(would love to see this done with vinyl of static textures eg those old BBC FX Library LPs)
> Mix has an interview with three sound effects editors/designers, the moral of which should be the mantra of every film sound editor: its all about the story
Just got back from a few days mixing at The Inside Track in Auckland and apart from working I had a bit of time off & enjoyed some retail therapy – physical media! Remember that? Coincidentally, or not, I also bought a copy of the latest issue of The Wire (331) and there is a great article by Amanda Brown as part of an ongoing discussion (Collateral Damage) about the impact of download culture. Unlike previous rants this one discusses the issue from a psychological and experiential point of view: “When music has been reduced to the status of junk mail, and groups’ entire discographies are skimmed and dismissed in half an hour, what depth of understanding or appreciation for these creations can we have? How do we remember what we’ve eaten if it’s been swallowed, not chewed?”
The vinyl I picked up below might seem a case of cause and effect, but I actually read the article on the flight home… regardless it is good food for thought. But one book at Parsons bookstore I bought is completely about physical media and experiencing it: A Touch of Code published by Gestalten is beautiful book about the intersection of science and art in the form of interactive installations.
The book is full of intriguing projects from the practical (eg a 3D touch screen i.e. that your touch can sink in to!) to the machine featured on the cover above (a drawing machine controlled by the heart rate of stationery cyclist) to the whimsical (a jellyfish theremin? a device for converting twitter feeds into birdsong? a clock that knits time?) to the almost familiar:
The hardest part of the book is that it leaves you with the intense desire to experience the projects yourself – its great that thanks to vimeo & youtube many of these projects are documented, and the index at the end of the book lists websites for every project so it is a great resource for exploring other projects by these artists, but take this example – it would be spatially amazing to hear this work:
“Nemore” is a garden, consiting of 36 bendable graphite poles. “Nemore” senses the visitor. Each pole has a behavior and reacts to it’s neighbours only: and to the visitor, of course – the visitor acts an “alien neighbour”. We are interested in the question: Does a system arise from the poles behaviour, that we (the observers and the visitor) perceive as angst, curiosity, nervousness, etc.? Each pole has a distinct sound, that builds up a chord, fluctuating in resonance with the movement of the poles.
As far as physical media goes I think anyone who buys vinyl has a few records in their collection they bought solely due to the cover art, which was the case with the first record below… The results of shopping at real groovy and conch – a Debussy box set for $6? Excellent!
Window seat on the flight home….
I deliberately chose which side of the plane to sit on, for the setting sun
What a great response! Since it launched there have been over 2,500 downloads and in the following four weeks 79 people have uploaded a remix to soundcloud. It has been so much fun getting up each morning & having a listen to a couple of new remixes every day! That such a diverse range of works has been created from that small set of 45 sounds is a hugely positive affirmation of creativity. So the first result of the competition is that everyone who uploaded a remix is a winner!
I didn’t want to announce this before the competition finished, as it could have become an incentive to upload anything, but all of the entries have been so fascinating to listen to that I’ve created a Tortured Piano MID sample set (24bit 48k) which I am happy to give to every person who entered the competition. At times teh internetz can seem somewhat cynical, where the anonymous haters, whiners & complainers speak with the loudest voices. But actions speak louder than words and it’s been great to see so many people engage & create new works! Action deserves reward so congrats everyone, I’ll send each of you a download link after the weekend…
So without further ado, here are the winners! There are eight simply because I narrowed the 79 down to eight that I liked and then decided I didn’t want to reduce them any further, as they cover such a diverse range of approaches…. So (drum roll) here are the winners:
- architectspider (Michael Cacioppo Belantara)
- Oscar Rydelius
- James Dean
- Gervais Andrew Harry
- John Grzinich
- Varun Nair
- Aaron Jasinski
- Vulture
I’ve already sent download links for the full Tortured Piano library to these eight and with permission (& their generosity) I’ve also compiled the eight tracks into an EP form & have released it as a free download, which you can download here (320k MP3s 41MB). Below are each of the tracks (in the order they appear on the EP) along with some comments from each person on their creative process…
Links: architectspiders.com (film, music, things that combine – with my partner Amanda Belantara) thetwog.com (music production/composing syndicate with Spencer Blair aka gunslunglow) www.kinokophone.com (technical support mushroom for this sonic art collective) futureworks.co.uk (certified ProTools MediaComposer FinalCutStudio LogicStudio Trainer)
Comments: “I love that the death of a musical instrument can lead to the birth of musical moments. The material was so interesting – full of creepy decays, thick timbre, lingering harmonics. I wanted to hear every sound at the same time both forward and in reverse to see if there were any interesting impacts or results from the combination of all the sources. I could not seem to steer this in any direction other than dark. I experimented with pitch and speed changes within Logic 9′ s feature set as well as plugins from Izotope and Camel Audio. I’ve attached a screenshot of the arrangement to give a little insight – link to larger screenshot here“
Comments:“I started off with the intention to make something rhythmic and fun. I layered down all the different sounds and took out peaces i found interesting to build a beat. The whole song was composed and mixed in Logic 9. The function “flex time” in logic is a personal favorite. It´s like a beat detective that allows you to grid for examples drums. Using it on sounds thats not traditional instruments is so much fun! When I had a beat I started off with the melodies and tones. I used logics space designer to get out some tones out of the samples. Using melodyne I pitched around the sample to get some melodies. The bass and some of the other melodies was created using Kontakt. I time stretched some of the sounds to get the right length. To get the rhythm section right I did a lot of cutting, pasting and slowdowns.”
Comments: “The source material was fantastic to work with and instantly offered a lot rhythmic, and tonal options. I particularly loved the organic quality of the metal and wood textures, the scrapes, and dense impacts. Since the piano had been sacrificed once already I decided to completely morph all material into something new yet again. I created a Reaktor sample map and proceeded to process it via Twisted Tools Scapes ensemble. This process was pretty much live using Reaktor’s built in recorder to record passes of me controlling Scapes via Konkreet Performer on the iPad. I focused on creating new rhythmic elements and one-shots first, before trying to find melodic ideas. The main theme came from one of the wood scrape samples, which when passed through Scape’s Delay lines created a tuned comb filter effect (via modulated delay times quantized to a pentatonic scale). The main theme throughout the track was born from this one sample, which gave me the idea of starting with the original sound and slowly morphing it into the track before morphing back again. I recorded this morphing live, plus a number of variations on the theme, then imported and sequenced the end result.”
Comments: “My creative process generally consists of me fighting with a bunch of samples for about 8 hours, hating everything I make. Then, about 3 sessions later I’ll make a sound that I actually like, and it kind of just goes from there. The first sound dictates how the rest of the track is going to go – I rarely have any idea what I’m going to do until I’m doing it – so I guess it’s appropriate that it takes so long to get ahold of it. Oh, and I did the whole track in Pro Tools using only the stock BombFactory and AIR plugins.”
Comments:“I’ve composed with piano harmonics and removing the “attack” from piano sounds before so I was interested to try it with Tim’s samples. So I initially created the drone bed using the harmonic tones I found. Then I selected some of the other sounds to compose a soundtrack type atmosphere. To process the sounds I only used EQ, filtering and pitch shifting. I’m not much into sequencing or granular processes. The rest was composition, trying to find a way to create “tension” and “release” in a short piece.”
Comments: “I had no idea of what I wanted to do, so I played around with the sounds to see what I could find. My only objective was to create something with emotions and a progression. I started off by creating a textural bed to set the mood and then began to add/subtract elements to create a story – which slowly began to fall into place. I imagine it to be a place where a soul/person enters right after death but before the beginning of an afterlife. It’s a place of pain, regret and happiness which eventually disintegrates into a feeling of nothingness which then leads to the afterlife/next step/next place.
Everything was done in Pro Tools – a lot of audiosuiting and plugins running across channels. The processing primarily included pitch shift, elastic audio (mostly in varispeed mode), automated EQs and filters, some of my own IRs (which are on my blog for download), frequency shift, phasers, chorus, reverbs/delays, granulation and healthy amounts of compression. The free plugins pack from Melda Production came to good use! I think I must have spent a few hours across two days in total.”
Comments: “First, I used Ableton Live drum racks to create ‘drum’ hits using layered samples. Next I took all of the cluster samples (low, mid, high) and put them in a single rack using Simpler to create one big smashing piano sound which is used as the main chord progression through out the track. I love the harmonic richness those samples contain. Then I used a few of the more tonal samples in the set to create the plucky melodic parts.
For the buzzy bass sounds I put one of the “scraping” samples into Sampler and looped just one cycle to emulate an oscillator. I did this to several samples to create a layered, thick bass sound. Filtered, added a touch of distortion and done. After that it was a matter of building layers dropping in some transitions and using as many of the samples as I could. Link to larger screenshot here“
Comments: “I took about 12 sounds from the libary. I slowed them down in Peak. I made about 25 loops from it, processing them with delay, flanger & distortion and I made some tone variations with pitch. Then I recorded them on a minidisk multitracker using the program function of a md player. I mixed the whole thing in garageband.”
