Those of you with a discerning ear might recognize this phrase of reversed Rhodes electric piano from a recent Keston and Westdal release. Here it has no processing other than being reversed. Sometimes I wonder what attracts me to reversed sounds. They are strange, but somehow familiar. We have become accustomed to hearing things backwards in music and film. The intent is usually to unnerve the listener or sound disturbing or bizarre. I hear reversed sounds as beautiful and symmetrical counterparts to the forward versions.
As far as I know, reversed sound does not happen naturally. Yet it is something that has been technologically possible since the very first sound recordings were made in the late eighteen hundreds. Thomas Edison may have been one of the first people to hear sound in reverse. He noted that when music is played backwards, “the song is still melodious in many cases, and some of the strains are sweet and novel, but altogether different from the song reproduced in the right way”. Everything sounds better backwards.
I added some delay to spread the stereo spectrum on this synthesizer drone of a low frequency fifith interval. During the recording you can hear the cutoff frequency changing as I turned the knob for it. On my most often used synth, the Korg MS2000 that was used for this recording, the surface around the cutoff frequency knob has been polished smooth from wear. I use it much more frequently than the modulation wheel or pitch wheel. I love knobs.
Here’s a snippet from a piece I started composing on March 28, 2007. I don’t remember exactly how I created the sounds other than the instruments that I used (Rhodes and Korg MS2000) and some of the processing applied (too many to name), therefore I don’t have a lot to say about this piece, other than:
I bought this instrument for a bargain price at a music store quite some time ago. It’s an inexpensive Japanese made version of a melodica. They sound a lot like harmonicas, but has a keyboard to play the notes. Hohner makes the most popular versions of this instrument, but I really like the gravelly tone of this one that I recorded during a session on August 2, 2006.
In January, 2008 I wrote about the sound design I had produced for an animated short film called
As a producer, a technique I have found that is an effective way to develop the dynamics of a performance is by adding expression through automated processing. In this phrase of synth from a composition that I’m working on I have applied automation to add an expressive quality to the recording.
I stumbled across this gem, that was recorded during a jam session between myself on Rhodes, Nils Westdal on bass, and
As you may know, Nils Westdal and I make up the production team,
Today I was digging through my recording archives and came across a nice example of me running my Rhodes through a wah wah pedal with a little overdrive on it. So not being one to leave well enough alone, I sequenced the recording into a short phrase at 90 bpm.
So, what do I do with all these samples of different mallets on piano strings, and other areas of the instrument? How about putting them all into a drum machine? Better yet, a virtual drum machine, like