I have been exploring the creation of rhythmic, dub techno style sounds by manipulating field recordings in Ableton Live 8.4.1. so this weeks project follows on very nicely from what I’ve been doing lately.
The source material for this piece is an 17 second recording of wind chimes made on an iPhone though you’d be forgiven for doubting this as the manipulation is pretty extreme.
There are three tracks here but all the work is on track-1 really.
I proceeded as follows:
Track-1
Select & loop bars 3, 4, 5 & 6 of the wind chime recording.
Drop the pitch by 34 semitones.
Feed the loop into a resonator and twiddle knobs.
Apply AutoFilter High & Low and fiddle.
Direct signal through EQ-Three to emphasize chattering glitchiness generated by auto-filters.
Filter Delay for more echo & repetition of beats.
Feed through limiter as digital distortion starting to spoil results.
EQ Eight to control distortion at low end.
Track-2
Small cluster of beats from Kick drum of an FR2 Classic Kit.
Kick EQ-1
Ableton’s warping function keeps this in time with the wind chime generated beats, (110bpm).
Track-3
High Tom from an 808 Kit with Filter Delay, Ping Pong delay and limiter.
There are 5-sections to the composition:
Track-1 only
Track-1 & Track-2
Track-1 & Track-2 & Track-3
Track-1 & Track-2
Track-1 only
I have found that I only need to add a handful of drum beats which can easily be repeated, doubled, tripled etc using delays and warping keeps it all in time.
It’s rather like I imagine driving a juggernaut must be; huge fun!!!
The bottom end is VERY low and you may not hear it at all without a sub-woofer, fairly decent headphones, speakers or monitors.
I’ve tried to strike a balance between cleaning the sound up and leaving it all there…
I have to say I’m pretty pleased with the minimal atmosphere and the new possibilities that are opening up to me.
You can help yourself to a free copy of the 16 bit WAV file by right clicking Aeolian Metrics and selecting Save As
It’s a 37.4MB file.
(The artwork above opens in a new window if you’d like a free, 1500 x 1500px copy of that too).
Alternatively you can stream or download a 320kbps mp3 version with embedded artwork & metadata using the SoundCloud widget below.
More on this 107th Disquiet Junto project (“Use a wind chime as the rhythmic foundation for a track.”) at:
disquiet.com/2014/01/16/disquie…07-aeolianmetrics/
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
disquiet.com/?p=16588
Join the Disquiet Junto at:
soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/
