#24

Here’s mine for this week:

I still had my list of instruments from last week and randomly selected 3.

I really liked the outro of last week’s submission, which was all about the 10Harmonics, so I went back to that as my starting point. It forms the bass pedal with (duh) lots of shifting harmonics. 10Harmonics is basically just a tone generator, but I wrote a few progressions after getting the chords doing their thing, by automating changes to the base frequency.

I used Tyrell N6 for chords and ended up writing in 11/8.
A bunch of tweaking of envelopes and such, but otherwise it’s playing straight into a delay plugin.

Magical 8bit Plug is best for Nintendo type sounds, but that didn’t make much sense with where I’d headed, so I used it to make a melody, running through a big reverb.

I really wanted a bit of a beat, but figured drums would be their own instrument.
For a kick-like sound I sent the 10Harmonics bass through a gate that taps out the 3 and 3 and 3 and 2 rhythm which is the basis of the track, pitched it down an octave, lowpass filter, some reverb.
There’s a click in the sawtooth LFO running over the main 10Harmonics part, so I also passed that through a highpass filter and then delay to accentuate that popping sound as the track progresses.

Track name via the start of Missy Elliott’s Get Ur Freak On. :man_shrugging:

6 Likes
#25

For once I’m not posting this at the last minute. I enjoyed the restriction, as a way to make the task of composition more manageable. I’m thinking using such a technique for sections of a larger work in the future could be fruitful.

8 Likes
#26

Sorry about the Melvins. Boris is doing some Tokyo shows. That could be cool. You can always reamp a guitar you’re unhappy with. I once worked with a guy who did most things with the intention of “fixing them” later using real-world traditional amplifiers, stomp boxes, stairwells, etc. but captured the feel of those early performances by going simple and direct. I’m likely too lazy to make something like that work.

2 Likes
#27

Will have to check them out!

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#28

Well that ended up sounding AWESOME. Once the drums kick in it sounds like two separate completely natural performers, jamming together. The pauses on the drumming, especially. Wonderful track!

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#29

They have lots of albums, but I think that the first track on Book M is a good introduction to their world:

2 Likes
#30

my contribution for the “Random Less”, project.

6 Likes
#31

My Matrix for choosing instrumentation…

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#32

Cool prompt! Coming from a musical tradition of punk, metal and industrial, I sometimes have to remind myself that less is more!

In reading over the prompt and looking at the other submissions (great stuff y’all), I thought back to a lesson I had with guitarist Wayne Krantz. I saw him perform at Berklee during Guitar Week in 1998 and was totally blown away–it was like nothing I’d ever seen. I had to sit down with this guy!

Fast forward a couple months and I’m in his Soho apartment, telling him I’m in a rut. He puts on the metronome and tells me to pick two, max three notes from a scale and use these to improvise. What I found was, when I couldn’t just blow randomly through my well-worn licks and scales, I had to really think about phrasing and dynamics. And weirdly, my playing became much more musical.

So, inspired by the prompt and my lesson with Wayne, for this piece I did the following:

  1. Asked my daughter to pick the three instruments. They were: piano; three water bottles (shown in the picture–they produce the chiming and percussion sounds); and my classical guitar (she wanted me to play recorder at first but we both agreed that would sound awful :slight_smile: )
  2. Recorded the piano and water bottles on my phone. The percussion sounds are partly crafted from the sound of me accidentally dropping the wooden spoon I was hitting them with. It sounded pretty cool! I should drop things more often.
  3. Dumped the recordings into Live and put down a basic rhythm track. Not much processing, just some limiting, reverb and panning.
  4. Put down some guitar. Here I limited myself to just the root, third, fifth, and major seventh. I flubbed this many times! I chose the least-flubbed/most charmingly flubbed version.
10 Likes
#33

https://soundcloud.com/ohm-research/spir-disquiet0388

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#34

Last week, I reported that there were too many instruments in the house. I used this week’s limitation to choose instruments that happened to be out of the case, and plugged in. I went with the Hammond S-6 (1950s), An Emmons 10 string push pull guitar (1974ish), played through a '72 Deluxe Reverb, and a random software drum machine. I used my ARP 2600 to add reverb to the track and to process the organ through it’s overdriven filter. I don’t know if the 2600 counts as a 4th instrument, as it was just used for processing…

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10 Likes
#35

Busy weekend means I’ve only just finished the recording I started on Friday, using the baritone ukulele, upright electric bass and drums selected by rolling dice.

I already had a few chords in mind, but the four-fingered one and a small window to record led me to decide on arranging the parts in Live.

A few chords and phrases were recorded, then some drums at the tempo and I spent a little time on Friday night arranging the instruments in my laptop.

On Saturday morning I knew I’d only have a short amount of time to record the bass, as I was going to be in Matong and Wagga for the following nights.

I was stuck trying to figure out some of the root notes but had an idea the track’s key is G.

While I was waiting for my kids to wake up on Saturday morning, I began programming a MIDI bass part and had an idea to use a 5/4 time signature so the bass would start on a different note each bar.

5 Likes
#36

So I ended up with:

12 string electric guitar, drumset, and these weird tuned plastic tube kid toys.

I played(?) the drums and the plastic tubes blind to one another with the common tempo coming from a click. Recorded both with a Zoom H1n. Started to assemble something somewhat cohesive in Live, then noodling with the 12 String over that to get ideas. Eventually settled on an A and B section and continued from there. There is a little EHX Memory Boy on the 12 string on the B sections. Otherwise its straight in with Amplitube acting as the amp. The plastic tubes I used C and D in 1 hand, then hit both of those with another note and did multiple passes with different notes - E, F, F# and G. Then in Live I added some delay.

I really enjoyed this one and hope to come back to it and flesh it out some more. I would record the guitar through a real amp, maybe augment the plastic tubes with a complimentary synth, and develop the arrangement further - have it actually go somewhere. Oh - and maybe redo the drums :slight_smile:

7 Likes
#37

Randomly selected norns script fugu 3 voices in random

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#38

rolled the dice til i got the instruments i wanted
.
kalimba / 12 string guitar / mountain dulcimer
through protoplasm
podfarm, ambient reverb fx
slowed down a little in audacity

7 Likes
#39

Cool! Great tone on the uke. Who made that one?

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#40

Cheers. I put it through Softtube’s vintage room amp, as well as a Space Echo VST.

This guy makes lovely instruments:

3 Likes
#41


Randomly selected from my collection of instruments: a Bulgarian tambura, an ocarina and a mandolin. I composed a simple tune for the ensemble and recorded the parts in Logic Pro. No overdubs or heavy processing – just a little eq and reverb.

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#42

Random selection was thanks to a Ruby one-liner :smiley:

Treated this almost as a duet, using the ukelele just as a weird intro sound

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#43

Here’s mine: https://soundcloud.com/plusch/vibe

I didn’t select instruments at random, but I did limit myself to Sugar Bytes’ Thesys, u-he’s Hive 2, and Sonic Charge’s Microtonic. Put it together in Bitwig Studio, and used FabFilter plugs for EQ, compression, and limiting.

4 Likes