Guitar Chord

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A rarely tapped resource for me are clips found in the sound file folders of Ableton Live sets I use for performances. My group Keston and Westdal use two laptops running Live synchronized using a MIDI network. We usually play instruments during our performances and use the laptops for live looping and triggering loops and “scenes” as we construct the arrangements during the show. Our drummer gets a click so we can we can leave out or bring in sound from the laptops as we like. This way we can have purely live instrumentation intermingled with sequenced and live looped audio. It’s a bit of a learning curve to perform this way, but very liberating once you get it down.

This short sample of a guitar chord was played by my good friend Jason Cameron based in Seattle. While jamming together last June, 2008 I captured a few of his phrases in one of my Live sets, and came across it today while browsing through the sound file folders, looking for something to post. I dumped it back in Live, resisted the urge to reverse it, and added distortion, delay and reverb for a little texture.

Guitar Chord

Share Remix Adapt

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All the audio files that are included in the Share Remix Adapt category are under a Creative Commons license that allows the work to be shared, distributed, remixed or adapted as long as it is attributed to the original author. For more information on this license please click the link below. If you are planning on using one of these recordings in a commercial or derivative work and need better quality renders than mp3s (wav, aiff, etc.), please let us know at participate [at] audiocookbook [dot] org.

Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

AudioCookbook.org on Create Digital Music

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Special thanks are in order for Peter Kirn, editor of Create Digital Music (CDM), for posting an article about AudioCookbook.org on CDM. You may have noticed that CDM has been linked here since I started the site. It’s one of my favorite sites relating to modern music production with tons of great resources and articles. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in music technology.

In the article Peter writes, “Sound design secrets have traditionally been closely-guarded secret sauce. But in the age of the Web, the opposite is happening: people can actually enjoy sharing what they’re doing, just as passionate cooks chat about recipes on food blogs. Case in point: reader John Keston writes to tell us about AudioCookbook.org, on which he’s blogging a new sound each day. Not only is this a nice way to talk about techniques with fellow enthusiasts, but it’s a great example of how you can use blogging to encourage you to get things accomplished, rather than just distracting you.”

Check out the complete article on CDM.

Logical Psychosis

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Once again I have opted to feature a mini-mix of an unfinished idea, rather than an individual sound or example of processing. I am finding that creating these 1 to 2 minute snapshots of the idea is giving me a new perspective on unfinished compositions that I might have otherwise left by the wayside. Perhaps rendering simplified versions of these pieces will serve as an interim step to producing completed versions. I’m also appreciative of the feedback I’m getting on these rough mixes from friends, family and even a handful of very nice reader comments. Thanks!

I wouldn’t exactly call this piece a remix, but it does use bit of my Rhodes playing and other samples from prior Keston and Westdal tracks and performances. The arrangement, bass line, chord progression and processing are all new, so it only obscurely resembles any other tracks. I’m quite fond of how the bass line sounds. It reminds me a little of an analogue, male vocal simulation that Tomita produced on his interpretation of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”, which otherwise has no similarities to this piece.

Logical Psychosis

Creepy

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I have had this sound so long that it’s difficult to trace where it came from and how is was originally processed. I think it dates back to early in the year 2000. So, how does one deduce what the sound is and how it’s processed just by listening? Let me start by forgoing paranormal techniques. Although it sounds “creepy”, I’m guessing that I didn’t accidentally record ghosts eight years ago.

First of all it is obvious to me that the sound is another example of reversed audio. It’s also likely that the sound was processed through a delay before it was reversed due to the repetitive nature of the fade in at the beginning. It also sounds like it includes a vocal element, but there are other textures and percussive layers to the sound suggesting that it it is made up of several tracks. I could investigate it further, but everyone loves a mystery.

Creepy