Tag Archives: Composition

Octave Pedal Rhodes

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A variation of this clip is probably going to end up in a new track that Nils Westdal and I are working on. After a recent session Nils left his Boss OC-1 pedal in the studio for me to mess around with. The first thing I did was plug the Rhodes into it. The cool thing about the OC-1 is that if you play intervals into it it gets confused and randomly switches between notes. The results are unpredictable, but it’s also possible to get consistently unpredictable results. I know it sounds like an oxymoron, but duplicating certain intervals at specific dynamics allows you to mold the output into something usable. This is what I was going for in this example. I edited the recording to a suitable length, added some delay, and then automated a filter to manipulate the texture.

Octave Pedal Rhodes

Chlorobenzene Mistfall

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It’s been a while since I have posted a rough mix, or musical idea for the One Sound Every Day category, so here’s an excerpt from something I wrote recently. It’s in very early stages, but has a high melody in 3/4 time along with some lower melodies in harmony with each other. The lower pitches are made up of the Rhodes Feedback that I posted an example of yesterday.

I cut up the feedback into sections that had specific qualities I was after, then I pitched them so that they worked underneath the high melody played on the Rhodes at an upper octave. Finally, after a couple of run throughs, I arranged the pitched feedback in real-time to form the passages heard in the excerpt.

Chlorobenzene Mistfall

One Hundred Consecutive Sounds

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Today marks a total of one hundred sounds that I have posted consecutively in the One Sound Every Day category. To create todays sound I have simply started grabbing tiny, uniform chunks of audio from previous entries in the One Sound Every Day category. I sequenced them chronologically from oldest to newest, selecting what I thought might work in a micro sample opus. Sadly I ran out of time before I was able to sequence one hundred consectutive sounds, but I managed to make some good progress. As soon I return to the country I will continue this sequence and post a new version for you to listen to.

One Hundred Consecutive Sounds

Flying 808s

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To generate this pattern I loaded a basic TR-808 kick drum sample into one of the most simple Pluggo VSTs called Flying Waves. The controls in Flying Waves are a set of movable cross hairs on a grid, volume and an external sample button. Moving the cross hairs up and down increases and lowers the pitch of the sample while left and right lowers and increases the volume respectively. With a sine wave you can get Theremin like sounds.

After loading in the 808 kick I resampled myself adjusting the cross hairs for a few minutes until I had some interesting patterns to work with. After that I cut and pasted a bar that was a good representation of what I was going for, then I looped it four times and rendered the results.

Flying 808s

Piano Sound Objects

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This as yet untitled rough mix is made up of a few simple melodies recorded on my 1916 Raudenbush & Sons upright piano. Interspersed within the piece are a number of what I’m calling piano sound objects. I used a couple of different techniques to create these sounds.

To get some of the sound objects I tapped the strings with a variety of mallets. Another sound was created by rubbing a mallet along the string in a rhythmic pattern. I also created an interesting sound using a brush, intended for use on drums, to stroke the strings across the sound board.

The processing involved includes high quality reverberation, equalization, and compression, but I also took the liberty of applying pitch shifting a reverse in a few places. Although all of the sounds originate from the same acoustic piano, I would still call this an electronic piece because of the editing, treatments and processing used.

Untitled Piano Sound Objects