This dissonant phrase of piano was created by using a metal mallet to gently taps the stings on the piano in the upper register. I’ve been experimenting with getting some unique sounds out of my piano by not using the keyboard.
Not all of these recordings are dissonant or unsettling, but these kind of techniques lend themselves to creating nice suspenseful or disturbing passages. Eventually I’ll post some excerpts of some pieces I have created using these sounds.
Metal Piano Mallet
I always liked the sound this old spring door stop makes when accidentally kicked, but never recorded it until now. I think the fact that its attached to a one hundred two year old wooden door gives is some nice resonance.
This is a basic mono recording originally at 48kHz and 24bit. I plugged my favorite large diaphragm condenser into my M-Audio Firewire 410 with the phantom power enabled. I’m not sure what I might use it for. Perhaps it will make up some percussion in a future track.
Door Stop
In my last post I explained how I rein in random processing behaviors to get the results I’m after. A good processor for randomizing audio is Ableton Live’s Beat Repeat. Beat Repeat effortlessly duplicates the once tedious process of repeating small chunks of a sample to get stuttering effects, but also has parameters to randomize the repetitions in a variety of ways.
For the Rhodes solo in “Six Weeks” I wanted to scramble my performance in some way to match the “broken” drum programming. Beat Repeat was the ticket, but I couldn’t get a complete take that fit well with the rest of the piece. If you look at the image you can see that the solo is made up of fifteen separate regions of audio. These are all abstracted from specific renders of the performance through Beat Repeat. After rendering the audio several times I selected specific phrases and organized them in a way that enhanced the dynamics of the piece, creating a hybrid. Listen to the solo by itself and then to hear it in context play the full track at 2:54.
Six Weeks (solo) – Hybrid Beat Repeat Solo
Six Weeks (full track) – One Day to Save All Life
After playing Precambrian Resonance for a few people and explaining how the arpeggiator was creating a randomness to the output I was asked how that randomness made it sound different from previous playback. This was easy for me to imagine since I had heard it rendered several different ways, but difficult to explain. Therefore I have re-rendered the piece to illustrate how it changes.
This brings up an issue that I have encountered on several occasions. When audio processing creates some sort of randomness in a mix, how can you get exactly what you want? What if after you export the audio there’s some chunk of randomized audio that just doesn’t quite work?
My solution is to render the track that has the random processing on it several times. For Precambrian Resonance 0.2 I rendered the processing eleven times. After that I’ll listen and compare the renders, or if I hear one that I like during the rendering, I’ll just choose it. Ableton Live makes this easy with the “Freeze Track” option that essentially renders the track while allowing you continue making adjustments.
Sometimes it is not that easy. I have encountered situations where version after version of the randomized processing doesn’t quite fit. At this stage what I do is carefully listen to the audio for phrases that have something interesting going on. The next step is to sequence the selected phrases into a complete track, effectively herding the random behaviors into what I’m after. I suppose that this is similar to using genetic algorithms to hybridize the audio in a semi-manual way.
Precambrian Resonance 0.2
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.
Precambrian Resonance