Piano Mallet Bass

The sample I included in the Piano Mallet Loop has been used in three pieces that I know of so far and are all linked somewhere on AudioCookbook.org. So tonight I am presenting another example of using a mallet to produce sound with a piano instead of using the traditional keyboard that we are familiar with. The mallet I used to get this sound was the steel handle of a socket wrench with some thick rubber bands wrapped around one end. I bounced the rubber bands of a few of the strings in the lower register and got this simple bass melody.

Piano Mallet Bass

Here are the pieces that used Piano Mallet Loop. All of them are very nice. A big thanks to tacitdynamite, Fourstones, and small.cat for sharing their compositions.

Little Ditty #1 (tacitdynamite)

Mississippi (Founders Mix)

Red (small.cat)

Cuba, Illinois

Once again, today I set out to experiment for a few minutes and make a new sound using some processing I had yet to use. But like it is prone to happen, as I tweaked and played around a musical piece started to emerge. I sequenced a series of vocal samples then applied a real-time randomizer to the sequence. Second in the chain was a vocoder plugin programmed to produce a Csus chord, followed by a stereo delay. Underneath it I layered a low melody and automated the waveform setting for one of the oscillators to get a digitized static effect. I titled it Cuba, Illinois after a town of about fifteen hundred people in Illinois called Cuba. I’ve never been there, but I like the juxtaposition of the town and state names.

Cuba, Illinois (Rough)

Fifty Consecutive Sounds

Today notes the fiftieth entry in my One Sound Every Day project. That’s fifty entries in as many days. I wasn’t sure I would be able to manage this task, considering all my other responsibilities and interests, but it’s been a fun and delightful journey. I have had to give up a few vices and a few positive things too. My piano practicing has suffered, but I don’t doubt that I will be able to remedy that eventually.

The good news is that the discipline involved in producing something every day has created a bi-product of about fourteen new pieces, and this was not even the goal of the project. So, to mark my fiftieth entry I have decided to let you hear an unreleased full-length rough mix of the first composition I have completed that is a result of contributions to One Sound Every Day. Please have a listen and feedback is always welcome.

Forgotten Complex (Rough)

 

Throat Singing

I have been wanting to post an example of my talented friend Chris Huff throat singing for some time, so here it is in all its unprocessed monophonic glory. Throat singing or overtone singing is a technique that vocalists use to sing multiple pitches at the same time with a single voice and is often used in various religious chants in central Asia.

I refrained from dousing it with a Taj Mahal style reverberation setting in case anyone wants to use it, since I am placing in it in the Share Remix Adapt sample pool. See if you can identify how many pitches he is producing simultaneously. It’s a little difficult to discern because of the dissonant intervals.

Chris Huff Throat Singing

 

 

Phone Recording of Car Park Reverberation

The scene is a huge and deserted underground car park around 3am. You shut the door to your vehicle. the sound reverberates for almost a minute. What do you do? Do it again! I found myself in this position after a late evening out with my wife recently. Unfortunately all I had available to make a recording was my mobile phone. So, I set it to record and started opening and closing the door to my wife’s pickup truck, listening to the results. I knew the recording would suck, but I had to take a crack at it. As you may have heard, my wife thinks I’m crazy. As long as she doesn’t find out it’s true, I think I’m ok.

Car Park Reverb