Feedback February ~ a lines community project

[jlmitch5]

the return of a fraction of the out
put signal to the input of the same
device the return of a fraction of
the output signal to the input of
the same device the return of a frac
tion of the output signal to the in
put of the same device the return of
fraction of the signal to the of the
same the return of of the signal the
of the the return of the signal the
the the return the signal the the re
turn the the the return the the return
the the the the the the the the the the
the the the the the the the the the the

– @renegog

You can also check out an incredible sampler video that includes snippets of the compilation’s tracks, along with photos and videos from the participants, processed and put together by @lumena

Also thanks to @smbols for the visual art.

---

Back in late January, I started a process thread to share my plans for a creative project I wanted to challenge myself with in the upcoming month–try to create a new piece of art utilizing some sort of new feedback loop each day as a creative technique. The response was supportive and the idea of having a compilation came out of that discussion. After a month of many members sharing ideas and experiments in the thread, I ended up with 15 contributions to the compilation, ranging from minimal drones to harsh noise to peaceful ambient…even a few tracks veering into the pop side of things.

Please ask any questions you might have in this thread. The participants will start sharing more about their tracks here as well.

[bassling]

Good variety of approaches and results. Cheers!

[oot]

I just listened to the whole album and there’s lots of very cool songs and I like how they fit together despite how diverse they all are!

My song:

My track is a collection of a variety of approaches to feedback. I posted something like 17 experiments in that thread and I enjoyed it quite a bit so I wanted the song to reflect as many of them as possible.

The noisy parts of the song are done with a feedback loop of DJ mixer and guitar pedals. I also fed very simple sinewave drum hits into the feedback loop to make it sound vaguely percussive. I also step sequenced the expression inputs on some of the pedals.
It’s kind of inspired by Mick Gordon’s Doom soundtrack in process but ended up sounding more like the power noise artists I grew up listening to.

The glissando sounds are pedal steel guitar feeding back through a Vibesware GR-1, an EBow competitor that sits on a mic stand with a gooseneck. It’s very fickle about what it wants to feed back so I mostly reused short snippets of myself using it.
I also created a bassline out of these recordings by running the signal into a Digitech Freqout in subharmonic mode. The Freqout doesn’t create feedback but it emulates it and sometimes in a strange way, like the dubby wobbles I got on this track.

Later in the track I introduce a vocal effect, which was recorded by using the already recorded vocal as modulator and a microphone feedback loop as carrier while I manipulated settings like EQ and decay time on the vocoder. I really think this technique could be expanded on in some interesting ways.

Towards the end of the song I introduce a “keyboard solo” which was an attempt at a physical modeling patch on my eurorack system using the Synchrodyne’s PLL as clock. The PLL was feed with some upredictable sound sources, causing it to squeal and sputter. I then decided to put autotune on it and it kind of created some T-Pain/Rick Wakeman monstrosity, still sometimes dipping into completely unpitched sputters if you listen closely.

Thanks to everyone else who participated and @jlmitch5 for organizing this and mastering. I had a lot of fun.

[Starthief]

Listening to the album now and really loving the vibe here

…

My track “Two Five Twenty” was a hardware/software feedback loop with Mosky Spring Reverb, Red Panda Tensor, Bitwig pitch shifter, Hornet Thirty-One (auto-EQ to keep resonances from blowing out too much) and Bitwig Peak Limiter.

Injected into that is Hertz Donut mk2 through Ripples bandpass, with pitch controlled by 16n Faderbank quantized to 4ths and slewed by Teletype.

Sometimes it goes through 2x Rings (with different settings on each and negative frequency offsets for lo-fi reverb/delayish effects), crossfading dry vs wet and Rings 1 vs Rings 2.

It was all processed through Arturia Reverb Plate-140, and Wavesfactory Cassette to turn some of the harsher distortion into more tape-like saturation.

[smbols]

Awesome to see this all put together! I’ll be listening through while I work today.

My track, “Laboratory Ambience,” was made using a modular system. I wanted to see how I could take a very basic source sound, a droning sine wave oscillator, and make it interesting by feeding it into a complex feedback loop.

The loop consisted of a matrix mixer, triangle to sine wave shaper, asymmetric overdrive, a delay clocked to the droning oscillator, and a reverb. I modulated the delay time, overdrive, and oscillator pitch with some very subtle LFO’s.

Once that loop was established, I tapped it at a certain point and fed the signal to a comparator which triggered a simple Karplus-Strong voice whenever the drone hit a certain amplitude. The pitch of the Karplus-Strong voice was controlled by a sample and hold, also being fed the original feedback loop, but tapped at a different point in the chain.

[nonsmeddy]

My process was essentially the same as the last thing I posted in the thread. I started with a Klein Bottle mixer pedal with both channels of Space reverb and a Tensor as its three fx loops, signal tapped with a stereo DI box and fed back into input. I don’t remember what sorts of settings or which Space algorithm I used this time.

I made a fairly long recording at 192kHz, then slowed it by a factor of 4 and downsampled to 48kHz. I chose three excerpts from that recording and layered them together in Live with two send tracks, the second of which also fed back into itself. The second send contained a compressor sidechained to the first/drier send track, an Echo device with its own internal feedback automated between 150% and 68% over the course of the song, and an envelope follower modulating an assortment of things: keeping the levels from exploding, pushing the L/R offset of the Echo further apart, attenuating the highs on one of the source tracks.

In general, I’d been trying to help each piece compose itself, as far as looking for different behaviors and then trying to arrange for them to happen while keeping out of each other’s way, sonically, to some extent, at least, so to speak, if you’ll pardon my, etc.

My boyfriend walked by holding the cat in his arms and “Bariscum” popped into my head. I don’t know what it means, ask the cat.

[renegog]

Thanks @jlmitch5 for starting this and for all your work, and everyone who contributed really enjoyed listening through to everyone’s songs. This prompt led to many experimentations with different ideas of “feedback” both literal, as in my track here, and less literal ways of thinking about the modular instrument as interacting with itself. It made me consider my role in this interaction in new ways.

My track here, is based around Cold Mac and a matrix mixer. I had CM patched up as a compressor (envelope following the drumbeat sample) with the output fed back through the MM into another CM input. It sounds a little bit like I might have been routing some of the feedback through Three Sisters too but I’m not sure exactly—I should’ve snapped a pic or taken notes on this particular patch >_<

The poem is pretty self explanatory I think, but it’s a definition of “feedback” which disintegrates into noise, in the form of a Shakespearian love sonnet that’s romance!

[rycolos]

This came out really wonderful.

My track (Ryan LaLiberty) — The core of the patch was an R*S Resonant EQ. Honestly, I don’t remember the rest of the details and I’m terrible at taking notes, but I’d venture an estimated guess that I was controlling Res EQ feedback with VCAs, sending it noise and sine as sound sources, and doing all sorts of Maths CV processing as the patch unfolded.

[ringsandrocks]

Thanks so much for making this happen @jlmitch5 and everyone who put the album and video together! I love the way you’ve made the tracks flow into each other to make a coherent album journey out of our separate work.

My track (Lake - Liam Elliot) is based around feeding back through a string resonator that I built. I posted some information and pictures here:
Feedback February (compilation finished!)
Feedback February (compilation finished!)

To play the track I was muting, releasing, and occasionally plucking strings on my resonator while finding different harmonics and resonances using Three Sisters. I love releasing single strings at a time and finding the new partials that each one has with the filter. If I remember correctly I had Centre in the feedback loop, with Low and High going to Morphagene then Mimeophone. I used Morphagene to create a lower, textural bed after recording the first minute.

[jlmitch5]

When I sat down to make my track, I was in an emotional mood and wanted to play the guitar loud…so that’s what I did lol. I ran it through the reel in feedback to create an echo, and overdubbed some various in-key synth elements with techniques I had come up with during my feedback feb experiments (mangrove -> 3 sisters -> fed back into mangrove air with CCW attenuverter, various warps feedback patching).

[papernoise]

I have yet to give this a more focused listening, but from the video it seems like this turned out reallty well! great work everyone!
I like the idea of a video sampler by the way!

[grainoise]

Great stuff ppl! Just registered here because the feedback thread. Looking forward to hear more stuff.