The idea for this came from a collection of sounds I had recorded a couple of years ago. The original sounds were recorded on analogue tape via a Marantz tape recorder using a RODE NT3. The sounds are scrapes recorded from a rusty metal louvre on a pig pen and a metal ashtray from a car being slid in and out. A small section from this collection of sounds are used in this composition. A section with as much sustain as posible was found. The longest ‘note’ was around 1 and a half seconds so a lot of time stretching was going to be done.
The piece itself is made from four tracks which represent a string quartet. Each track comprises of small sections of recorded scrapes pitch shifted to create musical notes. A short piece was written in Bm. This was used as the template for the scrapes. I think the idea of sounds of nature replacing traditional orchestral sounds has potential although this piece didn’t really represent it well. With more work and time I’m sure this could get to a level that I would find acceptable.
This piece could easily have been put together via MIDI, but it would have had a different result. If the sound was triggered by a sampler, the sounds would no doubt have artifacts from being pitch shifted and also the side effect of automatically getting the tempo of each sample altered up or down depending on the keyboard note. Having full control by choosing the sound which most closely resembles a particular note gives much better results although doing it that way is a very time consuming method.
The piece itself is made from four tracks which represent a string quartet. Each track comprises of small sections of recorded scrapes pitch shifted to create musical notes. A short piece was written in Bm. This was used as the template for the scrapes. I think the idea of sounds of nature replacing traditional orchestral sounds has potential although this piece didn’t really represent it well. With more work and time I’m sure this could get to a level that I would find acceptable.
This piece could easily have been put together via MIDI, but it would have had a different result. If the sound was triggered by a sampler, the sounds would no doubt have artifacts from being pitch shifted and also the side effect of automatically getting the tempo of each sample altered up or down depending on the keyboard note. Having full control by choosing the sound which most closely resembles a particular note gives much better results although doing it that way is a very time consuming method.
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Haines, Christian. 2007. “Creative Computing.” Seminars presented at the University of Adelaide between Feb and June 2007.
Carrol, Mark. 2007. "Perspectives in Music Technology 1A." Seminar presented at the University of Adelaide, Week 7.
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4 comments:
Bloody lovely and tuneful. There is a CD in the library called 'Music for Mechanical Instruments' and this sounds like one of the instruments. Shame it's not an instrument, but who knows, maybe that can be arranged! Seemed pretty loud at times but not overloading at this end so cool and nice sound placement. Enjoyed it much.
'Having full control by choosing the sound which most closely resembles a particular note gives much better results although doing it that way is a very time consuming method.'
True. I guess you could record to reel to reel and pull over play head at the right speeds for a purer result (no digital leftovers) if you are going to take ages about it (as these things usually do!). And why not?
very tasteful and slightly painful :)
it makes me wonder what you've done to your ears.
"it makes me wonder what you've done to your ears."
Amplitude and the time exposed destroys hearing not frequencies themselves. :)
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