#21

so cool, thank you :slight_smile:

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#22

Good idea. I’m going to have to think about what combination of effects pedals to use to try this.

1 Like
#23

I don’t feel concerned by this week’s challenge: I’m too old and my skills wouldn’t help. I turned my back on PC’s and went back to 20 years-old hardware machines: anyone needs a tip about SCSI? I think I would have more to share about how to drive and maintain a 16-T digger, or about building a cabin in the woods without a permit. I can play several instruments, but mainly use a plastic keyboard like many of you. I don’t suffer sends problems since I use an old analog mixer with direct outs, aux sends and groups, never short of a choice. But mostly my studio can do the same as your PCs so I don’t see one machine I could give tips about. I like the diversity here, thus my preferences go to challenges where everyone gives own interpretation of obscure commands like cloudy tops and shifting bottoms, or to compose music for a contemporary dancer we don’t know s… about, versus more “technical” ones. I know I’m old school, I still use reverbs mostly to give the listener a notion of space, and that kept me from participating last week. That’s ok, I have a lot of fun coming here to listen to your “bêtises”, I’ll just add mine later. Long live Disquiet Junto!

1 Like
#24

I suppose I sort of went a little off-piste here, my tip is not about a specific piece of hardware (unless you count ‘a modular synth’ as a specific piece of hardware!), but is about using simple sequencers in a different ways, coupled with effects, to generate more complex musical themes. My track is made from two very simple sequences - one six notes long, the other eight notes.

https://soundcloud.com/ikjoyce/a-spirit-of-sharing-disquiet0242

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#25

I’m a bit sad not posting anything, I like to participate. So I changed my mind (after listening to ikjoyce’s post) and will post my last song with a tip. The first part, which was done a few days after the second part, does what ikjoyce does, in maybe a more strict manner. The second part is completely different: I had pinched a nerve in my back and taken some valium, and continued working on my song. What unites them, apart from my formidable musician’s skills :slight_smile: , is a simple idea that took one day to arise (after-effect of valium): I used the same simple sequence for the hammered strings of the piano and the bow-like synth. Only had to copy to another MIDI track, change channel number, and a little editing for durations. The hardest part was to set up the delay, manual tap no milliseconds. I progressively used less feedback to bring back the direct piano sound.
As I uploaded to soundcloud before this challenge, it’s not tagged and so won’t appear in Disquiet playlist, never mind, for your pleasure only.
https://soundcloud.com/claudelebelge/a-smoke-in-the-garden

3 Likes
#26

@Drewsky @Ahornberg
i may be misunderstanding what you’re looking for, but everything both of you are talking about should be possible with ableton’s audio effects rack tool. i think @Jet explains the feedback effect thing (using a send) elsewhere in the thread. for parallel effect lines, use ‘chains’ (there’s an okayish demo here, i’m sure with some mild searching you can find a better one).

1 Like
#27

Thank you to autumn-drones for being a gracious host, a fine collaborator, and an amazing caretaker of synthetic technologies that would make your head spin. Check out his releases:

So this week’s Junto asks us to share a trick or technique that we utilize with a particular piece of hard/software. My response might be perceived as a willful disregarding of the spirit of this task, but I’m completely serious in my desire to share one of the most important aspects of music creation for me; namely face-to-face collaborations for real-time improvisations. I get such a boost of creative energy by working with other individuals who are consciously creating and responding to our shared space. The improvisational nature makes for an invigorating propulsion, and having another person helping to keep the figurative balls up in the air whilst juggling our way through means one can take more and more risks in development. Are their bumps and blemishes? Of course. But there are also moments approaching the sublime.

Find someone to create with live. Have them come to your place. Go to their place. Take a few pieces of gear. Don’t overthink it. Jump in and let it all hang out. Even if the results aren’t up to your normal standards, I guarantee you’ll learn something new about how you create. If you’re fortunate enough to have access to a person like Timothy Stoneberg (aka autumn drones) all the better for you because you’ll have even more opportunity to learn through explorations.

This piece is the first one that we knocked out and we started it within minutes of sorting out our audio/control routings. Timothy’s Cirklon was his co-brain in this, and they fed MIDI to my Two-Voice Pro. This made my instrument behave in a way that I’d not encountered before. There were certain things that I couldn’t do that I normally can … like octave shift the voices up and down with the press of a button. This meant I would be locked into a relatively narrow pitch range which was an unexpected limitation. So I had to work to change things that I could control, like timbres. I also stepped out and did more raw oscillator tunings that I would normally do, sweeping the dials up and down to at least partially change the pitched zone.

As the song proceeded, I found myself fatiguing of some of the repetitions, and I was keen to try introduce rhythmic variations. I began opening and closing the envelope stages more aggressively, and using the knobs more like I used to approach DJing with a mixer’s crossfader while cutting and scratching. This opened up a whole other area for exploration. Finally, being synced to a shared global clock, I discovered I could still adjust my sequence’s length anywhere from 1-16 steps, and uneven numbers would create interesting results when played against Timothy’s chords, drums, and lead lines.

I know this is ridiculously long contribution, but it really pushed us both to keep things developing, morphing, and changing as the nearly 40 minutes passed.

This was the first time that we worked together and it won’t be the last. Production, especially electronic production, can be really an isolated experience. I think that’s why so many of us reach out and participate in groups like this. To feel a sense of camaraderie, and to share inspiration with each other. If you enjoy it online, you GOTTA’ try it in the flesh.

11 Likes
#28

I like jamming. I don’t know for the sublime parts, question of taste, but having jammed since I was 20, I know what it feels like to be in. I don’t care for the recorded results, quite often if there’s not a live engineer involved it doesn’t sound like it was felt. But I do agree it’s a best way of enriching yourself as well as trespassing your own limits. When I was in a prog-rock band we used to start a session with a smoke and exchange our instruments to improvise. we would record hours of tape this way, then select interesting passages and try that with each of us now playing his own instrument. That’s how we “composed” our repertoire. :slight_smile:
I’ll vote for this tip.

2 Likes
#29

Hello everybody, here’s my track :gift:
Description as posted on Soundcloud :
Background noises can really bring life in a digital world.
I often use them, sometimes imperceptibly… which is not the case in this track.
Here, there are nine different noises (samples from Sample Magic ‘Analogue Noise’) for the same piece played three times (voice loop : Marcel Duchamp talking about ‘ready-made’, synths : AudioRealism ABL2, AAS Chromaphone, KV331 SynthMaster).
https://soundcloud.com/petrus-major/duchamp-background-noise-disquiet0242

1 Like
#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