#71

Am thrilled to hear the final compilation! listening now, wonderful stuff… :slight_smile:

“For my piece, A Song for Hilma (#5 on the album), I was inspired by the work of Hilma af Klint, both visually and conceptually. Af Klint worked as a biological illustrator, and was also a committed spiritualist, conducting séances and claiming communication with otherworldly entities; her art was strongly influenced by both these seemingly contradictory passions. To invoke the project’s remit of “music based on something other than what we know”, I used (mostly) my own field recordings, as there is much we still do not know about the world we’re in; sounds picked up by NASA probes, for the world beyond; and several recordings of Hildegard von Bingen’s vocal works, played concurrently yet out of sync, representing the many unknowns of the world of the deep past. To guide the composition I used aspects of her abstract paintings to serve as loose graphic scores.”

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#72

Thought I’d talk a little about mine too :wink:

The title of my piece references an article I read earlier called ‘The Insect Apocalypse’ where insect populations around the world have dropped dramatically in recent years due to human-related reasons. I then pondered the idea of how it might sound and feel like from an insect’s perspective.

The base field recording is from the front of my house - the crickets were particularly loud one night! The field recording also picked up some sounds of passing traffic. Then I variously manipulated the field recording using various techniques like time stretching, doppler shifter and panning to get the final piece.

I was hoping to get a somewhat mechanical/drone sound in some of the tracks to get that sense of human intervention and how it was this overpowering presence.

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#73

thanks I will check the books out.
L>

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#74

Dear lumena,
Thank you for explaining your approach to composition. When I listened to your piece the first time, I wrote this: “Beautiful background drone - I’ve been trying to get such a sound with my guitar, but I’m not there yet. Are you using guitar throughout, or just from around 3m30s onwards?” You’ve partly answered my question, but now I’m wondering: are you using guitar pedals before you start working inside Ableton? If so, what’s your set up?

Thank you in advance.

#75

Dear samarobryn,
I really liked your track, and two things especially caught my attention:
(1) I felt like I could hear a kind of “breathing” or quiet exhalation, and
(2) you somehow produced a sort of chugging or grinding guitar sound
How did you create these sounds out of your original field recordings?
Best wishes,
how the night came

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#76

just guitar throughout, no other sound sources.
Short answer… yes pedals 2 fuzzes, an Enzo and a full tone Clyde Wah. More will be coming as I find the right ones, some fly in and out in a couple of days and all the online stores know that I send a lot of things back.

Main echo track is guitar originally tracked with light overdrive (Catalan Bread Karma Suture) into a compressor in Ableton and tails processed are using about 40% Valhalla Shimmer plugin. On the guitar tracks I don’t use busses only direct in channel. Keeps me thinking in stomp box mode. I have also been using Omnisphere to process guitar but so far nothing has actually made it into a track.

All the bleeps and blips are from the creative max pack, using the sequencing delay with various parts of the delay modulated using max LFO’s. There are 2 tracks of randomized echos.

I have been trying lots of stuff - mainly I am finding that it is about distortion and compression especially when tracking. Often I am removing the attack with a volume pedal changing the envelope in real time. The bit where you can actually hear it’s a guitar is using an Enzo pedal at about 30% with filter opened up into a fuzz. I have been spending a lot of time working to get to a simple low cost Fripp type sound. Ever since I read that he did the Heroes lead hook direct into the board I am looking for the combo that gets me there.

Valhalla Reverbs definitely get that Eventide sound and the new Robert Fuzz by Shoe pedal I just received for Christmas should do the rest. I have stopped using amp sims as it is just as easy to shape the sound inside of an EQ. Actually will be selling my Kemper as I am doing better with stompboxes and EQ.
I am lately using the Vintage Eq Plugin in Ozone but sometimes I stack single band cuts on key frequencies. Takes a bit of experimentation but using the Spectrum plugin and using my ears gets me there pretty fast. Cuts are the way to go getting rid of non harmonic overtones.

Christmas spending limited me but by Feb. I should have added an H9 or maybe 2 of them and I am hoping to get https://expeditionelectronics.com/Products/Index 60 second delay but who knows with small builders. After that I am doing everything else in a computer for recording, only using an amp for live things.

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#77

Omigoodness, so much wondrous and beautiful sound from this community! It is a rich privilege to engage and participate with such divergent thinkers/feelers. I am newly inspired with each piece and post and so grateful to hear your processes as well as your outcomes!

I’ve posted in detail about my process here, for those interested, but the one thing I most want to share is that the sounds used in my piece were all sampled from stones in Ringing Rocks Park, PA. (The process of doing so required more athleticism than this aging body was expecting :sweat_smile:.) My intention was to be as faithful to the voices of the stones as possible; my submission was the result of imagining what the stones might do to entertain themselves across the millennia.

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#78

so cool! loved your rock piece :slight_smile:

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#79

I liked your track a lot, and would also be interested i hearing the “full orchestration” one :slight_smile:

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#80

Wow, go away for 2 days and it all happens. Amazing…Listened to about half. great stuff yet again.

#81

How the Stylus feet of the Water Boatmen remix the pond…

"Music for perhaps a terrestrial life form but one which we don’t normally associate with music, e.g., trees or jellyfish?"

The water boatmen sit motionless for minutes or they slowly skid along. The ends of their feet digging into the water’s tough skin- a membrane overloaded by the concerts above and below. These insects performing their own remix as they go.

Each foot a tiny stylus, picking the full on rave of noise within the water and the air noises around. Wavering ripples, air trapped squeals, high squiggles of fidgeting larvae, the thrashing of tadpole tails dominate the water.[mainly divined by 0coast and soft pop synths]

It is kind of primal score in there, written in the algae maybe, its the swamp thing, the rules from which everything must grow. At times the thrashing of tadpole tails dominates, as they contest the right to grow back legs and mature among the oxygenating weed and cross back and forth through the worlds of water and air.

Various versions co exist across each other, gender amphibious thrash beat ,the clogging slime ruthless in what it permits, the dry shuffle of chintinous water boatmen limbs channel it all, adding their own sound, a skritchy-scratchy movement of their styli feet.

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#82

fantastic!
thank you so much, really cool tracks

supercollided-ed sounds from https://www.ableton.com/en/blog/sounds-polish-radio-experimental-studio/
(and vocals) :slight_smile:

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#83

I’ve only had the chance to listen through once so far, but very much in agreement with this.

It’s linked to here: //// musica ignotum : lcrp.solstice.2.2018 ////

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#84

thank you for the detailed reply. the enzo section sounds lush. have been eyeing the h9 for a while!!

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#85

I read your post about your recording method and it was amazing. such a brilliant way of approaching the challenge.

when I read the title of your track, and then heard the sounds emerging, I was instantly put in mind of a fabulous thought from Spinoza:

“Further conceive, I beg, that a stone, while continuing in motion, should be capable of thinking and knowing, that it is endeavoring, as far as it can, to continue to move. Such a stone, being conscious merely of its own endeavor and not at all indifferent, would believe itself to be completely free, and would think that it continued in motion solely because of its own wish. This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined.”

Sorry if it’s a little off topic, but I’m not quite sure what is on topic any more!!

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#86

It’s pretty, eh, striking how metallic the stones sound. I really like the rhythms in the piece.

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#87

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it! To your questions:

  1. Field recording slowed 1200% [Adobe Audition] + Mirage effect [for bit reduction + downsample] [Ableton]

  2. Field recording slowed 1200% run through doppler shifter [Adobe Audition] + Moscow resonator + Dominator distortion VST + Wanderer filter delay [Ableton]

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#88

Thanks for your kind feedback. Love this quote! I’m a psychologist in my day gig and free will, its existence and limitations, and its application are frequent topics in the kind of therapy I conduct. Also, although I was a philosophy minor as an undergraduate, I never read Spinosa directly, but was intrigued by the summaries I read in Durant. Do you have a citation for this?

@otolythe, thanks so much! I have to say I love your handle. Very clever!

Still listening through all the tracks…

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#89

The core doctrine is in Spinoza’s Ethics, although this quote is from his letter to Schuller (letter 58 on page 85 in the following PDF) :

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/spinoza1661.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwj34fzUocDfAhWJWbwKHS3QCu4QFjACegQIBRAB&usg=AOvVaw114KAdkpwJ7Y3ii1TbXvw_

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#90

This week’s Disquiet Junto should be relevant to this group’s interests.

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