100M dowloadable... from Kr(o)akatau ....CROACK !!!!

[Krakatau]

Hi folks,

I glad that, finally, i have something concrete ( better than any kind of blah-blah !) you can listen here and give a real feedback

First of all, i give you to read a copy of an older post that makes for me, real sense today :


A SHARE OF MY OWN EXPERIENCE IN SAMPLING

Let me share with you what is, well, the best of my own personnal programming experimentation : samples of natural ambiances of any kind, that is to my taste an incredibly huge world to explore

First of all , let me just highly recommand to the ones of you who have any few experiences with samplers, to try a quite easy experimentation like the following one :

-1) Using a DAT or a MD, just try to make a good take of a natural soundscape like noisy wind (trought some trees for example) or rain, or a fire burning...

if you don't have the appropriate equipement, you can make a sample by CD extraction of some commercial CD's of natural soundscape )

-2) Then sample an single portion of 3 to 10 seconds in stereo (you don't really need so much to use a digital interface, just do your work properly),

-3) Within the sampler make a long, crossfaded loop on sample edit (or by default you can choose a loop point on a short silence..., you will notice that a long sample is needed by playing the highest key of your master keyboard : the artifact created by the loop getting shorter and shorter would be sounding too intensively on a short loop

-4) At least choose on program edit a very simple enveloppe: long attack, no decay, highest sustain and long release that you can reproduce wathever is the choosen sample (the only exception would be for staccato-like or explosive sounds like thunder or a single raindrop but right now i would be getting a bit off-topic !) You may also if you want hadd some velocity sensitivity on volume and/or filter cutoff (some low-pass with no resonnance or modulations , just keep in mind that before anything else the resulting sound must be a main contribution of the original sample itself !)

Notice also that you don't absolutely need a stereo sample in a way that you can easily recreate convincing pseudo-stereo soundscapes that way :

-Make a copy of your sample

-reverse it

-route one of them completely to the left, the other one completely to the right

-then do both loops(at once if they can be recognise as a single stereo sample by the
sampler, you'll remember that they still have exactly the same length )
Because of the fact that both sample have exactly the same timbral content but inverted notion of time it will result with a complex and unpredictable mixing of travelling sounds from one side to another of the stereo image, you will notice that if the sounding impacts and the reverberations/early reflections (when it is a very audible component of the original take) change in nature completely when reversed, the other timbral characteritics still remains the same

Forget yet about this very last piece of sample editing for a while : Now you that you've finished your progrm edit, just lay a hand from one side of the keyboard to another and listen carefully, you may have noticed that, just by using polyphonic transpositions of a lonely sample on all the keyboard, how all the timbral (and other psycho-acoustic) aspects may change deeply !

By experience i noticed many similarities listening to transposed soundscapes of, apparently, different nature

An example:

you may easily experience by creating samples out on some commercial CD : Compare a children's diving into water played 2 octaves down with a thunder's sample...or a thunder's sample played 2 or 3 octaves up with the sound of a heavy footstep on a wet ground ,etc ,etc...)

Supposing you've got on your sample some overall, echoïng or reverberating sounds (it would be the case with any takes of distant sound's sources like ambient rain or thunder, in there you'll obviously hear some early reflections) you will have the feeling of different "room size" by transposing the original sample up (smaller size ) or down (bigger size)

Another example

the most amazing experience i had by comparing different sounding sources at the present time was this one :

-on one side : the territorial drumming noise on the trees of the woodpecker (Scientific name : "Dendrocopos major")

-on the other side : the noise of the stick before the curtain's opening and the beginning of the actor's performance of a comedy (...you know, right before the 3 hits at the very beginning !)....Both in one-shot mode

If you have a chance to compare them by transposing down the first or transposing up the other you will make a marvellous experience : nearly impossible to distinguish them , except maybe that at the same apparent speed, the woodpecker's sample would appear as using some more stength !

..of course by reflecting a bit you easily notice that they both are bio-acoustic wooden and, repetitive noises
That general experimentation, on bio-acoustic sound especially, as left me with a strong feeling of relativity of time...

Again another example :

if you transpose down, of about one octave or more, some bird's warbling, they will sound quite like tropical birds, wich are much bigger, that means with lower pitch and slower warbling's articulation; A similar observation that you can make with the preceeding example of both living forms of life, thought it compares a bird with a human beeing
...as if it was reflecting of a time and space correlation

But this means in practive that it is a too easy way to do impressive and very variated stuff but much more difficult to optimise their use in a program flexible and versatile enough for a musical use in situation

Let see, except for a use as "new-age additionnal arrangement" that seems to me the most obvious, you would need some sound that can perhaps be quantised
(single raindrops or a thunder's impacts or any sounds that can be edited in one-shot mode )

...or maybe tuned
(some types of wind, i have in mind some takes of snowstorm in the ice barrier, can be described as having a well defined and quite stable fondamental frequency, also some natural reverbaration as described, like water trought a tube that has some raisonnant frequencies and therefore you can expect a tuned use in polyphony)

My experience in arrangement make me trust of a use of tuned samples of natural soundscape by looking for some common timbral aspects with instrumental samples or synth's patches in one hand and natural or synthetic sounscapes with no harmonical correlation in the other hand (notice for example the similitude between the sound of a motor car, especially at constant speed that means with a stable, and therefore tunable fundamental frenquency and a "heavy metal" distorted guitar, their both easily blends together in a way that it would many times impossible to distinguish them in an good orchestration and at the meantime without loosing their own timbral characteristics !)

What i can say about experiences of quantised samples of natural sounscapes:
...that most of the time it is highly uncompatible with common actual musical beats .

For example i would appreciate a lot to work on reason with REX files because it is a very easy job to make some "techno-electro-trance-etc" types of beat but except if you expect tu use an industrial sample-based rex files like some automatic functioning machines or civil engieneering sounscapes, that can blend with those squary types of rythm,... i guess that you would be dissapointed with the result

You would need some swinging or groovy thing (can't tell...) that can would make an easier bridge between "rythmical" and "arythmiqual" music or soundscape,

I am sometimes working with African traditionnal musician and music..., and to my ears, those type of groovy rythms seems more adapted, but comparing to both african scales and rythms am a perfect stanger to their own musical ears
(I may define them as ternary types of rythms that have temporary tentancy to reach binary rythms, by opposition of a swing that, in an opposite way, are binary rythms that try to reach ternary rythm, as easy example 4/4 in pure binary 6/8 or 9/8 sounds more ternary)

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After all these aesthetic and technical considerations let me do some comments about the collection of samples you can download by now

Just a big THANK YOU TO SPACEMAN who find a SPACE ( haha!!!) on his site to upload them

It consist on 6 folders of sampler's patches and rex files ( 78 at least ) defined that way :

1st : Tunes rex files ( 8 rx2 files )

2nd : Pianistic envelopes ( 6 patches )

3rd : Tuned / legato ( 23 patches )

4th : Tuned / one-shot ( 22 patches )

5th ; Untuned / legato ( 10 patches )

6th Untuned / one-shot ( 9 patches )

Let say :

You need to be aware that this is, i'm afraid, about 100 mega of samples to dowload at once

You need to be aware also that they are all reason instrument's patches ( Dr REX ans NN-XT sampler )

...but considering that, ( rx2 files except ), they are mostly based on a single sample without much program edit subtility, it shouldn't be a big pain, even for someone that isn't a real sampler expert, to create his own patches if he want ...

Here is the link :

http://www.meowie.com/ambient/Krakatau.zip


About the rex files

All of them are intended to create, based on bird's songs, something that is both tunable and quantizable

My recommendation would be too choose upper transpositions for tuning... as well as monophonic performances .

And if you use Dr Rex within reason there is one file you can't load (Rossignol Philomèle) unless you delete the exceeding number of slices

The "pianistic envelopes" folder, as suggested, contains patches that are intended to be played as any kind of piano or e-piano, using sustain pedal if needed

I experienced of using a small timestrech program (amazing slow downer) on a samble of a reverbered bell with a convincing enough result for my ears to include it in a patch
(Though i may admit it is of my lazyness that i didn't streched the original bell samble and then add reverberation rather than streched the combined sample...nobody's perfect ! ) This in order to minimise the huge difference in sustain and "room size" feeling between one side of the keyboard to the other one

You may re-create the sound of church bell, coming from far away, behind the hills...
(In fact, it is the only multisampled patch in all the upload )


The( not very well named) "tuned-legato" folder contains, i think, patches that are the most usuable for making ambient music

Usually based on soundtakes, some are mines, many of them are extracted from cd of natural soundscape, them prepared (enhancers, stereo spreaders, early reflexions, mutiband comps, etc...)

The idea was to keep from the original sample, some modulations or accents in the loop that would still blend easily in a composition without affecting too intensively the new harmonical context you would have choosen

The treatment on samples intend to magnify (sometimes exagerately ) all the psychoacoustics and timbral aspects of a sound rather than it fondamental

This is something you may appreciate by comparing different transpositions of the same sample, particulary spectacular on the ones from the two "one shot" folders.

That arem as suggested patches of sustained, percussive ( or similar ). sounds

few things i will comment on some patches :

The lamb's sample was an first experimentation on resynthesis, using a program from IRCAM ( Diphone studio ) with a streching effect on a sustained sound, kept for tuning the sample
(...something that actually should be done much easier with a plug-in like rephrase...or inside melodyne, i guess )

Strangely, the woodpecker's sample sounded more like "stone" rather than "wooden" when played on high keys after treated through a stereo spreader (psp pseudo-stereo)
(On NN-XT, you are invited to disable the filter if you feel to do so, i tried to imitate the chaotic phase modulation of long-distance sound sources but it is maybe too intense... )

Notice also the subbtle stereo instability of the toad's sample (bufo viridis)...also due to a stereo spreader, i suppose that it foundamental frequency bandwith is fooling around a critical frequency in the stereo processor...the result was an unexpected good surprise, though

There is one intruder in this folder : warplanes ( that should be in the preceeding one, shame !!!)


The two last folder are based on sample without obvious harmonic correlation

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Enjoy and please, give me your inputs on them

Alexandre Borcic (Krakatau)

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Just in case :

though they all are heavily re-designed and then not obvious to recognise, a few of them had their original raw takes extracted from copyrighted productions
(The fact his than i can't actually remove them by miself from the uploaded file )

But honestly i don't think i should be any kind of CASUS BELLI !!!!


hope so...

[Krakatau]

-did you have a good sleep folks !

... or shouldn't you be called the narcoleptic associates ?



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pfff...

[waiting man]

guys!
a little up..

thanx for this Alexandre, to you and spaceman...
downloading.

[opiadream]

relax
some people are probably still downloading it
and in my case,i just found this thread

thanks you for the time and generosity
I'm sure to get something out of these

[Krakatau]

CROACK ! !



( you'll find it on the "untuned / one shot" folder )

[waiting man]

wow, great set of waves, not only for Reason (haven't checked the rex stuff yet)

Aspirator...

[tetraplan]

Brekekex brekekex?
Koax koax?

Groekoekoex, Erikikix

[VicDiesel]

Lot of stuff to absorb. Downloading.....

[Krakatau]

Aspirator...

Just try the donkeys !

________________


OUR BELOVED DONKEY TUGGER, THIS PATCH IS DEDICATED TO YOU !!!!!!!!


( sweet nuances of green , don't you think ! )

[anopenscroll]

Can someone give me a 3 liner summary of what the parent post is talking about?

[Meffy]

Can someone give me a 3 liner summary of what the parent post is talking about?

Stuff makes cool sounds. When you mess with sounds in time, you can make even cooler sounds. You can download a bunch of great stuff from Krakatau and get a head start on messing with sounds in time.

=^_^=

BTW, the sound made by Greek frogs -- as Aristophanes, writer of several comedies, told us in the fifth century BCE -- is:

"Brekekekex koax koax!" <-- in froggy green

[edit] Darn it, again someone beat me to it. *fallsover* I must learn to type faster.

Meffy

[Krakatau]

Can someone give me a 3 liner summary of what the parent post is talking about?

CROACK !
CROACK !
CROACK !

[anopenscroll]

Thanks meffy.

[Krakatau]

But you'll find also :

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Meuuuuuuux !
Miewwwwww
Ouaf Ouaf !

CRAAAAA CRAAAAA !!!!!!

FLAP FLAP FLAP !!!!

And many other, have a try you'll see i'm telling you the truth !!!!




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don't expect to hurt anyone but i actually doubt of my english ( froggy language that i usually talk as everyone here in Geneva...CROACK ! )

[Meffy]

*bow* I left a bit out, but that's the basic idea. Grab the download if you can, experiment with the materials, and see what you can come up with. :-)

Meffy
the play's the thing