#21

This week’s project is one of my all-time favorites. Given over 100 short audio files containing vocalizations of various vowels, syllables, and occasional other things, from dozens of different voices, we were given the task to weave these into a composition.

With the exception of some transposition towards the end of the piece, I chose not to modify the character original material in any way. What I did do was write a set of scripts which chose randomly from those files and figured out how to generate randomly-varying loops within the files in order to allow any one of them (I did have to skip anything shorter than one second) to be extended to an arbitrary length. Then from that script, I built big, chordal sections where all the voices begin as the same moment (up to 42 parts at one point!), and other sections where the parts overlap and weave in and out over time.

The increasing transposition (up and down) of the sounds gradually distorts them in some disturbing ways. Pretty early on, I thought of this as a vocal requiem, and structured it to reflect the austere, ceremonial nature of such a work.

All sounds were processed, mixed, and virtually placed in a 3-d sound environment using the RTcmix software toolkit.

11 Likes
#22

This small piece is composed of a random sample of these vocal samples.

Via use of Abletons Sampler with different computational random selections (the new Chordimist Max thingy) and arpeggiations, the vocal rhythms have been created - and then sliced and diced via Sinevibes and Native Instruments plugins. Finally, a few rhythmic elements and a single chord has been added.
No tuning etc of the voices have been done (and no animals harmed in the process)

5 Likes
#23

Creepy track, great video that looks like a David Lynch Self Portrait on Super8.
Reading your accompanying text I seem to recognize my own endeavours, awkwardness,doubts and giddy feeling while working my own track.
I decided that working with vocal samples produces a peculiar state of mind that blurs everything in the composer’s path. A bunch of vocal samples is like a sonic mushroom to mee.

2 Likes
#24

Incredible! Was that everyone?

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#25

I don’t really use samplers. I mean, I use big sample libraries sure. But I’ve not loaded samples into something labeled a sampler in decades. And so the exercise was somewhat freeing, because I decided to keep not loading samples into something labeled a sampler.

So I wrote a bunch of python code which (basically) figured out the fundamental frequency of every 512 sample block of almost every one of the dischoirs (a few really non-pitched ones I excluded). This gave me a complete frequency map where I could pull the samples i wanted by frequency, pick them at random, etc. I did a bit of analytics and rubber banding to make some re-tuned copies to fill in some holes in the frequency space too. The code is all available in my GitHub, although it’s an iPython notebook and as such, a bit of mess. But it makes music!

But In effect, it’s an instrument. When you “play” c4 for some time period, I randomly hunt through the set of samples on a 512-sample block level to find a sample which is roughly 261.63hz, then expand around it to make a long enough sample, then send that out to the stream. Sometimes the frequency detection is wrong; sometimes the note drifts during duration. So it goes!

The bit of music I intended to make was the first prelude from the Well Tempered Clavier, and I actually worked that out and it sounded pretty good. I ended up intersecting with that music several times this week. I won’t bore you with that here, but if that sort of thing interests you I have a tinyletter at tinyletter.com/baconpaul

But then I heard the sad news that Neil Peart had died. That changed my plan some late on Friday night.

And so I’d like to share with you “The Well Tempered Dys-Qyr-Z (disquiet0419)”

12 Likes
#26


ORCA sox csound
sample files:
abalone–oo-ahah-um.wav
adlez27–w3b.wav
‘Patricia Wolf Dischorus Ohhh.wav’
(and a shaker)
pitched and chorus on some in sox
samples on seperate midi channels in a .csd
been thinking about fifteen second video loops
as 'the track (art product) lately
sometimes it can seem epic,
and then when it loops a few times,
it changes the way the whole thing moves,
what it means…
here’s a link:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B7L77B1Jq9N/?igshid=1r9yppc4lkaye
won’t make the playlist this week,
that’s cool, thanks, glad to be here

6 Likes
#27

Thank you @samarobryn, but no!! I simply couldn’t resist sampling @Jet, and then I lifted one second from the very end of @patriciawolf’s submission. That’s it.

However, everyone contributed in a different way. As I was listening to all the samples, the hiss and static and hum in the background of our recordings put me in mind of a certain classic radio friendly song. From his comment on SoundCloud, I know that @DeDe worked out which song it is.

The “Recording” section on Wikipedia blew my mind. The band made four metre long tape loops…

6 Likes
#28

Took one sample of every contribution and joined them together on a track in Cubasis. Added copious amounts of Eventide Blackhole and 4Pockets Shimmer. Imported into Borderlands Granular. By then it was reminding me of a 1970’s Friday night British horror movie (don’t ask me why?) so I added some mellotron type strings and organ from the Streetlytron app. I think it is over the top but hey…just gotta go for it! Thanks again for an inspiring idea!

10 Likes
#29

Excellent! I was hoping for a ‘Midsommar’ vibe and even got out recorders and bells, but didn’t use them.

I decided that working with vocal samples produces a peculiar state of mind that blurs everything in the composer’s path. A bunch of vocal samples is like a sonic mushroom to mee.

That’s awesome! I think, just as mushies will give a ‘back to nature’ vibe, working with vowels is like going back to where music began.

This could be the start of a vowel movement!

2 Likes
#30

I was terribly excited about this project and was thrilled with all the wonderful samples. With so many, though, and my limited time to participate, I really had to just grab the ones that grabbed me (I hope to mess around with the others later). The result surprised me, but maybe reflected some of the dark stuff in my head of late (I mean, that’s how art works, right?).

I did very little manipulation of the samples other than chopping and balancing dynamically. I was surprised at how little repitching was necessary – almost zero except in the chorus at the end and even that required less than I expected. The biggest changes I made to any voices apart from that were adding a 8va down doubling to one, HP filtering out some noise in another, and then reverb added liberally across the tracks.

I look forward to listening to others’ contributions over the next few days!

https://soundcloud.com/circlingcrows/disquiet0419

(For whatever reason, I have been unable to embed a player widget from SC for some time, thus the plain hyperlink.)

5 Likes
#31

I wanted to be able to “play” as many voices from the choir at once with each voice on an individual key. I was unsure how to do this, and got some help from Dave Hilowitz who makes his own sfz sample instruments (thanks Dave! Check out his site, linked below), he showed me how to write a simple sfz pad and play the samples using the sforzando plugin.

I assigned each sample a random number from 00-59 and then mapped those files to the corresponding midi key and everything panned from extreme left to right manually. None of the samples were grouped by note or person, so I was hitting random chords and getting some really interesting clusters of notes. With some minor editing, this is essentially what I played.

I have also uploaded the sfz pad I made along with 60 voice samples (edited from the original versions to be in mono, match velocity and blend together better) to my google drive, if you’re interested in playing around with it too:

And here’s David Hilowitz’s site:

Photo by JR Korpa

12 Likes
#32

That was what I wanted to do, but I had no idea how to go about it. If you have time, could you share a bit more about the process please? (Don’t worry if you’re too busy!!)

1 Like
#33

Not at all! The quick version is I watched Dave’s video on the topic, which explains everything along with the links you need: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmTmy6Byx6g&feature=youtu.be

If you download the zip I provided in my notes, you’ll find the .sfz file I created along with the samples I used - you just need to install sforzando plugin (it’s free - I had to use an older version 1.81 because my Ableton is too old) and drag-n-drop the .sfz file into the plugin and you’re good to go.

The hardest part was literally just copying and pasting the lines of code in the .sfz file which was just tedious more than anything. I kept the file labeling system very basic. I was surprised how easy it was.

3 Likes
#34

@LeeRosevere Thanks so much. I’ll check it out when I’m back home!!

2 Likes
#35

Heh my silly contribution was me with a terrible cold figuring all I could try was throat singing. Am sure the fundamental is all over the show but I was pleasantly surprised by the volume of the overtones at least!

3 Likes
#36

I did this, which was both what was intended and nothing like what was expected :slight_smile:

4 Likes
#37

This is the optimal outcome.

6 Likes
#38

Before proceeding, I chose to look up the definition of “choral music.” I also searched the term in my preferred music streaming service to obtain some examples. Satisfied that I had some leeway, I audited all of the samples consecutively, and pushed them around in Reaper. I soon realized that this would be fun, and that it could go anywhere.

I plucked a few samples from here and there, added some midi instruments, and the piece developed somewhat quickly (relative to my usual pace). The bed is a band-pass equalized ambient recording captured at Drummysgroin while working on the project. Interior. It’s good to get this out there.

My intentions shifted from attempting a piece with complexity, schizo-layered with fragments of things I had been working on already in different keys and time signatures. I had also decided I wanted to make the next mournful thing, reflecting my own feelings lately. This inclination carried the day. When I come to a point during the work that I well up and shiver a bit, I know I’ve done what I’m supposed to do.

Thank you to all of the Junto members who submitted samples; you contributed to the total palette. I used roughly nine of them. I know who some of you are, but I inadvertently overwrote a couple of file names in the process of gluing items to fit the time selection.

8 Likes
#39

Thanks so much for everybody who took the effort to provide these samples - it’s been fun working with them!

My approach was to select some of my favourite samples, and prepare by creating a looped version of each. I then transferred them to modules with sample playback capability on my modular system. The looped ones create a slowly moving bed with the non-looped ones triggered at different pitches with a short envelope. I encountered a lot of nice ideas while playing with this setup and I hope at least some of these are captured in my upload.

Looking forward to hearing everyone else’s submissions.

3 Likes
#40

I always liked that song in my youth as one of the MOR radio singles that had some salt and pepper. But a while ago , when I heard the cover by Diana Krall, I went back to the original after decades and it blew my mind how mysterious, dreamy and hazy it sounded. Wanted to know why/how and I ended up on a Youtube “making of” and that Wikipedia page. Amazing how they did it. Painstakingly fearless with imagination and patience. And now we think that with a mouse, two clicks and paulstrech we are the baddest experimentalists…

2 Likes