Tag Archives: Music

Unity Status

Posted on by
1

Technically this post and the last have been more than one sound, so perhaps I should rename the category “one sound or more every day”. Anyway, I just made a rough mix of this musical sketch (not quite a complete piece yet) and thought it could serve as today’s sound.

The image is a partial screen grab of one of the virtual instruments I used. The chordal and melodic tones and the bass are all played and programmed by me, but the rest of it is sampled from an unnamed jazz recording, so although the samples are heavily manipulated this composition is unlikely to go much further than this.

Unity Status

Piano and Kalimba

Posted on by
1

Every so often I think it might be a good idea to record using acoustic instruments I have lying around my studio. This time I started with a little loop of syncopated piano. On top of that I added a very simple melody with a kalimba, or thumb piano. There’s no processing other than normalization to -3db to give the levels a little boost.

I have dozens of these tiny pieces, and once in a great while they actually get finished as tracks, but the vast majority of them, like this example, sit in dusty folders on backup hard drives. Most of the time that is exactly where they belong, but I do review them occasionally to get ideas or see if there’s anything worth producing.

Piano meets Kalimba

Distorted Percussion

Posted on by
1

In this category I am planning to post a new sound everyday. I may not have created the sound the very same day of the post, but it will be something recent at the very least and more than likely created on the day I submit it. The idea is something like my colleague Tim Armato’s p{365} blog where he is posting a Processing sketch every day for a year.

My goal is to learn more about some of the audio processing that is available to me. It’s not always convenient when working on a project to explore new plugins or new ways to use old ones, especially in the studio or while collaborating. With this exercise I can do that and archive the results here. I’ll briefly describe the process of creating each sound and something about the software and hardware involved.

Today’s sound is a loop of audio that has been heavily processed in Ableton Live with filter taps (Pluggo), distortion, eq, dub delay (MDA), reverb, and more. The loop is an excerpt from a remix of “Some Kind of Adhesive” (One Day to Save All Life) that I produced with Nils Westdal. Believe it or not it started out as a simple shaker pattern. To me it sounds similar to the over driven thumb pianos of Konono N°1, although this was an accident since I was basically tuning the pitches to work in the remix. After I added distortion and a little virtual knob turning on the dub delay, this is what I got.

Distorted Percussion

Internet Radio

Posted on by
Reply

Nova PlanetNovaplanet.com is a broadcast radio station out of Paris that also streams their programming over the internet. This radio station was made for me. Their broad programming is eclectic, funky, never repetitive and even on occasion delves into the avant-garde. One minute they’ll be playing Boards of Canada, and then the next their onto some Pharoah Sanders.

One reason why Novaplanet.com is so good is because of the time difference between Minneapolis and Paris. I’m rarely listening during peak hours. On the few occasions that this has happened I have noticed more advertising, news, interviews and French top 40. If that’s not your thing just check the time in Paris. The good shit starts happening after midnight.

 

 

 

Video Game Music Remixes

Posted on by
2

One of the projects that I assign in my audio production class is an exercise on how to import MIDI files into Reason and assign specific instruments to each track. I usually demonstrate this with a random classical MIDI file from classicalarchives.com and end up with a Tomita-esque rendition of Mussorgsky.

The Lost WoodsHowever, I do not limit the assignment to classical works. Sometimes, students make clever remixes of popular music, and frequently they choose music from classic video games like this remix of the Lost Woods theme from the Legend of Zelda – The Ocarina of Time by Brandon Sullivan. Brandon creatively chose some unique patches for this piece and then added a drum-n-bass beat to the end of the sequence that elevates the energy and takes the Lost Woods on a wayward yet intriguing new path.

Later I’ll add some more examples to this post. Also, if you have any interesting examples of video game music remixes and would like to share, please post a link in a comment below.

Lost Woods