end up transposed, i.e. loop 1 moves from 100/0 l/r to 0/100 lr, loop 2 moves from 67/33 to 33/67, etc. After this, each returns to 50/50.

I also made one in which I tried to combine these modulations and also play with the gains on the four loops. It turns out I don't have enough fingers or coordination to really do that many things at once, but with a little practice, I think I can probably do better:

Boomp3.com

Also, did you know that boomp3.com will also host .wav files? At least, it seems to be, because that's what I've done here.

Saturday afternoon, I did some homework at YalMusT, and while I was working, I opened up radiaL and put some of the loops from the "content/audio and video media sources/audio media sources/100bpm loops" folders, where I found some pretty funky guitar and bass loops. I especially recommend 3gl4c005.wav for a chickenscratch type guitar line, and 3ebc005.wav for a , and 3dl40391 for a nice synth percussion part with some cool pitch effects. I'm going to try playing around with them next time I've got some free time. If it turns out well, I'll post the results...

ringtones

2008-09-29T08:26:00.001-07:00

Here are two ringtones I made.

This one is made up of the sound of a glass falling over and a lighter sparking... it sounds pretty outer-spacey and rhythmic. with a little more noise in the low frequencies, it would kind of sound like a didgeridoo:

Boomp3.com

I'm less happy with this one... the sample is the sound of keystrokes on a computer keyboard, but it was raining when I recorded it, and I couldn't really get the noise out of the recording:

Boomp3.com

Also, I found a cool site that has lots of open-source and public domain audio: www.archive.org. I was looking through the presidential collection -- I think I'll use an excerpt from Kennedy's inaugural address in something this semester... wonder what that'll be?

a different take on mechanized music

2008-09-21T19:58:00.000-07:00

The Trons are a New Zealand-based rock band whose members are all robots. Here they are practicing:

And here they are in a music video:

According to their Wikipedia page, the Trons' vocals are produced by a tape loop with an actual tape deck, and the musicians are built mainly from old photocopier parts.

It's interesting that despite the absence of people in the band, the music is still so familiarly pop-y. See, for example, the 1-4-5 chord system in the first video -- a far cry from the music concrete and futurist ideals of other mechanized musicians.

I guess the next step would be to design a program that would write music for the Trons to play, and cut us out of the picture entirely. I kinda like the idea of robot minstrels -- at least until they turn on us.