#8

It would take most of the weekend to even find all the musical instruments I own, so I’ve revisited a recording that uses many of them and added in some of the takes that I’d originally left out.

There are three takes of acoustic guitar, two takes of four-string guitar, one Nashville-tuned guitar, one MIDI-equipped guitar, two basses, two melodicas, two takes of drums and a glockenspiel. All are single takes, many first takes.

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#9

This would be quite interesting, since I can’t play most of the instruments I own.
And I got a busy weekend to do

I’ll do my very best …

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#10

@haebbmaster Well, I just found out that I can’t TUNE most of the (four) instruments I own!!

  • Backing track (drums, bass and strings): Spitfire Labs VSTs programmed using my Arturia Mini Lab MKII. (Some of the keys on this midi controller stopped working properly over Christmas, so I disassembled it and cleaned the contacts inside using my wife’s nail varnish remover. Somehow, that did the job and it’s still working.)
  • Acoustic guitar (rhythm and solo): Yamaha APX500II
  • Guitar swells: Gibson Tribute
  • Mandolin: 中出昌広 YM75 recorded into a Shure SM57

Besides my pedalboards, that’s everything I own.

Track took about three hours to cut, so it’s pretty rough…

6 Likes
#11

What a great track!! That thick rolling bass line has got me in the mood for some mid-period The Cure (Kiss Me, Disintegration, Wish). We should have a whip round and ask Robert Smith to cut some vocals :slight_smile:

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#12

Missed a couple of weeks for no real reason and noticed that my motivation to make music in general was at quite a low. Figured that doing the weekly projects is a great way to get my juices flowing, so hoping to return more regularly :slight_smile:

I have quite a lot of random instruments lying around that I’ve collected over the past year or two. Always with the vague idea that I’ll just pick them up and mess around with them and have a sudden burst of inspiration… inevitably that never happens and they sit around in little boxes or on tables gathering dust. Really happy to have a project which pushed me to give some of them a go!

I decided that using all the instruments at my disposal would take more time than I really wanted to put in and probably result in quite a cacophony of sound. So I decided to select a few that I either rarely use or have never recorded with. So, with no clear plan in mind I picked up some instruments, watched a couple of tutorials on how to actually use them and started recording in the following order:

  • Hohner Puck Harmonica: hurts my mouth to play it a bit - and I have no idea how to actually play it. I used the Ableton tuner to find out what notes I was actually playing: Ab, Eb, F#, Bb and C so I put them into a scale website and decided to use the F Phrygian scale for the other instruments
  • Coconut shaker: realised there is more technique to shakers than just back and forth motions. Very difficult to record nicely on a zoom-h1 mic
  • Cajon: had the microphone dangling from my desk in midair to record this - with part of the cable wrapped around synthesiser knobs to prevent it from reaching the floor
  • Electo-Acoustic Guitar: Hooked up to Ableton, plugin surfin’ until I found something which distorted the sound sufficiently for my taste
  • PO-24 Office: SO glad to have finally used this in a recording. All I’ve ever really used it for is the odd solo jam in bed / around the house. Quite happy with how the quality of this sounds recorded into a computer.
  • Shure Microphone: Bought earlier this year, but unfortunately always a bit too self-conscious to use it, even when I’m on my own.

All recorded into and sequenced with Ableton. The acoustic instruments were recorded and pretty much left untreated, so its pretty rough sounding and not quantised to a grid like all the music I normally make.

This was so much fun :slight_smile:

4 Likes
#13


I looked at this as a “throw it what ya got” assignment, but counting physical instruments and picking one softsynth to play on a keyboard controller. The chord change is inspired by a theory book I’m sporadically studying. I wanted to keep this musical despite putting ‘everything’ on it, so I mainly do a slow change, Lydian to Phrygian. Three electric guitars, acoustic guitar, two basses, Volca Beats, Volca Modular, and one zeta+ preset. I spent about 8 hours on it. its amazing how the Junto prompts can inspire creative energy.

1 Like
#14

Hey All, Sad to say I don’t have my hardware set up as my procrastinating ass is waiting for summer break to get it all set up as i would like it. I do have my daughter’s POS guitar so I played that but i could only play on one string as it will not stay in tune. I also have my mic so I am using myself and objects to bang on. The one drum track is a loop with vocal spice on other tracks. This is 16 tracks going at full steam in some parts and that’s about my limit for tracks. Hope all are well. I have a throat infection so you may hear some of that on the vocal tracks.

Peace. Hugh

3 Likes
#15

In my home we have mandolin, guitar, flute, block flute, ocarina, mouth harp,
harmonica, piano, keyboard + sound module, qy-10 (maybe not an instrument? For me it is. And I got 2 of them.), djembe, ukulele, oboe, cello, viola, violin, modular synth, trumpet, glockenspiel, electric guitar and bass, voice… I think that’s all. The computer is an instrument too. Dont have time to participate this week. I have a son that graduates from high school this week. And we renovate the kitchen. But I will listen to your submissions! Oh yes, the graduatee (is that a word) has some sort of Chinese instrument too. :thinking:
Yes we have a tin flute and a zither also. But none in the family plays them.

2 Likes
#16

Wow, The Cure might still be in the country after performing Disintegration at the Sydney Opera House.

Feel like I should try and develop something more melodic on the bass now, their basslines are often remarkable.

2 Likes
#17

I write my scores using Sibelius software and play that score through Noteperformer. This means that in addition to just about every instrument you have heard of, I have at my disposal instruments such as the Taiko, Cimbasso, and Bandoneon.

So I decided to make a little change to the project, which was to include every instrument that, at some point in my life, I have learned to play to at least some degree of proficiency, and have performed in public (which would leave out instruments like the tin whistle, which I played but never performed before anyone, as well as reel-to-reel tape recorders, which I used to create electronic music in the mid-70s).

This collection of instruments formed a rather motley group that, frankly, was pretty close to impossible to bring into coordination - sort of like trying to get a group of three year olds to dance together - so the piece Everything & More is similarly on the quirky side.

Everything & More was written for Clarinet, Baritone Horn, Piano, Acoustic Guitar, Electric Bass, String Bass and Voice.

The score is available at http://bit.ly/2QBJ2rH

4 Likes
#18

The playlist is now rolling:

#19

Instruments: Silvio Saprani Accordion, Porkpie Snare with magnet drop, Cymbal with Magnets, KORG SV1, ROLI, Roland DJ 808, SM7B, iPad with ROLI Noise App. Built some EQ and Loop instruments in Abelton and a drum rack with wood tones that I used to play on the Roli Block. I started by programing the drum sequencer and then live looping thru all the instruments and then a vocoder on for a vocal. I then applied some compression to various tracks at multiple rates.

disquiet387
disquiet387.jpg3024×4032 3.3 MB

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#20

I’ve been out for several weeks and thought I’d be able to jump back in this week… but there are three or four hundred instruments in this house…

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#21

Three or four HUNDRED?!

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#23

Yeah, I’ve been playing music since the mid 60s and have accumulated quite a bit of stuff. I ran a mid size recording studio for about 25 years, which I recently closed, and have all of that gear. Plus, I went down the rabbit hole of guitar collecting for about 30 years…
my wife is also a professional musician, and plays 13 different instruments.

3 Likes
#24

I managed to pull something together using 61 instruments.

List of instruments

Physical instruments

Nebulophone
Harmonica
Kalimba

AudioMulch Signal Generators

Arpeggiator
Bassline
10Harmonics
RissetTones
TestGen

Ableton Live 8

Analog
Collision
Drum Rack
Electric
Impulse
Operator
Simpler
Tension

VST Plugins

Aalto
ABL3
ADM
ASynth
basic_64
basic65
boing
boing2
cylinder33
Dexed
dirty harry
Drumatic 3
FMMF
Genobazz 2
GSinth
GSinth2
Kaivo
Lokomotiv
Lounge Lizard Session 4
magical8bitPlug
marimka
miniSID
minisynth FRET
minisynth GRIT
minisynth PEAK
MrRay73
Nanotron 2
OB-Xd
phybes
phybes13
pling
pling2
pling3
pling38v
pling4
ReaSynDr
ReaSynth
Stoq
Strum Session 2
Synth1
Taurus
TickyKlav
TyrellN6
Bassline
Elek7ro
U-NO-62
Ultra Analog Session 2
Upright Piano 1

I started by building an 8-bar loop of stuff with Ableton Live 8’s built-in instruments. That’s the main bunch of sounds you hear through most of the track. I kinda like it, kinda think it sounds like a crappy demo. I’ve never really used Live, but I got a licence for some cut down version of it once upon a time and I decided to count its instruments as “available”.

I exported the Live loops and loaded them into AudioMulch, and added parts from the 5 Mulch contraptions I decided to count. The Mulch stuff suggested a coda, so that’s the stuff based around a drone (the subtonic of the original key, hmm).

Next I recorded some notes on the 3 physical instruments I had, and played about with those in Reaper, changing pitch on the kalimba and harmonica to get them in key. I reversed the kalimba too and put lots of echoes on it.

I figured the sounds I’d already got needed to be the foundation and fairly consistent, else the track I’d started wouldn’t hold together. I did toy with constantly switching the arrangement and having something like maybe you’d hear on Orange Milk records, but it felt at odds with where I was headed.

From there on in, I basically worked in Reaper, and did a lot of what felt like cheating. :wink: I made ensembles of many similar sounds and then put fx on them to bind them together, like the first sounds you hear, the string machine stuff that’s coming in around 1m30s, and all the chiming stuff in the second half of the track fed through a warbly tape effect. Then there’s many moments where a single note underscores something, often a bit of a bass pedal.

I don’t particularly like the track, but there are some bits in there I can imagine recycling. I’m soooo used to working with sampled and manipulated sounds but didn’t feel like working hard on that aspect after spending heaps of time just ticking off every instrument. I also ruled samples out of the list of instruments, because that would get even more unwieldy. There were also many times where I would’ve ordinarily let individual sounds have more space for themselves, but it was hard to do so within the context of the assignment.

3 Likes
#25

OK I severely mangled this week’s prompt, which was “Make a single piece of music using every single instrument that you have at your disposal.” Well, honestly, I don’t have any idea exactly how many musical instruments I have, but it’s somewhere in the dozens. I couldn’t figure out a way to record them all this weekend.

but I thought, disposal, disposal…what about making a piece of music from instruments that have been disposed OF? So this track is made from three instruments that were retrieved from the trash. They are, left to right (and they enter the track in this order):

“Matrix” is a twelve-string Ovation knockoff. He was found in a county dump by a friend of mine who thought, hey Charlie would probably play this thing (I have a reputation!) I cleaned it up, put on new strings–not bad! Intonation is meh but miraculously, the electronics work! He starts the song.

“Sunflower” is a guitar found in a collection of trash by the curb by a different friend who thought (you guessed it) Charlie would play this thing. (He calls my house “the Island of Misfit Guitars.”) As with Matrix, somehow the electronics still work and it holds a tune ok. The top is a little caved in so I don’t tune it to concert pitch. My daughter painted the lovely sunflowers on it. He does some Ebow in the beginning and the lydian solo in the middle.

“William” I found sitting out at the curb in a pile of trash not far from my house. He’s a dulcimer built into a cardboard box, with the name “William” written in marker on the headstock. He doesn’t have a lot of sustain (cardboard box, you know) so I put some delay on him. He’s the last soloist.

All guitars tuned to open C. All recorded in Live–first two guitars ran direct, William used the mike built into my Apogee preamp because my regular mike wouldn’t work. Some compression, delay, reverb and limiter applied (also some EQ on Matrix).

6 Likes
#26

Hi everyone! Happy to be back :slight_smile:

Here it is:

Thankfully I don’t have a huge number of instruments floating around, but I had to do the splits in this one mainly because of the Teenage Engineering’s Arcade pocket operator my brother got me.

Here’s the list of “instruments” (gee, the definition can be as wide as you want it to be – glad I don’t work in a lab anymore…):

  • 5-dollar guitar
  • kerbside cleanup ukulele
  • toy xylophone
  • Teenage Engineering arcade pocket operator
  • MPC1000
  • Zoom H1
  • ORCΛ + PHASEX
  • Non Sequencer + amsynth
  • Xone:K2
  • Qtractor
  • Calf plugins and more
  • Audacity

This one took me embarassingly long, but it was a great learning process. I’ve been really loving learning how to use ORCΛ.

About the process: The first synth is real random midi notes put into Non Sequencer, hooked to amsynth. I then added the guitar based on those notes. I mapped a few knobs to my Xone controller to play with the synth. The xylophone samples are repeated in the MPC, which includes rubbing the xylophone on carpet for that wave sound. The last bit is obviously the TO Arcade, and I based the second synth on those chords (ORCΛ controlling PHASEX). All 140 BPM. Had to add that ukulele finish to tick that one off. :wink:

2 Likes
#27

  1. Sample from my phone into Morphagene
  2. Morphagene is morphagened. Time stretch and modulated with Wogglebug, noise from Quantum Rainbow into Varispeed, this goes into a…
  3. Phonogene which is set up using the “EchoPhon” patch from the manual. Some more modulation of a couple parameters (varispeed ditto as above), output of which is patched to…
  4. a w/ set up as a basic tape delay (negative offset into THAT and a Zularic Repetitor is being used as funky clock divider and patched into THIS) (I have two but I need to clean up and reinstall the FW on my 2nd one, it froze and I didn’t want to start over).
  5. This is sent into a 4ms DLD, set up as a basic mono-to-stereo looper…
  6. Which then goes into a Clouds (well, “Smog”) which has parasites firmware and is in 8 bit looping delay mode, with some attenutated modulation into Position, either white noise from a Quantum Rainbow or the wiggly bit from Wogglebug).
  7. Recorded into an ER-301, which seems like overkill for what that module can do.
  8. Took the recording into Ableton, very light EQ and a wee bit of reverb just slapped on.

This prompt initially gave me anxiety — Everything?! (gazing in horror at piles of “gear”)— which turned into a few good ideas, but, well, time and life intervened (and my daughter’s sports day).

So what I had at my disposal (i.e., hooked up, ready to go) was my sampler/looper rack which I often use to process short bits and bobs either from my laptop, norns, or another rack of sound generating modules. I made a couple versions of this patch today while I was at home doing housework, a few with phonogene in broken echo mode going into the morphagene set up as a delay/granular delay. They all sounded nice to me, but this was the shortest recording I made today and the other ones won’t fit into Ableton without me chopping them up.

This week taught me (i) I have a lot of stuff, (ii) my studio space is (still) a mess and disorganized, and (iii) I can still make music I like with the things I have at hand, no excuses. :slightly_smiling_face:

2 Likes
#28

Beautiful beautiful track, sounding like the offspring of Robbie Basho and mid-period Sun City Girls. Love it!!

2 Likes