#26

I took my trumpet outside to our shed whilst Storm Dennis was starting here in the North of England. I placed my Tascam DR-05 on the floor to record both the external sounds of wind and rain and my trumpet. I had no preconceived ideas of melody and tried to respond to the weather. I wanted it to be as ‘in the moment’ as possible and do it in one take - so excuse the noodling! I left the wind noise distortion in towards the end (about 1min 50secs) - so be prepared!

5 Likes
#27

Went slightly different than instructed… I took a recording of water sloshing irregularly from a drain pipe, In Ableton I then extracted the groove from it, applied it to a drum track full of artificial noises (metal scrapping and banging). Played two piano melodies, applied convolutional reverb to one with the water slosh as the reverb space. Then chopped up the water recording, had it play back via random midi notes, but in the same groove as the original. Finally, added some LFOs that took timing from the water waveforms peaks and applied them to the reverb parameters of the other piano section.

3 Likes
#28

I live in NYC and wasn’t sure I was going to draw much inspiration from nature in the middle of winter. However, I woke up this morning and heard some birds chirping outside my window. So, I decided to record the birds and sound of the quiet morning chill. I made two separate recordings outside the windows of my apartment. One facing the south and one the north. The window facing the backyard was able to catch some chatty birds, while the other side picked up on some sounds of the city in the distance.

I then decided to play them over each other in Ableton. One panned left, one right, and each with their own respective “fluctuating rhythms”. I used those recordings as the bed for a simple, spacious acoustic guitar. It was my attempt to will Spring into fruition.

1 Like
#29

I know it’s a cliche, but I mean how many times remaining do have to see things like this?

A patch on the sun37cv, with the cv outs modifying the vco1 shape and cutoff on the minilogue xd. Aftertouch mapped to lfo1 rate on sub37 and to loo interval on the xd. The string cheese is from Klevgrand’s Hillman.

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#30

I’ve deviated slightly from the prompt: this wasn’t performed outdoors and the composition was created as a result of the process rather than beforehand.

I videoed a nikau palm in the work carpark then took 1024 frames and motion tracked a frond and also a distant tree swaying in what was a fairly stiff breeze. The next process was to take the motion tracking information and convert it into Ableton Live automation envelopes. This was more involved than my hoped-for drag-and-drop and involved writing a Go program to extract the datapoints from Apple Motion’s XML format then a Max4Live patch to allow the resultant data to be recorded as automation. I did this for both the x and y coordinates of the palm frond and the tree.

These envelopes were then used in various ways. I set up instance of HATEFISh RhyGenerator with 32 steps and used the automation envelopes to control the number of beats within the 32 steps, the speed, and the MIDI notes sent. The MIDI information was consumed by two Ableton Tension devices, one of which was arpeggiated having been scaled to my usual Cm.

At the same time a Quanta granulator was being modulated by the same envelopes using a recording of cicadas I recorded on Saturday at our local beach yoga session.

3 Likes
#31

I taped myself having a little jam in the backyard. It’s based on a little tune I’ve had stuck in my head. I’d like to think I came up with it but more likely it’s just a mash up of ideas I’ve heard before. The wind and the pigeons and the plant life made the moment quite tranquil. So tranquil that I forgot to tune my guitar.

Also it’s about time I picked those chillis!

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#32

Like a bagpipe full of bees! :slight_smile:

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#33

I’m pretty sure I’ve got everyone’s SoundCloud tracks in the playlist, but if I’ve missed your so far, lemme know.

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#34

Thanks for this - I’d like to adopt your approach as I feel totally out of my comfort zone on this one! Enjoyed your piece though!

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#35

When I first got the e-mail, I thought this would be easy, because it had been raining steadily for what felt like weeks. Unfortunately, the rain cleared up shortly afterwards, and I was left with trying to figure out what natural rhythms I could use during a very quiet winter.

I ended up going to a wooded area where I live after dark. In the winter this area is VERY quiet and still, but I did manage to find a pond that was frozen over…except for one drainage chute, which seemed to have a torrent of melting water (not entirely sure how, I couldn’t see because it was pretty dark out!)

I set up my zoom recorder, took a few steps back, and then whistled a melody to my phone. The rapidly flowing water had a very steady rhythm at the time, but the zoom seems not to have caught it. Oh well.

I came home and tried to convert the whistled melody to MIDI in Ableton Live, which was a disaster. I ended up figuring out the pitches and and recording it by ear.

I added a small drone underneath it and a very slow LFO at one point to mimic a kick drum and try to recreate the rhythmic aspect of the water sounds. The synth sound comes from the Afro DJ Mac’s “Ice Cold Synths” pack.

A very short photolog:

[Album] Disquiet 0424 - Fluctuating Rhythm
2 Likes
#36

I have to say I love the sound of ocean waves and I just feel it can go with anything.
Not much to my process here. Just thought I would mix in a field recording of ocean waves from St Joseph Peninsula to a new tune I am working on.

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#37

I thought about this a lot and ended up using a barely edited field recording from last week when I was out late walking my dogs and an owl was hooting.

When I’m field recording one rhythm is when to start and stop and in this case that was dictated by the owl - I was waiting for him/her to hoot. I got into the rhythm of their hooting and caught one at the beginning and them one at the end of the recording. The owl set the pace.

Recorded on my street in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA on an iPhone 6S into VoiceMemo and edited for volume in Audition. Sorry for the hiss!

1 Like
#38

recorded on my phone in the garden
the birds think it’s spring
used the kosmische app found a patch that fit, adjusted the cutoff and resonance to the ebb and flow of the birds, wind, and next doors dog

tried to get rid of the traffic noise and wind with audacity noise reduction, and then EQ / reduced the tempo so the wind is a bit more tonal and distorted

2 Likes
#39

You aced the assignment! :smile:

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#40

I didn’t create an entry this week, but I did listen to everyone elses’. I mostly didn’t create one as I didn’t quite find the conductor I wanted. In particular a few days prior it was fairly windy (30mph) and the trees had a distinct and continuous beat which I’d thought would be perfect. I kept a look out but didn’t see such a structured motion and I ran out of time. I considered other sources but felt that the tempo was either too subjective (e.g wind or rain) or that the movement varied too wildly in rate and amplitude for me to meaningfully follow along. This was hard to deal with as my desire was to treat the object as a conductor in as literal a sense as I could.

@brasslens - Despite this being atypical for you I enjoyed it a lot. In fact I’d describe it as the closest to what I’d had in mind of all the submissions (albeit trumpet instead of piano). Nice work!

@pauli - This was surprisingly effective for something so minimal: I don’t think I could bring myself to keep it so sparse (which is a big asset here). I had thought of using birds as a tempo but I found the sounds were so irregular that the tempo was extremely ambiguous meaning the best I felt I could do was generally playing fast or slow. Either way, I like what you did here!

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#41

Thank you - really appreciate your feedback.

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#42

This is excellent. Loved it.

#43

Love the wind distortion on this and how it disrupts things, like a weakened transmission.

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#44

Thank you for listening and commenting. And I agree with you about the @tatecarson piece - that really inspired me to do mine!

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#45

Thanks!

I’ll add that one outcome from this project was sharing the recording on a local Facebook page and stirring memories of the location:

"Across from my parents home lot’s of history on that bridge. I seen you over there first time a guitar has been played there.

“That was where nearly every kid in Leeton swam. Mudfights, fist fights, laughter, tears and many good times were had there. Ask any local aged between 55 and 65 and you will get a smile out of them as they remember the good times at the canal.”

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