As I was playing with VLC, I realized I liked the sounds I got by making heavy use of the space bar in between fast forward skips, and backward skips. The final track is 3 unmodified layers of samples generated by glitching my disquiet tracks like that.
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For this project I first had the idea to use the oldest tracks I could think of, made in Fruity Loops - later FL Studio - in the late nineties. I managed to find a CD but no drive that could read it. So I went through what I had on my PC and chose a recording from Jamuary. I skipped forward 1 sec at around 130 bpm. Rather by accident this resulted in something listenable, even if the recording (via screen recording) had quite a few artifacts.
I then added some of the field recording I used in the original track, a few synth notes and some delay.
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After thinking about this for too long I came up with a patch in bespoke synth for manually skipping through 32 cues in the sample player to playback some modular feedback (original recording 11minutes). This went into UAās lo-fi asā¦ and into wires vst. I played along with kontakt and Auraās voices.
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I tried using VLC player to scrub through my tracks but I found it seemed a bit laggy to respond to my ffwd key presses making it hard to create a good rhythm. In the end I created a patch in Forester, using a random selection of 6 of my tracks, overlapping to create cross fades where they intersected.
The patch would scrub through the tracks at different paths, rates and sized chunks and select a chunk to send to the audio buffer. I did this 3 times, once with an automated path, one with a random jittery scrub and one where I manually controlled the path of the scrub. These 3 tracks were mixed in Logic, some minor editing with muting and reverb added.
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I found an old recording of Debussyās Syrinx that I made for an audition in high school, and played around with the fast-forward on VLC. Since itās such a short piece (about 2 minutes), I found that it worked best to press fast-forward more slowly ā I went with every 3 seconds. One amusing thing was that the first two phrases of the piece (which start the same way) were about 10 seconds apart on the recording, so the first fast-forward takes you to the same place you left off, except one phrase later.
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I didnāt want to install VLC and then have the problem how to record it. But I had the idea to use Sonic Pi for emulating the behaviour. I havenāt used the software for quite a while, so it was a good incitement to start again.
I wrote a simple algorithm which plays a snippet of a certain length of a sample and then jumps forward a certain time. For emulating the process I added randomness to the length of the sample and the jump. I tried out several of my tracks of the last weeks and liked the effect on Finnish Movies should always end with Hope most.
While debugging the algorithm I inserted a pause between the different snippets of the audio. I liked the effect so much that I kept it for the track - even if this doesnāt reproduce the VLC. I added delay and reverb to fill the holes.
Then I ācorrectedā the algorithm and produced an audio with other parameters, skipping through the track rather fast like VLC supposedly does. Then I created another version, pitched an octave higher already by Sonic Pi. I cut these two audios into 3 respectively 4 pieces and arranged them along the first audio. The additional tracks were also treated with delay and reverb, the stereo-width was also changed.
Then I spent some time on eq-ing the resultā¦
I really like this track consisting only of the three versions of stepping through the original track. Again a wonderful new inspiration how to create music.
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With this kind of thing, it can quickly become chaotic, or - if you adjust it too much - too dry. What Iāve attempted here is to keep it slightly just over the edge, hopefully not very predictable but still somewhat musical. Imported the skipping track back into Ableton to add some side-chain gated heavily reverbed arps here and there.
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An abstract ambient track of around 9:30 was the source, from a 4 track EP I made a few years back using only the Reaktor Ensemble āWestā, a simple Buchla-inspired instrument made by Icaro Ferre.
https://www.native-instruments.com/en/reaktor-community/reaktor-user-library/entry/show/8123/
Iād usually use one of my tape machines for this but felt like doing it digitally this time so itās all made in Bitwig.
-Sliced the original track in half bar intervals then only kept one out of every 3 to drop the track to just over 3 minutes. Pulled all the remaining slices together and bounced the result, leaving the clicks from slicing as a rhythmic element.
-Added a reversed version of this which you can hear panning left and right.
-Added some found percussion recorded with various farm machinery on my in-laws property.
-Added a few simple, improvised tonal elements, largely made from my own samples with one patch I made for U-He Zebra, the melodic counterpoint to the analog bass.
All the reverbs but one are the Bitwig Convolution with some of my own IRs, the chopped original track and reversed copy have a glitchy Bitwig delay patch I made and a little airy Madrona Aaltoverb on them, grouped. The kick uses one of my factory presets from Unfiltered Audio Tails.
I hope the mix is ok, all done on my headphones which donāt always give the right perspective.
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Took a look at my own soundcloud and found an old song, which if i remember correctly, i probably recorded via the macbook mic when i got my gleaming grimey new $8 ebay casio mt-200, you can even hear me fat-fingering the keys, some breathing, and cars passing by in the original.
For this messy, strange (spooky?) concoction, i skipped forward about once a second in soundcloud directly, piped to ableton, looped a few times, added a slice of another old soundcloud song for extra drums (which i donāt even remember recording!), and also added a long take with an op-1 chopped/re-assembled into random chunks. Bathed everything with a mess of glitchmachines/delay/shimmer, and so it goes. As usual for me, mixing isā¦ not one of my strengths.
The original track is here:
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Thanks Marc another great and frankly challenging prompt.
I started in soundcloud and discovered I was able to use the arrows to scrub tracks. Bonus.
I scrubbed through a few without much thought. Dismissing the one I ultimately used because the bass drum was so prominent. I loaded the result into Logic for a lot of disappointment.
Back to soundclound this time I was a bit more musical in my arrow tapping. I was also able to go forwards and backwards creating some thing loosely like a loop. I tried this out on my recent house track and pretty much avoided the bits with the bass drum if possible.
Back into Logic where I edited up a bit of a rhythm sound bed. I had a vocal sample from Jude I wanted to use and an idea for a bassline which I had borrowed from Chuck Rainey ( Josie ). I added some synths, some Forrester and some other random bits I had lying around like a bell and an om from an old cassette.
I needed to treat the F9 material in parts as it was too random so I added some STFU in parts to bring it into line. It is there throughout sometimes on multiple tracks but heavily treated. I left a portion I called the solo in the middle where its doing its thingā¦
Lots of sculpting, moving stuff around until we got to here. A few times I was going to throw in the towel on this one but I am glad now, I finished it.
Edit.
Here is a video I made for the track.
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hello.
after some difficulty, i found this tutorial and, using audacity, recorded myself using vlc to fast-forward through a 22-minute piece from an unreleased 2006 ep that iād recently unearthed called synthetic rust.
i brought the recording into bitwig studio and put it on 4 different tracks. two i reversed. i put the reversed tracks through dedalus delay, looperator (i got the idea from @xiiixxi mentioning it) and sparkverb. the other two tracks went through efx fragments, effectrix, and mangledverb.
i wasnāt really in love with the result as it didnāt really have the glitchiness iād normally associate with skipping through a track, so i ended up just sticking audio damageās newly released replicant3 on the master channel.
so weāve now got about 7 minutes of glitchy noise that makes for rather tough listening. i decided to take this output and replace the original fast-forwarded recordings in bitwig with it, but otherwise put it through the same processing. however this time i added eos2 and other desert cities to the master chain so it had the makings of a much nicer more ambient piece. i then started messing around with the ācreativeā presets in lifeline console/expanse and came up with this nice talking effect, which i accentuated by putting it through audiothingās the orb. i then added in unfiltered audioās silo because it felt a bit static. iām a lot happier with this version though i may still post (or rework) the glitch/noise one at some point.
iād like to do a bit more with this but iām running out of time. as i write this itās getting on for 7pm here, and i have other things that need doing besides music work tonight, so i think iām going to have to call it done.
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Sandy Shores was originally a voice memo recorded in the summer of 2016. The recording features myself on the congas and two other musicians on guitar and synthesizer (there might be a few bass notes featured as well).
After finding the VLC media player extension unsatisfactory, I decided to use the flex time function in Logic to create a fast forward effect. This resulted in the congas resembling a doumbek/darbuka. Seeing that the tempo was tripled, the duration of the song dropped from fifteen to five minutes. Five minutes was still too long for my liking, so I then trimmed it down to three minutes and 40 seconds by cutting the repetitive sections.
Upon returning to the track the next day, I completely soured on what I had recorded and nearly scrapped the song. However, the guitarist who appears on Sandy Shores had expressed his approval in releasing the song, so I felt an obligation to finish it off. To grow more satisfied with Sandy Shores, I applied the axiom of addition by subtraction, and ultimately brought the song down to just 45 seconds in length. The final product now amounts to a sped up highlight reel of the 15 minute jam.
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Sorry for breaking the rules and being so terribly lateā¦ only got a moment this morning.
Downloaded the VLC player and then I did several VLC scratches with an older voice track of mine for Disquiet Junto (DroneVox 0584) and then made loops of it and sing (or should I say scream) on top of it and added delay, and tried different EQs on each track and automated the fades.
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