#30

Really, really nicely done. So engaging. The guitar cut up works a treat. And the soft synth bed pulls things together in a pleasantly woozy way.

#31

https://soundcloud.com/ohm-research/anthologie-disquiet-0242

I don’t really have any special knowledge or tricks. Three years ago, after an economic hardship that I brought upon myself, I started working on sound design again after a long layoff. During my time away, I sold almost all of my hardware—Arp 2600’s, Korg MS-20, 909, 808, SH-101’s—many great pieces. All I really had to work with was a computer and the often-maligned program Acid. So, I learned to create in a linear fashion with software for the first time. This piece is a representation of what I learned from the experience. Fades, dynamic panning, barely controlled distortion, juxtaposition, etc. At my age, 60, I have a lifetime of musical experiences to draw from: my parents 16 rpm Guy Lombardo records, seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, Jimi Hendrix on Dick Cavett, knowing Woodstock was happening and also knowing there was no way I was getting there from southeastern Ohio, hearing Kraftwerk on the local AM radio station, and, in 1973(or '74?), playing around with a MiniKorg at the local music store. If I allow myself to wax a bit, it all led to where I am with my attitude, approach, and assessment of what it means at this point in my life.

6 Likes
#32

Those synth strings were a pleasant surprise for me too. I was thinking of doing more of a cliche trap string part, and was scrolling through Ableton instrument presets trying to find the right sound. I stumbled on this one instead.

#33

https://soundcloud.com/user-651760074/frontdisquiet0242

Disquiet 0242
Couldn’t help it…had to use some samples and inspiration from Front 242, for obvious reasons :slight_smile:
The tricks here are probably new to no one, but they can be used to pretty good effect still. For the reverb fade ins you take your sound of choice, reverse it and add a nice longer reverb. Bounce that with the tail, reverse the bounce and add before original sound. They need to crossover, so sometimes it’s easier to make a new track with same effects as original sound. The minor tip is copying regions to new tracks but using different eq’s and effects to add depth and dimension, sometimes changing pan slightly helps even more.
The samples used were the vocals on Front 242-Headhunter where they conveniently count up numbers. The music is mine(based on their sound) and made with Cubasis, Patterning, Audioshare and Oceanaudio. I used the above techniques on vocals and Micrologue synths.

More on this 242nd weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Make (and annotate) a track that provides an example of a trick/skill/tip you want to share about a piece of musical software or hardware” — at:

http://disquiet.com/0242/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

3 Likes
#34

Modular 3XAOS

This is a technique I’ve developed over the years and use as the basis of many a self-generative analog modular patch.

There are two main features:
a) Three LFOs each modulating the next in a loop - this produces widely varying rhythm and structure
b) A varying control voltage run through a three stage sample and hold shift register, so that the pitches of three sources change in a cascade

There is some additional “old skool” digital delay added in the middle for that “electronic music studio” sound.

Album of close up pictures of the patch
Track on SoundCloud

2 Likes
#35

You can do this in Ableton:

  • put a simple delay on a send, set the feedback to 0, dry/wet 100%
  • add the effect you want “in the loop” after the delay on this same send track
  • set a an audio track to take audio from the send track, post FX; set monitor to In; set audio to Sends Only – this is the feedback track
  • send some source material (on another track) to the send
  • slowly turn up the send to the send track from the feedback track

Tada…

Moving the effect pre or post the delay, or moving the delay or the effect to the feedback track gives different versions of when the feedback effect happens.

Enjoy!

1 Like
#36

I was waiting for someone to use Front 242! nice track, sounds like a cabaret voltaire remix or something. That reverb trick was used a lot back then, record a smash through the reverb onto 1/4" tape turn it around and splice it in (have to measure the length to keep the tempo though!
x gus

#37

I’ve seen them once in Brussels (live) and I believe they were using a drum machine along with a real drummer

#38

Something you might like to try is to set up two harmonizers and send them to different speakers (hard panning, and manipulating the feedback by moving a directional microphone between them. Here’s an example from the late 80s: http://www.echonyc.com/~jhhl/Mp3/Harmonic%20Feedback.mp3

#39

My first post in Lines;)

  • In working with Ambient music and Sound Design, we are often creating drones and otherwise mangling samples. The method I wanted to show was that you don’t need to just work with a single sound source (sample).
  • Paul Stretch in Audacity, Ambient_v0.3, The Mangle, and on an iPad - iDensity, csGrain, and Borderlands examples of software I use for this purpose.
  • I will often create a number of tracks e.g. 2 - 20 and mix them to my liking. Then I will do a mix down (hence the title - Vertical for multiple tracks and a mix down in LogicPro is a Bounce)and take the result and run it through any of the software listed above.
  • The result can be a new track/sound/drone with much more character than a drone made from a single source. So instead of creating a bunch of drones and combining them, you are working in reverse order - combining a number of sounds/tracks and creating a drone from it.
  • In this piece, I created four tracks: synth sequence, bass and two ambient sounds. I bounced those and then created two drone like tracks. The first was created by running the bounce through ambient_v0.3 (a more swishing sound) and the second using Paul Stretch (a more choral sound).
  • The piece open with the 2nd drone and the 1st drone is brought in briefly twice with automation.
  • The original four tracks can be heard by themselves at 0:37 - 0:47. Then the 1st drone is faded in - full at 1:04. Then the 2nd drone is faded in at 1:17.
  • A couple of notes:
    • Most of the software mentioned will add harmonics so if your original bounce has tones in the 5Khz range, you may need to EQ the top end of some of your creations (as I did in this case), because the 15 - 20Kz range could get annoying.
    • This source ran through a I, bIII, V progression, but you can also just keep the source in a single note range, or whatever you want.
    • If there is something you don’t like in the result, you can either EQ it (massage it) or go back to the original tracks and modify them to generate a different result.
    • Think big. There have been a couple times where I created a piece, and it just wasn’t good enough. I took the whole mix down and ran it through something else and came out with a piece which was much better.
3 Likes
#40

For this weeks Junto I have two techniques I wanted to share. They are both in the same song and were part of a video project for One Track Mine. I used Brian Eno’s Apollo album as my source. The video was inspired by the Rosetta project a few years back, the orbit and landing on a moving comet. I took a clip of the first few seconds of each track on the album and loaded them onto separate tracks in Cubasis. Then played them all at once so they meshed into a single mass of sound. Then that audio was imported into Sector, a circular randomizer/sequencer app, which I used to build into a simple sequence that was broken apart by randomized clips of the audio from the album, which are never the same clips during each playback. So essentially I wanted to share the technique of track stacking and randomized slicing of audio in a sequence. Nothing all that special or ground breaking but it was fun to do. The video can be seen here:

A screen capture of the track in Sector:

File_000.png2048×1536 1.67 MB

3 Likes
#41

I don’t know if this is a trick or technique, it’s just something i’m into at the moment.
Field recordings. I like nature sounds and storytelling and thought it could be useful to record stuff and use it in electronic music and/or audio dramas to add something organic and real.
Plus i discovered the sampler in ableton and use the field recordings to create my own sounds.
In this track i used a recording of a bonfire and extracted a short rhythm and some kind of melody by looping parts of the recording and adding a lot of effects. I also used a few of the tips like crossfading and send tracks.

It is also a nice way to collect memories, like you do with pictures. In that case, i remember a bunch of great people and awesome kids, some of them are friends, some are strangers, but all of them were my guests and we shared this evening together on the fire. The spoken part at the beginning is us, trying to calm down five kids, a bunch of adults and a dog for a minute. Of course we didn’t make it.

And because i learned another awesome massage method this weekend and now have to deal with some side effects (the central nervous system can be a bitch too) it represents pretty much my constitution today. Maybe working on it kept me from getting a panic attack.

Thanks for all the wonderful input.

https://soundcloud.com/rudzupuke/i-saved-you-a-seat-by-the-fire-disquiet0242

1 Like
#42

Thank you! Yeah I remember a friend telling us that’s how the did the intro on Yes-Roundabout, I don’t know if it’s true but am sure glad I have digital otherwise a lot of tape would have died an unnecessary death :wink:

#43

Mud mud glorious mud :slight_smile:

#44

It is like the echoes are gradually moving away into the distance. I like that effect. I usually have two echo pedals and a reverb on my effect sends - but one of the echo pedals (EHX #1) I bring into a channel on the main board instead of using a Return channel. In that way, I can pan, EQ, and also re-send that echo to my other pedals (and itself…carefully!). Allows a lot more creative control over the outcome.

#45

This is not only a great visual demonstration of the technique, but also a beautiful track!

#46

I keep trying to arrange face to face collaboration, but never quite get it sorted. Most of my ‘IRL’ friends are not into the same kind of music as me and have no interest in what I do - and the ones who do live a distance away. That’s the excuses out of the way… now I just have to make it happen!

1 Like
#47

Nowt wrong with Acid - I use it as my main DAW. Does all that I need and more.

#48

Love love love - that section around 1 min 20 makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

1 Like
#49

As much as I like Ableton, I still work with Acid quite a bit–as long as it doesn’t crash. Too bad Sony doesn’t seem to have enough enthusiasm for it to update the program.