The Girls EP was rushed.
I can honestly state that it was mostly a few roughly thrown together tracks to facilitate a release based around cover art, rather than something purely music orientated.
Nonetheless, it has some interesting moments worth discussing.
The theme is of stalking, not that it is something explicitly followed outside of track names.
It was released on milkcrate (http://www.milkcrate.com.au/godinpants/girls.zip) on 06/05/2009
Title: I met this girl.
Released: 06/05/2009
Platform: LSDJ
Notes: This song is basically a mess, it was something I had been writing for a while, that was headed no where, so I decided to quickly jam it out and see where it went.
The changes are hard and often feel forced and not particularly melodic.
One thing I am quite happy with in this track, is my drum beat writing. Probably the strongest feature of the track, and something I struggled to write the rest of the song around.
Title: I followed her home.
Released: 06/05/2009
Platform: LSDJ
Notes: A perfect example of the droning melodies that dominated my early chip work.
This track also features a really nice pulse channel kick, and noise snare(although that is all the noise channel does in this track).
The track goes nowhere, dying out as quickly as it started, and finished in just over 2 minutes in length, the harmonies in the drone feel like something to return to an "fix" in the future.
Title: She didn't mind.(originally "Deadagascar")
Released: 04/05/2009 (http://8bitcollective.com/music/godinpants/Deadagascar./)
Platform: LSDJ
Notes: Probably the stand-out part of this release.
The opening riff is based of something I used to play on guitar with my band. The feel I was going for while writing was kind of "evil harpsichord" type playing, and I reinforced this sound by having the riff doubled an octave up(which causes some phase effects). Again the drums on this track are some of my favourite, the excessive use of the retrigger command, and the sound of the lofi sampled 909/606 kits, accompanied by the kick/snare combination of the noise channel.
Title: Her parents did.
Released: 06/05/2009
Platform: LSDJ
Notes: This track was written at the request of a friend, who asked for "the brutal sounds of a narwhal death battle" and originally, that is what this song was.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Are You With Us or What? - EP breakdown.
Title: Daftmash
Released: 11/7/2009(http://8bitcollective.com/music/godinpants/daftmash/)
Platform: LSDJ
Notes: This track started off as a bit of fun for a friend. It's a mash up of a few daft punk songs including, Robot Rock, Aerodynamic, Da Funk and Television.
Later when performing this song live, I made use of LSDJ's speech synthesis to emulate the robotic vocoder sounds used by Daft Punk.
To make all the parts fit together, I transposed them all to the key of D.
This track features some really good combinations of wave and pulse channel a fifth apart, to create a nice thick distorted guitar like sound.
Title: Sunchaser
Released: 25/5/2009 (http://8bitcollective.com/music/godinpants/sun-chaser/)
Platform: LSDJ
Notes: This track is one that I don't listen to much, the high arpeggio sounds very brittle and harsh, despite using a 50% pulse wave. Structurally there is not much to this song, and the arpeggio is too overpowering of all the other sounds.
The noise channel work in this track is also a bit disappointing, it lacks definition between instruments and falls into the background.
Title: Unemployed Astronaut(originally released as "Incomplete Life Goals")
Released: 24/6/2009 (http://8bitcollective.com/music/godinpants/Incomplete+Life+Goals/)
Platform: LSDJ
Notes: This is one of my favourite tracks from this particular release. It starts off with droning chordal sounds, which developed from something I wrote on guitar. As I moved this song from guitar to LSDJ I had to re-write it to fit the limitations. Because of this, I wrote the arpeggio to come in on the weakest part of the chord, so that the general sound remains.
Some criticisms against this track would be that I feel like the kick in the recording is a bit harsh(though this was fixed in the track on my gameboy). Also the pseudo-side chained bass line is not loud enough.
This effect was obtained by writing the bassline and kick pattern in the same channel, leaving me with the 2 pulse channels free for the bouncy arpeggio and droning lead.
It can be difficult to bring all the levels equal in LSDJ, though the simplest solution would be to record each channel seperately, the improvisational nature of my work makes this difficult.
Overall however I quite like the way this track turned out.
Title: Mediocrit(Originally named "Striving for Mediocrity")
Released: 20/05/2009(http://8bitcollective.com/music/godinpants/Striving+for+Sonic+Mediocrity./)
Platform: LSDJ
Notes: When recording this track, I wanted to get more out of the sample kits I was using for drums.
So I split wave and noise tracks left, and everything else right(I've used this on a few other tracks, as most of my LSDJ music is simply mono). This meant I could apply different EQ and effects to both parts. The result is the very defined drum track, while the pulse channels remained clean.
This track features some early attempts with noise channel work, as well as the gameboy's speech synthesis, speaking "godinpants" towards the end of the track.
Title: Prosthetic Whale
Released: 22/07/09(http://8bitcollective.com/music/godinpants/Prosthetic+Whale%28the+desert+crawl%29/)
Platform: Nanoloop 1.3
Notes: The first of my underclocked recordings.
This track was something I put together quickly in Nanoloop, comprised mostly of older song parts I had left unused when moving across to LSDJ.
I feel it showcases the pitch depth that is available with an underclocked DMG.
From the low, thick bass, to the high, chiming sounds.
There are two tracks in this recording, the second being identical to the first, but with distortion, this track was lowered in the mix, so as to preserve the bass of the first.
While showcasing the good side of underclocking, it also showcases the "worse" side. As referenced in the track's subtitle(desert crawl), the gameboy is brought almost to a crawling speed when underclocked, creating many more limitations of what can be produced with it.
Title: Are You With Us or What?
Released: 16/08/09(http://8bitcollective.com/music/godinpants/Are+You+With+Us+or+What/)
Platform: LSDJ/Axiome(puredata software for running with the Monome interface)
http://www.monome.org
http://www.lsxdesign.net/Puredata/Axiome/
Notes: Another underclocked track, although this time, frustrated with the continual crashing of my gameboy, I recorded some simple parts onto my computer, where I cut them into short loops for use with Axiome and my recently built Monome.
This track is one of my favourites to play, because it requires the most from me, and allows the most improvisation, which also creates the most potential for things to go wrong.
Having the ability to cut breaks live along with my gameboys was one of the reasons I built an arduinoboy, which was later replaced with a midi>gb.
Although this track feels more like a more organised return to the Lunchbreaks style.
The recording I used on the EP was only my second attempt at playing the song.
------
All up I was quite happy with how this EP turned out, although retrospectively I feel that Sunchaser and Prosthetic Whale are fairly weak in comparison.
However I was intending to release and print copies before my appearance at the band comp, which was later moved.
Had I known it would be, the two tracks would have been replaced with newer, better ones.
Released: 11/7/2009(http://8bitcollective.com/music/godinpants/daftmash/)
Platform: LSDJ
Notes: This track started off as a bit of fun for a friend. It's a mash up of a few daft punk songs including, Robot Rock, Aerodynamic, Da Funk and Television.
Later when performing this song live, I made use of LSDJ's speech synthesis to emulate the robotic vocoder sounds used by Daft Punk.
To make all the parts fit together, I transposed them all to the key of D.
This track features some really good combinations of wave and pulse channel a fifth apart, to create a nice thick distorted guitar like sound.
Title: Sunchaser
Released: 25/5/2009 (http://8bitcollective.com/music/godinpants/sun-chaser/)
Platform: LSDJ
Notes: This track is one that I don't listen to much, the high arpeggio sounds very brittle and harsh, despite using a 50% pulse wave. Structurally there is not much to this song, and the arpeggio is too overpowering of all the other sounds.
The noise channel work in this track is also a bit disappointing, it lacks definition between instruments and falls into the background.
Title: Unemployed Astronaut(originally released as "Incomplete Life Goals")
Released: 24/6/2009 (http://8bitcollective.com/music/godinpants/Incomplete+Life+Goals/)
Platform: LSDJ
Notes: This is one of my favourite tracks from this particular release. It starts off with droning chordal sounds, which developed from something I wrote on guitar. As I moved this song from guitar to LSDJ I had to re-write it to fit the limitations. Because of this, I wrote the arpeggio to come in on the weakest part of the chord, so that the general sound remains.
Some criticisms against this track would be that I feel like the kick in the recording is a bit harsh(though this was fixed in the track on my gameboy). Also the pseudo-side chained bass line is not loud enough.
This effect was obtained by writing the bassline and kick pattern in the same channel, leaving me with the 2 pulse channels free for the bouncy arpeggio and droning lead.
It can be difficult to bring all the levels equal in LSDJ, though the simplest solution would be to record each channel seperately, the improvisational nature of my work makes this difficult.
Overall however I quite like the way this track turned out.
Title: Mediocrit(Originally named "Striving for Mediocrity")
Released: 20/05/2009(http://8bitcollective.com/music/godinpants/Striving+for+Sonic+Mediocrity./)
Platform: LSDJ
Notes: When recording this track, I wanted to get more out of the sample kits I was using for drums.
So I split wave and noise tracks left, and everything else right(I've used this on a few other tracks, as most of my LSDJ music is simply mono). This meant I could apply different EQ and effects to both parts. The result is the very defined drum track, while the pulse channels remained clean.
This track features some early attempts with noise channel work, as well as the gameboy's speech synthesis, speaking "godinpants" towards the end of the track.
Title: Prosthetic Whale
Released: 22/07/09(http://8bitcollective.com/music/godinpants/Prosthetic+Whale%28the+desert+crawl%29/)
Platform: Nanoloop 1.3
Notes: The first of my underclocked recordings.
This track was something I put together quickly in Nanoloop, comprised mostly of older song parts I had left unused when moving across to LSDJ.
I feel it showcases the pitch depth that is available with an underclocked DMG.
From the low, thick bass, to the high, chiming sounds.
There are two tracks in this recording, the second being identical to the first, but with distortion, this track was lowered in the mix, so as to preserve the bass of the first.
While showcasing the good side of underclocking, it also showcases the "worse" side. As referenced in the track's subtitle(desert crawl), the gameboy is brought almost to a crawling speed when underclocked, creating many more limitations of what can be produced with it.
Title: Are You With Us or What?
Released: 16/08/09(http://8bitcollective.com/music/godinpants/Are+You+With+Us+or+What/)
Platform: LSDJ/Axiome(puredata software for running with the Monome interface)
http://www.monome.org
http://www.lsxdesign.net/Puredata/Axiome/
Notes: Another underclocked track, although this time, frustrated with the continual crashing of my gameboy, I recorded some simple parts onto my computer, where I cut them into short loops for use with Axiome and my recently built Monome.
This track is one of my favourites to play, because it requires the most from me, and allows the most improvisation, which also creates the most potential for things to go wrong.
Having the ability to cut breaks live along with my gameboys was one of the reasons I built an arduinoboy, which was later replaced with a midi>gb.
Although this track feels more like a more organised return to the Lunchbreaks style.
The recording I used on the EP was only my second attempt at playing the song.
------
All up I was quite happy with how this EP turned out, although retrospectively I feel that Sunchaser and Prosthetic Whale are fairly weak in comparison.
However I was intending to release and print copies before my appearance at the band comp, which was later moved.
Had I known it would be, the two tracks would have been replaced with newer, better ones.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Live Show.
Last night(August 26) was the university band comp.
I entered myself in the hopes of getting a video to include in my thesis, atleast for the purposes of showing some of the "issues" involved in chip music performance.
Here's some photos and a video.
Despite not passing through to the next round of competition, I had fun, despite being extremely nervous throughout my set. And I think for my first show it went well.
Recording of the night can also be found here (http://milkcrate.com.au/godinpants/do%20a%20live%20set.mp3)
I entered myself in the hopes of getting a video to include in my thesis, atleast for the purposes of showing some of the "issues" involved in chip music performance.
Here's some photos and a video.
Despite not passing through to the next round of competition, I had fun, despite being extremely nervous throughout my set. And I think for my first show it went well.
Recording of the night can also be found here (http://milkcrate.com.au/godinpants/do%20a%20live%20set.mp3)
Monday, August 24, 2009
Alternate Power Supply and Clocks.
Previously I posted my solution for placing a switch easily without much modification to a gameboy that allowed selection of 2 clock speeds.
But what if you wanted 3 clock speeds, to allow overclocking as well?
This is exactly what Celsius(chiptuner and part of dPad) is looking to do.
The only problem is, the 2.09MHZ crystals, as well as the 8.38MHZ crystals are both extremely hard to source, and when the can be found, are only available in very large sizes, leading to difficulty of placing the crystal within the case.
(image property of deepearthvoid http://8bitcollective.com/images/Deepearthvoid/Underclocked+DMG+mod/)
With so much trouble fitting in one clock, how would you go about fitting not 2, but 3 in there?(although let it be said that the original clock is quite small.)
There are two solutions discussed so far.
The first is to alter the battery compartment of the dmg.
By changing over to a 9 volt battery, instead of 4x1.5v batteries, the space taken up by batteries is halved.
There has been some discussion of alternate voltages running a gameboy including this blog
http://gameboygenius.8bitcollective.com/wordpress/2009/07/22/testing-gameboy-input-voltage-ranges/
and a decent part of this thread
http://8bitcollective.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=13389&p=3
The general consensus seems to be that there will be no damage to a gameboy in using 9v instead of 6v,(although on gameboy genius it is suggested lcd damage may occur from extreme settings after extended use) but battery life may decrease, as a single 9v battery appears to have a decresed MAh rating, compated to the four 1.5v batteries.
--------
The second option is to replace all clocks, with more "generic" speeds.
2mhz, 4mhz, 8mhz
These clock speeds are more readily available, and also can be found in smaller sizes.
The downside of this option is that while intune with themselves, this gameboy is no longer in tune with standard tunings.
However, this can be fixed by using a method addressed by little-scale in this posting (http://little-scale.blogspot.com/2009/07/retuning-underclocked-game-boy.html)
The method involves re-writing pitch tables in the LSDJ rom, so that pitches are produced correctly with the new clock speed.
It is suggested for use with 2mhz clock speed, but with the extra clocks running at powers of 2 to this, the pitches will remain in tune for 2, 4 and 8mhz speeds.
But what if you wanted 3 clock speeds, to allow overclocking as well?
This is exactly what Celsius(chiptuner and part of dPad) is looking to do.
The only problem is, the 2.09MHZ crystals, as well as the 8.38MHZ crystals are both extremely hard to source, and when the can be found, are only available in very large sizes, leading to difficulty of placing the crystal within the case.
(image property of deepearthvoid http://8bitcollective.com/images/Deepearthvoid/Underclocked+DMG+mod/)
With so much trouble fitting in one clock, how would you go about fitting not 2, but 3 in there?(although let it be said that the original clock is quite small.)
There are two solutions discussed so far.
The first is to alter the battery compartment of the dmg.
By changing over to a 9 volt battery, instead of 4x1.5v batteries, the space taken up by batteries is halved.
There has been some discussion of alternate voltages running a gameboy including this blog
http://gameboygenius.8bitcollective.com/wordpress/2009/07/22/testing-gameboy-input-voltage-ranges/
and a decent part of this thread
http://8bitcollective.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=13389&p=3
The general consensus seems to be that there will be no damage to a gameboy in using 9v instead of 6v,(although on gameboy genius it is suggested lcd damage may occur from extreme settings after extended use) but battery life may decrease, as a single 9v battery appears to have a decresed MAh rating, compated to the four 1.5v batteries.
--------
The second option is to replace all clocks, with more "generic" speeds.
2mhz, 4mhz, 8mhz
These clock speeds are more readily available, and also can be found in smaller sizes.
The downside of this option is that while intune with themselves, this gameboy is no longer in tune with standard tunings.
However, this can be fixed by using a method addressed by little-scale in this posting (http://little-scale.blogspot.com/2009/07/retuning-underclocked-game-boy.html)
The method involves re-writing pitch tables in the LSDJ rom, so that pitches are produced correctly with the new clock speed.
It is suggested for use with 2mhz clock speed, but with the extra clocks running at powers of 2 to this, the pitches will remain in tune for 2, 4 and 8mhz speeds.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Nanolife
Nanolife was a Nanovoice EP I recorded to take part in a "24 hour EP" challenge posed to me by some friends on the internet.
While all up, I feel it to be a rather weak effort retrospectively, I still enjoy the concept however.(as detailed in an earlier post)
This EP was released in May, and can be located here (http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?b2mydwwmm5o)
Fellow Chiptuner Little-Scale, has since also taken up creating music from cellular automata. (http://little-scale.blogspot.com/2009/08/sonifying-conways-game-of-life.html)
The following tracks are all composed on Nanovoice, with some support from Nanoloop.
Title: Rorschach
Released: Nanovoice EP
Notes: This track was titled due to the appearance of the beginning state of cellular automata being similar to that of a Rorschach test. The piece starts off slow(like most of the tracks in this EP) as I begin plotting in the pieces where they belong. Change, both rhythmic and pitch wise is evident throughout as I shift through some 5 iterations of the pattern. Heavy reverb and delay are used throughout, in an attempt to create a "thicker" sound than would otherwise be present.
Title: Lines
Released: Nanovoice EP
Notes: So named because of the starting state of the cellular automata this track begins much in the same way as the previous. Though achieving an arrhythmic dissonant sound early on, as the seemingly random parts begin to come together, filling more and more sonic space.
Noise is evident in this track, due to my use of a Gameboy Advance(my other gameboys did not react well to the software.)
Sonically, the track begins to become disinteresting around the halfway mark, but the introduction of the pseudo-random noise generator in the last quarter or so brings some rhythmic interest.
Title: Sauron
Released: Nanovoice EP
Notes: Named after the eye of Sauron that it resembles in it's beginning state, this is definitely the most interesting of the 4 tracks.
The track features "drum" support in the form of a pulsewave kick and PRNG noises from a synced copy of Nanoloop to keep things going.
The track also has a much, mellower, more contained sound, than the harsh bright sounds found in the other tracks.
Because of the sync with nanoloop, I was able to drop the pitch of nanovoice, which normally also drops the speed. This piece is rather long, and changes were taken very slowly, with the occasional altering of patterns on nanoloop to remain rhythmically fitting to nanovoice.
Title: Trailout
Released: Nanovoice EP
Notes: As Sauron ends, I let it continue on, doing little to the pattern, but dropping speed and pitch right down.
This coupled with the increasing delay throughout it's duration creates a huge sounding atmospheric sound. Very little happens in this track, even in comparison to the others on the EP. But personally I liken it to listening to the sounds of my similarly toned Buddha Machine(http://www.fm3buddhamachine.com/)
While all up, I feel it to be a rather weak effort retrospectively, I still enjoy the concept however.(as detailed in an earlier post)
This EP was released in May, and can be located here (http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?b2mydwwmm5o)
Fellow Chiptuner Little-Scale, has since also taken up creating music from cellular automata. (http://little-scale.blogspot.com/2009/08/sonifying-conways-game-of-life.html)
The following tracks are all composed on Nanovoice, with some support from Nanoloop.
Title: Rorschach
Released: Nanovoice EP
Notes: This track was titled due to the appearance of the beginning state of cellular automata being similar to that of a Rorschach test. The piece starts off slow(like most of the tracks in this EP) as I begin plotting in the pieces where they belong. Change, both rhythmic and pitch wise is evident throughout as I shift through some 5 iterations of the pattern. Heavy reverb and delay are used throughout, in an attempt to create a "thicker" sound than would otherwise be present.
Title: Lines
Released: Nanovoice EP
Notes: So named because of the starting state of the cellular automata this track begins much in the same way as the previous. Though achieving an arrhythmic dissonant sound early on, as the seemingly random parts begin to come together, filling more and more sonic space.
Noise is evident in this track, due to my use of a Gameboy Advance(my other gameboys did not react well to the software.)
Sonically, the track begins to become disinteresting around the halfway mark, but the introduction of the pseudo-random noise generator in the last quarter or so brings some rhythmic interest.
Title: Sauron
Released: Nanovoice EP
Notes: Named after the eye of Sauron that it resembles in it's beginning state, this is definitely the most interesting of the 4 tracks.
The track features "drum" support in the form of a pulsewave kick and PRNG noises from a synced copy of Nanoloop to keep things going.
The track also has a much, mellower, more contained sound, than the harsh bright sounds found in the other tracks.
Because of the sync with nanoloop, I was able to drop the pitch of nanovoice, which normally also drops the speed. This piece is rather long, and changes were taken very slowly, with the occasional altering of patterns on nanoloop to remain rhythmically fitting to nanovoice.
Title: Trailout
Released: Nanovoice EP
Notes: As Sauron ends, I let it continue on, doing little to the pattern, but dropping speed and pitch right down.
This coupled with the increasing delay throughout it's duration creates a huge sounding atmospheric sound. Very little happens in this track, even in comparison to the others on the EP. But personally I liken it to listening to the sounds of my similarly toned Buddha Machine(http://www.fm3buddhamachine.com/)
Lunchbreaks - A Live Mashup.
Continuing with my breakdowns of work I've done this year, in this post I'll be looking at Lunchbreaks a 25 minute mashup I performed live for episode 2 of the 8bc open mic podcast.(http://8bcopenmic.blogspot.com/)
I also released it afterwards, and it can be found here(http://www.mediafire.com/?rmncvmvem2a) without the awkward smalltalk that takes place before and afterwards.
This release consists of a lot of my early nanoloop loops recorded and cut to 1-2 bar lengths. These files were then sorted into the groups of drums, rhythm and melody. I also sampled a kick, which is used throughout.
As well as the nanoloop components, there are a few drum loops thrown in(in this case a collection of breaks).
I wrote a puredata patch that works on 4 channels. One channel is a kick, and has a 16 beat sequencer, synced to run in time with the rest.
The other three channels are loop players, that randomly pick a loop from a folder of up to 20. Once the loop is loaded, the patch detects beat length.It does this by assuming everything is at 120 bpm and thus 22050 samples a beat. By using the [moses] object, to pass the file down in doubled increments.(2 beats, 4 beats, 8 beats, 16... up to 64 beats long)
The beat length is used by the patch for several purposes, the most important being, that the file is played back in 1 beat sections. This allows for simple re-pitching and altering the tempo of a file, as well as allowing stuttering and to keep files in sync.
There are a number of simple effects built into the patch that can be heard throughout the recording. Each channel features the same mixer module, that I built to be re-usable and modular in other patches I write in the future. The mixer has a built in Delay, capable of up to 100% feedback and 1 second max delay time. It also features a "wetness" control and a simple toggle to turn the effect off.
It also has a built in distortion, which is a small abstraction that amplifies a signal, before clipping waveform down in size from -1 to 1, leaving lots of sharp peaks. This is fed into an [overdrive~] object for some extra "dirtyness". The amplification and reduction of the waveform makes for a harsh distortion.
Outside of the mixer module, the drum channel features a high feedback, short time delay, that can be toggled on and off. It is the only channel to feature this function.
All loop channels feature a stutter control, that repeats the current beat while the button is held. They also feature a randomising re-pitcher, that when activated, randomly picks a tempo to re-pitch the sample to, as well as randomly picking how long it will take to reach that point.
Compositionally, a lot of this, if not all was left to chance. I produced the original sounds to be used, and made use of them in a reasonably well controlled manner, but the order they appeared, whether some loops appeared at all, was left entirely to chance.
I feel that this improvisation, where I was left out of a large part of the compositional process created some combinations of sounds, as well as musical direction that personally I would not have considered.
There are "mistakes" throughout much of the recording, where the unexpected got the most of me, or where I quickly retriggered file selection because a certain sound did not work with the current feel, but I believe it brings a certain level of human interaction that isn't particularly present in most electronic music.
The piece does have some level of direction, I was able to control changes from the mellower sections(described in the podcast as "wind chimes of death") to the heavier and more powerful sections such as the end build up.
This recording was well received, with many downloads outside of its original podcast form.
I also released it afterwards, and it can be found here(http://www.mediafire.com/?rmncvmvem2a) without the awkward smalltalk that takes place before and afterwards.
This release consists of a lot of my early nanoloop loops recorded and cut to 1-2 bar lengths. These files were then sorted into the groups of drums, rhythm and melody. I also sampled a kick, which is used throughout.
As well as the nanoloop components, there are a few drum loops thrown in(in this case a collection of breaks).
I wrote a puredata patch that works on 4 channels. One channel is a kick, and has a 16 beat sequencer, synced to run in time with the rest.
The other three channels are loop players, that randomly pick a loop from a folder of up to 20. Once the loop is loaded, the patch detects beat length.It does this by assuming everything is at 120 bpm and thus 22050 samples a beat. By using the [moses] object, to pass the file down in doubled increments.(2 beats, 4 beats, 8 beats, 16... up to 64 beats long)
The beat length is used by the patch for several purposes, the most important being, that the file is played back in 1 beat sections. This allows for simple re-pitching and altering the tempo of a file, as well as allowing stuttering and to keep files in sync.
There are a number of simple effects built into the patch that can be heard throughout the recording. Each channel features the same mixer module, that I built to be re-usable and modular in other patches I write in the future. The mixer has a built in Delay, capable of up to 100% feedback and 1 second max delay time. It also features a "wetness" control and a simple toggle to turn the effect off.
It also has a built in distortion, which is a small abstraction that amplifies a signal, before clipping waveform down in size from -1 to 1, leaving lots of sharp peaks. This is fed into an [overdrive~] object for some extra "dirtyness". The amplification and reduction of the waveform makes for a harsh distortion.
Outside of the mixer module, the drum channel features a high feedback, short time delay, that can be toggled on and off. It is the only channel to feature this function.
All loop channels feature a stutter control, that repeats the current beat while the button is held. They also feature a randomising re-pitcher, that when activated, randomly picks a tempo to re-pitch the sample to, as well as randomly picking how long it will take to reach that point.
Compositionally, a lot of this, if not all was left to chance. I produced the original sounds to be used, and made use of them in a reasonably well controlled manner, but the order they appeared, whether some loops appeared at all, was left entirely to chance.
I feel that this improvisation, where I was left out of a large part of the compositional process created some combinations of sounds, as well as musical direction that personally I would not have considered.
There are "mistakes" throughout much of the recording, where the unexpected got the most of me, or where I quickly retriggered file selection because a certain sound did not work with the current feel, but I believe it brings a certain level of human interaction that isn't particularly present in most electronic music.
The piece does have some level of direction, I was able to control changes from the mellower sections(described in the podcast as "wind chimes of death") to the heavier and more powerful sections such as the end build up.
This recording was well received, with many downloads outside of its original podcast form.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Soundbytes 4: Retrospective.
During the break between semesters, I headed down to Melbourne to see Australia's favourite chipmusic show, Soundbytes.
Soundbytes is run by Dpad productions, a small group, closely tied with Gameboy Australia. So far this is the 4th show to have been put on, and it has enjoyed moderate success outside the chipmusic world.
This post(http://dpadproductions.blogspot.com/2009/06/sounds-of-sb4.html) on the Dpad page has a pretty good outline of who was playing and what it is they do.
This video also showcases just a bit of what went on.
(Video recorded and edited by Little-Scale)
Personally I think the highlights for me were AstroZombies and Little-Scale, both of whom had cds that I immediately picked up at the show.
All up it was interesting to see the variation in how everyone performed, from Able Archer's approach of starting a track then jumping into the crowd to get everyone dancing(although he did play keyboard and guitar on a few tracks), to Little-Scale's use of an external controller and laptop to take care of what was coming out of his NES and Sega.
Soundbytes is run by Dpad productions, a small group, closely tied with Gameboy Australia. So far this is the 4th show to have been put on, and it has enjoyed moderate success outside the chipmusic world.
This post(http://dpadproductions.blogspot.com/2009/06/sounds-of-sb4.html) on the Dpad page has a pretty good outline of who was playing and what it is they do.
This video also showcases just a bit of what went on.
(Video recorded and edited by Little-Scale)
Personally I think the highlights for me were AstroZombies and Little-Scale, both of whom had cds that I immediately picked up at the show.
All up it was interesting to see the variation in how everyone performed, from Able Archer's approach of starting a track then jumping into the crowd to get everyone dancing(although he did play keyboard and guitar on a few tracks), to Little-Scale's use of an external controller and laptop to take care of what was coming out of his NES and Sega.
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