Precambrian Resonance
August 5, 2008 – 1:53 pm by John Keston
Remember those Precambrian rock noises from North Shore Rocks? Well for this piece I loaded the unprocessed recording of those rocks into a simple sampling plugin, then arpeggiated the sampler randomly within a scale. This created a cloud of stumbling chaotic rhythms that changes every time it is played back in the software.
I listened to this for a long while, fascinated by it, then decided to run it all through the Resonator in Ableton Live. This processor produces a chord of resonant pitches that react to the signal sent to the device; in this case, my falling rock sample. Since the rocks had no discernible pitches, this instantly created a musical bed of sound. I tuned the resonance to a C minor 9 chord and then automated the tuning of a fifth pitch to create a melody. A little bit more fussing about, and this is what I got.
5 Responses to “Precambrian Resonance”
Okay, when do we get to see the video that goes along with it?
By Saronni on Aug 5, 2008
Ha I heard this and thought ‘wow he reinvented Deep Chord/Basic Channel dub techno with rocks and a resonator!”
By chaircrusher on Aug 22, 2008
dramatic but non-specific; appealing if somewhat ominous. I’d use it in Tertullian soap opera.
By trudeau on Aug 23, 2008