May your ears bleed treacle

[You™]

You call this a lullaby? Must be nightmare inducing

Nice idea, pretty scary stuff.

I never have nightmares. Disturbing, yes, but nightmares... nah. Anyway, meaning and moods in sound are all by association anyway, right?

[danielmm]

This song was built entirely from my vocal tracks. After my youngest was born (about 5 months ago), up to a certain age he seemed to respond better to more "noisy" sound rather than musical stuff. I've said before how the vacuum cleaner and train CD's were favorites. I also tried a bit of shamann's drones as well. But a few times I'd just make a weird throaty drone and he'd settle down and go to sleep. Of course, I could have just been scaring him to sleep.

Anyway, it was really strange even for me so I recorded myself five times and blended the takes to make two low drones and one higher attenuated drone tracks. My main sequencing program (Digital Performer) suddenly got the ability to read and manipulate pitch from any incoming audio so I used that to extract MIDI notes from the three vocal tracks. I assigned those MIDI tracks to custom non-musical patches on Automat, Pluggo's Wavy Waves synth and Camel5000. I also merged two of those MIDI tracks into one layered track I sent out to some several of my neglected outboard synths (a D-10, Microwave, Quadrasynth, K-3m). I recorded that track through an AirFX that allowed me to control filtering in real-time.

Back in DP, I cobbled together a mix and opened it in Metasynth where I converted it into an image and processed it further. In one version, I used the sampling too to load a truncated version of the song itself as a sample and play the sample using a sequence derived from the song's spectrum image (very recursive). In another take, I used image editing functions to alter the contrast and add harmonics to the spectral version of the song. Finally I added Metasynth's output back to the original sequence and remixed to come up with the final version.

Probably more detail than anyone wanted.

Yes, lots of detail... but that's what got me through the whole thread. (just got to this today)

The layering is fantastic.... I have to admit that I don't have any "illbient" in my stock of cd's but I think the process you went through to get this was well worth the effort.

Nicely done.........

dano

[You™]

Thanks. I'm always eager to discuss my techniques. I don't have any secrets. There's a lot of bumbling.

It helps to have forgiving tools. I've fooled around with C-Sound, Supercollider, Soundhack, Thonk and a few other programs. Metasynth is such a real treat to use, I didn't think find the steps I went through too much.

In a way, it's like developing photos in a darkroom. I actually wasn't very good at analog photography , but I can remember that for some of us, snapping the shutter on the camera was only the first step in a process of events that could radically shape the image which would eventually appear on the final print.

[vurt]

you wierd f**ker! i love it

took a few days out of the cafe after my hols just to get settled and it seem i nearly missed some classics

[You™]

Thanks vurt! Seeing your reply was a great way to come back from vacation. Glad you liked it.

[shamann]

Hey George,

Thought I had posted here already, but I didn't see me in here, so here is my post.

This is fun trippy stuff. Being one of the resident noisedrone guys, my favourite bits are near the end when it all builds to a crescendo, but liked it all. Hey, maybe this is new musical path for you? (nudge nudge)

Cheers,
Steve

[You™]

Hey, maybe this is new musical path for you? (nudge nudge)

I think it's fair to say it's an undercurrent. I'm always experimenting with things. I'm not a big fan of presets or recipes. I tend to jump into the soundstream and see where I can go working intuitively. If I hit a wall, I just stop and save and sometimes rework the elements more formulaically until I get something I like at the time. Sometimes I just print the results and throw it in a bin for source material in something else. Even my most "pop" songs are made out of my audio flotsam and jetsam.

That's why I was keen on your work as well as vurt, respirator and Sickelcell666, it *seems* like you guys are focused enough on what you're doing to achieve consistently worthy results. I'm pretty process oriented and I think my output is uneven - maybe eclectic at best. Haphazard.

I do have some more in this vein I might get around to posting. TBH, it's really hard for me to tell whether it's interesting to anyone else but me because it's so "out there." I only posted this to cash-in on the noizedrone craze that you all started, but I got a load of positive feedback from this so maybe it's worth sharing more...

[Sicklecell666]

My approach revolves entirely around a desire for purging negative artifacts from my psyche. It's the only true consistent thing linking all my material. It might not be something of noticable significance, but if you came at your work as a means of flushing your system as opposed to the process of artistic creation as seems to be your own angle(and a very good one), you might be intrigued with the results.

Nothing else for me is static.

You're stuff's always great one way or another.

[You™]

My approach revolves entirely around a desire for purging negative artifacts from my psyche. It's the only true consistent thing linking all my material. It might not be something of noticable significance, but if you came at your work as a means of flushing your system as opposed to the process of artistic creation as seems to be your own angle(and a very good one), you might be intrigued with the results.

Nothing else for me is static.

You're stuff's always great one way or another.

So you're saying your "music" is kind of like an aural enema or douche ...that leaves you fresh as a daisy?

[Sicklecell666]

So you're saying your "music" is kind of like an aural enema or douche ...that leaves you fresh as a daisy?

Those are your words, not mine.

NO, I don't feel 'cleansed'; nothing really gets rid of the bad shit, but I at least symbolicaly feel like I'm doing something aside from letting it sit inside me like the corrosive it really is..

*snif*

Smells like derision in here..

[vurt]

My approach revolves entirely around a desire for purging negative artifacts from my psyche. It's the only true consistent thing linking all my material. It might not be something of noticable significance, but if you came at your work as a means of flushing your system as opposed to the process of artistic creation as seems to be your own angle(and a very good one), you might be intrigued with the results.

Nothing else for me is static.

You're stuff's always great one way or another.

So you're saying your "music" is kind of like an aural enema or douche ...that leaves you fresh as a daisy?

its not so much excorcising demons as invoking them i think

[fuzzypenguin]

That was really cool. Thanks! Scotty

[You™]

Smells like derision in here..

No derision. It was a bad attempt at humor. Sorry.

I create art (or whatever you call it) for a lot of reasons but I don't quite know how consciously I could effectively exorcise any demons or ill feelings I might harbor. I do that by gossiping about my friends and bickering with my family. With the steam properly released, I enjoy the illusion of a bit of control over my life. I'm always mindful that I'm one step away from hubris catching up with me.

I hope you don't seriously think I would turn on you so quickly. I respect what you said and how you work. I just have a bad tendency to look for humor - especially where it's scarce. It's a survival instinct.

@fuzz/Scotty: Thanks.

[astanine]

An enjoyable listen that has the usual You quality feel about it.