#25

Absolutely love the ending! :joy:

2 Likes
#26


This is real muzak, rather generated than composed, and intended to evoke the unnerving quality of all hold music.
Generated in Ableton live with Glitch and Wash packā€™s Technical Glitch Kit and Dr Chaos with Pink House Blues plus Tweezy Tape effect.
This is a loop.

2 Likes
#27

sorry wrong track: https://soundcloud.com/user-317443894/hold-noise-disquiet-424

1 Like
#28

Hey All, I had originally started out working on a track for the Stones Throw Beat Battle but when I heard the Hank Williams track as one of the samples I thought it would be great for a hold song. So using chops and midi conversion I added tracks and synths to it and then slowed it down. I ad-libed some lines to get the feel of those voices that come on and tell you to keep waiting. It is kinda funny. It is as if some companyā€™s want you to hang up because the sound quality is so bad.

Peace, Hugh

1 Like
#29

I slightly modified the assignment (read: I misunderstood it at first and did something different) to portray how even a more-orā€“less okay piece of music can be degraded and subverted by being used as aural mogadon by a call centre, especially if youā€™ve been listening for 40 minutes and your ears are bleeding.

2 Likes
#30

Exactly! It amused me to see them both turn up in my SoundCloud feed consecutively :grinning:

3 Likes
#31

Great prompt. I created a beat that reminded me of those insta-rhythms that keyboards had when I was a kid, played a harmonic organ bit over top of it, and then I did whatever I could to degrade and defile it. For the tune, I thought how polynesian hold music would be imagined by a Music on Hold writer who had never been to, read of, or even given a shit about that part of the world aside from the tropical drink recipes they could provide.

2 Likes
#32

This is what itā€™s like to be in my head when Iā€™m on hold with [pick a bureaucracy or corporate entity].

Iā€™m old enough to remember the sounds of modems. Now they show up in nostalgic clickbait and the dang kids canā€™t identify the angular screeching. Jokeā€™s on them, when I was your age I used to have to dial long distance to download the shareware version of Quake from a BBS.

So, the title, DTMF. Dual-tone multi-frequency signaling (DTMF) is a telecommunication signaling system used by telephone systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-tone_multi-frequency_signaling

Each tone is a superimposition of two sine waves; for example, 5 is 1336 Hz and 770 Hz. I experimented with generating my own tones, but that frankly was a pain. It worked, but given the timeline Iā€™d rather do something more efficient. Instead, I found recordings of all the DTMF keypad frequencies. I loaded them into Kontakt along with some historical modem handshakes. Feel free to download the resulting NKI

Gear

  • Cockos REAPER v6.03/x64 (recording)
  • Blue Yeti USB Microphone
  • Magix SOUND FORGE Audio Studio Pro 12.6 (mastering)
  • Native Instruments KOMPLETE KONTROL S61 (input)

Instruments

  • Native Instruments Kontakt 6 - DTMF (Null Confluence) - custom
    • Glitchmachines Fracture - II_HAARP
    • Native Instruments Replika - Wormhole
  • (My Voice)
    • Cockos ExpressFX Noise Gate - Custom preset to suppress toddler in the other room
    • Glitchmachines Hysteresis - IL_DaedDub
  • Arturia Solina V2 - Warm Blanket
  • (Master)
    • Reaktor 6 - VHS_1.12 - 1980s Pawn Shop
    • Cockos ReaEQ - Custom present

Attribution

3 Likes
#33

Snap. Glad youā€™re being honest about this - the joke is on us!! I remember waiting patiently for over an hour to download a 20mb audience recording of a Secret Chiefs 3 track. Oh the memoriesā€¦

4 Likes
#34

Last week I had the opportunity to record the hold music for SadCo while it was suffering from a midi-based DDoS attack.

Summary

Sick kids this week so everything was via the iPad. This was made using a combination of @junklightā€™s Autony and Cality apps. Cality does a lot of stuff but especially neat is itā€™s ā€œcloudā€ section which (according to the description) is granular synthesis, but for midi notes. Here I had it sending a randomly modulated clouds of looping 1/256th notes across a couple octaves to AudioDamageā€™s Continua synth. Most synth apps will sound very unmusical (to me), but Continua can hang. The cloud of midi notes is what is producing a lot of the crunchy white noise.

I recorded a bunch of this, and then chopped a bit of it and re-played it back in AUM verrry slowly and sent through a bunch of compressors, filters, and limiters, including Bark Filter which has a pre-set called ā€œTelephoneā€ and does pretty much exactly what you expect it to.

2 Likes
#35

Didnā€™t have a ton of time this weekend but this was a quick cheesy sounding track put together in Gadget.

1 Like
#36

Track was marked up and filtered using Logic Pro X. Wav was then chopped, slowed down, sped up, and timbre adjusted using a granular-ish technique in Supercollider.

1 Like
#37

Really enjoyed this one, super happy with the result. All softsynths in Ableton, used mostly the Singularities pack and one of the free kick samples Ableton released recently. I then whacked some Erosion and Redux on both individual tracks and the master.
The recording at the start is by husky70 on Freesound.

2 Likes
#38

In listening, I wasnā€™t sure exactly if it was hold music, but I did really enjoy it. A nice mix of glitch, texture, rhythm and vocals. In fact if hold music was like this the world would be a better place.

1 Like
#39

Another track that feels like you really hit the subject on the nose. Classic cheesy music with equally cheesy dialogue: Great work!

1 Like
#40

had an old track running thru chorus, podfarm, vinyl and reverb
saved it as a 32k mp2 for some nice artefacts
the original did kinda sound holdy but its pretty distorted

3 Likes
#41


I wanted the hold music to be repetitive, slightly out of sync and to include pizzicato strings, so I used three MIDI drum loops in odd time signatures (7/8, 9/8 and 12/8) and three presets from Corin Neffā€™s Zebra Orchestra.

I recorded the hold message and used Freakshow Industries Backmask to garble the speech by reversing alternating sections. The message repeats four times, and each time the reversals happen at different points.

Allover distortion is provided by MeldaProduction MWaveFolderMB.

1 Like
#42

Futzy, crooked, untimely aberations. 90ā€™s existential voicemachine.

Great assignment! Hold music always sound out of context and no one ever bothers to make sure it loops properly, usually the edit is very jarring and it seems the OEM music library that all systems use stopped developing somewhere in the 90ā€™s. The idea is music, but itā€™s effectively just feedback noise.

I would have liked to add some voice messages to the track, but time was short and I just went with it.

I had some automation fun with a Bitcrusher, NIā€™s free Raum reverb and a softsynth. It evolved from sounding harsh to zen in the machine calmness.

1 Like
#43

I used some recorded text from a voicemail about getting things delivered, which has been an annoying process for us. Made several tracks in iOS Garageband and added overdrive, etc. Took it into Borderlands and made granular noise and added that to the Garageband mix.

Image is from a drawing of an Armenian flag.

Thanks!

1 Like
#44

1970s hold machine does a number on the organ

Sub37. Minilogue xd. Aftertouch mapped to various destinations. In memory of Jack McCall, talk show host and morning news anchor on KNOE in the late 60s who played a Hammond B-3 in the early morning commercial breaks.

Oops- I posted the wrong version of this track. It is updated now. Didnā€™t have the attack on the organ right.

2 Likes