you can d/l the files at http://www.vstk.org/music/9weeks
About the source
i ripped it from a crappy overcompressed porn video in which the guy filming was interviewing the slut. I grabbed it for 3 reasons: the ambient drone in the background, the sound of the slut laughing, and the slut saying “i like to fuck, what can i say?”
the first iteration was quick and dirty. threw it into granulizer and scrubbed it for 60 seconds. Added a couple effects and called it a day. All in all i was done in 10 minutes.
The second iteration focused on seeing what i could do with resequencing. I threw it into Recycle and ended up with 2 major components: A bank of individual slices (about 80) and a soundfont which contained all of the sliced mapped out to note values. i spent about 45 minutes getting heady over oddball rhythm sequences. nothing new, but it was a nice revisit of some familiar rhythm techniques.
For the third iteration I kept the same tempo but instead of raw sequencing, I had 2 intentions. One was to try to use a combination of envelopes and filters to create a really nice ‘kick’, ’snare’ and ‘hi hat’ sound. The other goal was to utilize chaotic sequencing (randomize function) to produce a wide array of spectral and rhythmic content with the flick of a wrist.
I quickly tired of the chaotic element, but i was happy with the results of my sound shaping approach, so for number 4 i wanted to continue on this path. i slowed down the tempo to open up some space and focused on creating some more refined percussive sounds. i kept the kick drum as the only artifact from the previous experiment.
Iteration 5: tiring of highly controlled rhythmic experiments i went back to the first approach: straight granular scrubbing, expect this time i had the intent of creating more of an ambient drone texture.
Iteration 6: i know i’m starting to get a little bit ahead of the actual weeks, but hey, i felt inspired to try something new. This experiment was a proof of concept in creating pure (i.e. pleasant) tones that can be used for harmony and melody. For this I went into my favorite audio editor, cool edit pro, and zoomed down to the sample level and looked for places where there were anywhere between 2-8 oscillations of a wave that didn’t have too much variance. i used a freqency analyzer to see which one had interesting harmonic overtones when looped. i then exported these (i had about 12 microloops in total) and inserted them in sampler channels within fruityloops, using the loop feature. I then played them like regular keybaord patches. once i had made the microloops the rest of the creation process took just a few minutes.
average time spent on each iteration: 30 minutes. I plan on spending more time on the last 4 rounds, as i really begin to delve deep into the frequency components of my material and spend more time coaxing completely different sounds out of the source. I could have spent more time on these first tries to get a more polished and actualized sound, but i ultimately said ‘fuck it, i have real songs to work on!’
ockham | 10-Jun-06 at 9:16 am | Permalink
vauztehq, you’ve been quite busy!
i took the liberty of uploading your tracks here, and adding the syntax for the player.
out of curiosity, what’s the granulizer you’re using? it seems like you’re getting some really high quality scrubs out of it.
what’s noticable in these 5 posts is your trajectory. from abstract granular process to the kinds of things we would normally do to go about making our tracks, and then you went back to the granular.
i’m rather a fan of the 4rth iteration where it sounds like you picked up more on that drone sound from the source. and began using that for psuedo melodic elements.
with the 5th iteration, there’s a lot of phasing or flanging going on, can you talk a bit more about that process?
vauhztehq | 10-Jun-06 at 9:32 am | Permalink
yeah, i hate to spill the beans on this one (its a well kept secret), but the phaser on the fifth iteration is a plugin called Mobilohm by Ohmforce. it is the most featureful phaser plugin i’ve found with a sound of pure liquid. I bought it when it first came out in 2002 then about a year later lost the registration code and my password for the site (and changed my email address) so i couldn’t get it back, but I just recently managed to get my hands on it again.
ockham | 10-Jun-06 at 3:07 pm | Permalink
great idea on the sixth iteration. i rather like the buzziness of in the higher frequencies. you’ve used one of the great features of FL that i wish other programs had. i know cerebral’s a big fan of that technique.