I spent some time figuring out how to consistently get the sounds I want out of this one technique that my buddy Erik who plays the Bass Clarinet turned me on to a few years back. First there is this small frame drum. Then on top of that is a small metal reed that you can find sometimes on the side of the road. It’s from the brushes on a special vehicle that is used to clean the streets. One time I hit the motherload. I found a whole wheel that had come loose. It was just lying in this sort of liminal space where these types of service vehicles park and drop off grabble and stuff next to a highway that is on the way to the bouldering place. I could tell it had worn out its usefulness for its intended purpose. A couple of days later when I was coming back from bouldering I used a Knipex clipper that I amazingly had remembered to bring from home for this purpose. Nobody was around, but I still remember feeling like a thief. It’s wild to me that this kind of thing could happen. I had been keeping an eye out for them when out on walks and I had found maybe three over the course of two years. I clipped off a whole bunch, but the reeds were still 99.9 percent there when I left it. Later that summer when I rode past I noted that the wheel was gone. I think it just got thrown away probably, but I like to imagine that someone else got lucky and clipped off some reeds for their preparation needs also. When I got home I spent a lot of time cleaning the reeds. They were very dirty. So anyway, bit of a tangent there. Reed on the drum and then what you do is you ebow the reed. Depending on how the reed is bent you get a lot of different sounds. I tried a bunch of different reeds and now I have four different ones that I really like and I used those for this recording. I did it at 192 kHz using a new lapel microphone which was borrowed to me from an employer to try it out for a different purpose. So far I can say that the Shure CVO-B/C is alright for this kind of close up acoustic recording. I feel like it could have been brighter but that’s probably smart to have that roll off for when you are using it live and you don’t want it to feed back. I used the nice preamps going into the other soundcard that can do the high res rec. Just like I always do, I put the mic real close, on the inside, as close to the skin of the drum as I could get it. Nothing really exciting happening in the code. I enjoyed figuring out the right high value for bgn so that it can’t play past the end of the file. I thought again about how silly I think it is that SC would show me a warning message because of my choosing to use a scale in combination with a tuning which does not have the same amount of steps per octave. I would like to never see these warnings again.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("~/snd/erd")
(
Routine{
//s.record;
//1.wait;
Pdef(0,
Pseed(9699,
Pbind(*[
type: \cln,
snd: \erd,
bgn: Pwhite(0.0, 0.9285),
pan: Pseq([0.5, Pwhite(0.0, 1.0)], inf),
amp: Plprand(0.7, 0.9),
atk: Phprand(35.0, 60.0),
hld: Plprand(1.25, 2.5),
rel: Phprand(35.0, 60.0),
sustain: Pkey(\atk) + Pkey(\hld) + Pkey(\rel),
dur: (Pkey(\sustain) / (12.0 - Pexprand(5.0, 7.0))).trace,
crv: Prand([Phprand(-3.0, -1.0, 1), Plprand(1.0, 3.0, 1)], inf),
crt: Prand([Phprand(-3.0, -1.0, 1), Plprand(1.0, 3.0, 1)], inf),
jpr: 1/3,
jps: Pwhite(0.5, 1.0),
scale: Scale.chromatic24(\sept1),
degree: Pmeanrand(-6, 6).asInteger,
])
)
).play;
1140.wait;
Pdef(0).stop;
240.wait;
s.stopRecording;
}.play
)I went to EMS two times and recorded the Halldorophone which is on loan to EMS from the inventor. I found it works best without any kind of bow interaction. This is at least true for me and for the kinds of sounds that I want to produce. I played the instrument laying on it’s back using only the attenuators and the tuning pegs. I only used one of the built in speakers because the other one made a tremendous amount of hum. There was still some hum and so the only way to get a clean enough signal was to play it loud. This is a shame because it would be nice to be able to play more one the edge of feedback. I used my nice mics and mic pres and recorded at 192kHz 24 bit Stereo like I always do. The single file is about five minutes long and is a distillation of the best parts of the sessions I did with the instrument at EMS. I would like to go back and do some more recordings. I feel I only scratched the surface of what is possible with the instrument. In the code I like how the hal reverb came out. I sat with that for some time and it was a nice and subtle thing in the end. It’s a very narrowly filtered fizzy reverb. Since hal does not bleed over out into a wider field I had the idea to do the panning quite extreme. That line quite neatly captures this idea I’ve had for some time now. Starts out doing one event dead center and then is followed by an exponentially slanted left pan and then an exponentially slanted right pan and then back around to the middle. This pairs nicely with that narrow hal sound. Also cav gives it that low end and mirrored reflection in the stereo image. Nice to get to use the hex group of tunings on top of the regular churchy tunings also. Been trying to get that to work for a while now.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("~/snd/hld")
(
Routine{
//s.record;
//1.wait;
Pdef(0,
Pseed(9196,
Pbind(*[
type: \cln,
snd: \hld,
flp: Pwhite(0, 1),
pan: Pseq([0.5, Pexprand(1.0, 1.5, 1) - 1, 2 - Pexprand(1.0, 1.5, 1)], inf).trace,
cav: 1/2,
cai: Pseg(Pdup(2, Pwhite(0.0, 1.0)), Pwhite(30.0, 90.0), \lin, inf),
atk: Plprand(4.0, 8.0),
hld: Plprand(5.0, 20.0),
rel: Plprand(4.0, 12.8),
crv: 6,
crt: -6,
sustain: Pkey(\atk) + Pkey(\hld) + Pkey(\rel),
bgn: (Pwhite(0.0, 0.4) + Pseq([0, 0.5], inf)),
scale: Pdup(Plprand(19, 29), Pxshuf([
Scale.aeolian(\just),
Scale.dorian(\just),
Scale.ionian(\just),
Scale.locrian(\just),
Scale.lydian(\just),
Scale.mixolydian(\just),
Scale.phrygian(\just),
Scale.hexAeolian(\just),
Scale.hexDorian(\just),
Scale.hexMajor6(\just),
Scale.hexMajor7(\just),
Scale.hexPhrygian(\just),
Scale.hexSus(\just),
], inf)),
degree: Pdup(Plprand(1, 19), Phprand(-7, 7).unique) - Pwrand2([0, 7], [1, 4], inf),
dur: Pkey(\sustain) / Plprand(10.0, 20.0) * Pkey(\degree).linlin(-14, 7, 4, 0),
hpf: Pkey(\degree).linexp(-14, 7, 250, 20),
amp: Pdup(Plprand(1, 2), Phprand(0.3, 0.6)) / Pkey(\degree).linlin(-14, 7, 0.7, 1.3),
hal: 1/4,
hai: Pseg(Pdup(2, Pwhite(0.0, 1.0)), Pwhite(30.0, 90.0), \lin, inf),
rts: 19,
edf: 0,
ldf: 0,
hlp: 16000,
hhp: 8000,
])
)
).play;
1140.wait;
Pdef(0).stop;
120.wait;
s.stopRecording;
}.play
)As I was completing Towards a Music for Large Ensemble I began to feel I did not have time to complete an etude for each new instrument I added. Now it’s after the premiere of the piece, so there is time again. Time to focus in on one instrument at a time and to figure out a way to make another piece from a single recording. This one I did with this great iterator which is a superball textured rubber mallet. You rub it against drum skins or gongs, or other things, and it makes the whole thing vibrate in this really particular way. I had made recordings of a Tom that I had bought cheap, but that drum made a low mid sound with not a lot of high end, so in th end it ended up sounding too noisy after the post processing envolved in the large ensemble piece. I wanted more amplitude, a lower fundamental and more overtones. I ended up putting a 1 by 1/2 meter metal plate in a bathtub and using the superball mallet on the outside with the mics on the inside. I recorded with my usual gear at 192kHz, 24 bits. There are 61 wav files in the folder. I chose to preserve the dynamic relationship between the files, as that was very clearly necessary in order to capture this technique faithfully. In the code I had the idea that I wanted there to be a kind of slowly mounting tendency towards higher and higher transpositions. This idea got combined with some low passed deviations in the short term, and then a modulo at the end, so that it wraps around from highest to lowest transposition. I had been carrying this idea around for a long time and I enjoyed incorporating it here. I am grateful that the style of playing and the dynamics enable this upward tendency to not be to Overbearing on the general impression of the piece. I felt the idea worked best as a fairly subtle thing, complemented in consort by other temperaments.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("~/snd/sbt")
(
Routine{
//s.record;
//1.wait;
Pdef(0,
Pseed(9127,
Pbind(*[
type: \cln,
snd: \sbt,
dur: Plprand(0.1, 1.0),
bgn: Pwhite(0.0, 1.0).round(0.2).unique,
num: Pdup(Pexprand(1, 2), Pxshuf((0 .. 60), inf)),
atk: Pexprand(5.0, 10.0).trace,
hld: Pexprand(5.0, 10.0),
rel: Pexprand(5.0, 10.0),
crv: 5,
crt: -5,
sustain: (Pkey(\atk) + Pkey(\hld) + Pkey(\rel) + 1),
amp: Pseg(Pdup(2, Phprand(0.45, 0.9)), Pwhite(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
scale: Scale.chromatic(\sept1),
degree: (Pdup(Plprand(9, 19), Pexprand(1, 10) - 1).asInteger + Pdup(Plprand(9, 19), Pseq((0, 1 .. 18), inf)) % 19 - 12),
pan: Pbrown(0.2, 0.8, Pwhite(0.1, 0.2)),
hal: 1/3,
hai: 1,
edf: 0,
ldf: 0,
rts: 8,
hlp: 200,
cav: 1/6,
dup: Plprand(9, 19),
fsh: Pdup(Pkey(\dup), Pwrand2([0, Pexprand(1.0, 2.5, 1) - 1], [19, 1], inf)),
fsm: Pdup(Pkey(\dup), Pwrand2([0, Pexprand(1.0, 2.5, 1) - 1], [19, 1], inf)),
flp: Pseed(0, Pwhite(0, 1)),
stretch: Pseg(Pdup(2, Pmeanrand(0.5, 1.5)), Pwhite(30.0, 90.0), \lin, inf),
])
)
).play;
1140.wait;
Pdef(0).stop;
120.wait;
s.stopRecording;
}.play
)I put snare wires on top of a small tambourine drum. Then I put an ebow on the snare wires. The ebow makes the snare wire under it vibrate. I put the mics at either end of the snare wires laid across the middle of the small tambourine drum. It had that delicate balance of stability and instability that I keep coming back to. I recorded eight three minute takes of different positions with my regular setup at 192kHz. I added a 30 second fade on either end of all them. Half of the takes I used the harmonic mode on the ebow. In the code I came back to the idea of using bnd to get a slow glissando to a quantized value. This has been showing up lately and I feel it is going somewhere interesting. I split the octave in 24 parts so I’d have enough end points over 1/8th moving up and one 1/8th moving down. This one has a strong focus on the higher end of the spectrum as I made it to fit with other more low end heavy material.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("~/snd/est")
(
Routine{
//s.record;
//1.wait;
Pdef(0,
Pseed(3257,
Pbind(*[
type: \cln,
snd: \est,
flp: Pwhite(0, 1),
num: Pdup(Plprand(1, 3), Pxshuf((0 .. 7), inf)),
bnd: Pmeanrand(-0.125, 0.125).round(1/24),
bno: Pmeanrand(30.0, 90.0),
bnt: Pmeanrand(2.0, 8.0),
bgn: Plprand(0.0, 0.5),
atk: Phprand(3.0, 30.0),
hld: Phprand(3.0, 30.0),
rel: Phprand(3.0, 30.0),
crv: Pwhite(5.0, 7.0),
crt: Pkey(\crv).neg,
sustain: Pkey(\atk) + Pkey(\hld) + Pkey(\rel) + 1,
dur: Pkey(\sustain) / 24,
scale: Scale.chromatic(\mean4),
degree: Pdup(Plprand(1, 3), Plprand(0, 7)),
octave: Pdup(Plprand(1, 3), Pmeanrand(4, 8).round),
pan: Pwhite(0.0, 1.0),
cav: 1,
cai: Pseg(Pdup(2, Pwhite(1/8, 1.0)), Pwhite(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
amp: Pseg(Pdup(2, Plprand(0.3, 0.6)), Pwhite(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf) / Pkey(\octave).linlin(4, 8, 1, 1.5),
])
)
).play;
1140.wait;
Pdef(0).stop;
120.wait;
s.stopRecording;
}.play
)I wrote on The Public Internet that I was looking to borrow a trombone. A person reached out and said I could borrow their Euphonium because it was the closest thing they had. I recognized this person from years back but we never played together or hung out. Amazing. It felt like The Internet of Olde. People just being nice to each other because it feels nice. We met up and talked a little bit. It was very nice. I carried the thing back home and it was surprisingly heavy. Big sturdy black case with cute stickers on it. I sat up my regular rig with the nice mics and the nice preamps and the nice soundcard. Took me a while to get used to the instrument but in the end I got it done. It’s that same embouchure thing that the trumpet has, just bigger and lower. I recorded the lowest note that I could get out of the instrument. I am not sure that it is the lowest possible note tho. For sure the lowest I could do. I stitched together a bunch of shorter notes to make a really long one. I recorded in Stereo at 192kHz but exported out at 96kHz an octave below what I had played. I did some colour work in the high end to get it to where it needed to be. The resultant file is 6 minutes and 30 seconds. When I was working with the material I remembered something a composition teacher of mine from way back when I was at The School of Composition had told me. It was about intonation and about how they felt that it was strange that in New Music you have this compromise as your starting point and then just dig in deeper by using quartertones. I always thought that was wild that my teacher acknowledged this cognitive dissonance and then just shrugged it off. So that idea is in there. Also I wanted to have a kind of mix between brownian motion and a rising offset with a sharp drop off as a way to present the pitch material over time. That’s a saw, just real slow. Also it felt cool to use modulo to have the pitches wrap around above the octave.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("~/snd/eph")
(
Routine{
//s.record;
//1.wait;
Pdef(0,
Pseed(152,
Pbind(*[
type: \cln,
snd: \eph,
dur: (1 / Pexprand(1.0, 29.0)),
lpf: Pseg(Pdup(2, Phprand(20, 20000)), Pwhite(15.0, 90.0), \exp, inf),
amp: Pseg(Pdup(2, Plprand(0.125, 0.225)), Pwhite(15.0, 90.0), \wel, inf) * Pkey(\lpf).expexp(20, 20000, 8, 1),
scale: Scale.chromatic(\et12),
dup: Plprand(99, 199),
saw: Pdup(Pkey(\dup)/1.5, Pseq((0, 1/4 .. 12), inf)) % 12.25,
degree: Pdup(Pkey(\dup), Pkey(\saw) + Pseq([0, Pbrown(0.0, 12.0, Pwhite(1/4, 1))], inf)).round(1/4) % 12.25,
flp: Pwhite(0, 1),
bgn: Plprand(0.0, 1.0),
atk: Plprand(1.0, 33.0),
rel: Plprand(1.0, 33.0),
hld: Plprand(1.0, 33.0),
sustain: Pkey(\atk) + Pkey(\hld) + Pkey(\rel),
pan: Pwhite(0.0, 1.0),
cav: 1,
cai: Pseg(Pdup(2, Plprand(0.0, 1.0), Pwhite(15.0, 90.0), \wel, inf)),
hpf: Pseg(Pdup(2, Pexprand(20, 200)), Pwhite(15.0, 90.0), \exp, inf),
calcFreq: Pfunc{|ev|ev.use{ev.freq.asStringPrec(48).postln}},
])
)
).play;
1140.wait;
Pdef(0).stop;
99.wait;
s.stopRecording;
}.play
)I went to visit a friend who lives a little bit outside of the city. Ducked in real quick in a cute lil second hand shop before catching the train back. I found this little childrens toy that had these great big metal bells in it. Later when I got home I took it apart so I could get access to the bells more easily. I found a way of palm muting the bells and moving slowly, very close to the microphones that I really enjoyed. A subdued, slow trickling of metal. Recorded using my regular setup at 192kHz. There are eleven Stereo files all between three and four seconds long. I have a long standing relationship with this idea of the “mass event”. I think I picked it up from Xenakis. I really enjoy this sort of flocking behavior. Through the whole process of working on this thing I was slowing everything down. This kind of thing I really don’t want to feel rushed.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("~/snd/mtb")
(
Routine{
//s.record;
//1.wait;
Pdef(0,
Pseed(2748,
Pbind(*[
type: \cln,
snd: \mtb,
num: Pxshuf((0 .. 10), inf),
flp: Pwhite(0, 1),
dur: 1 / Pseg(Pdup(2, Pwhite(3.0, 33.0)), Pwhite(1.0, 100.0), \lin, inf),
octave: Pseg(Pdup(2, Pmeanrand(3.0, 7.0)), Phprand(166.0, 199.0), \lin, inf),
amp: Pseg(Pdup(2, Pexprand(0.5, 1.0)), Pexprand(0.01, 33.0), \exp, inf),
pan: Pseg(Pdup(2, Pmeanrand(0.1, 0.9)), Pexprand(0.01, 33.0), \exp, inf),
lpf: Pseg(Pdup(2, Phprand(200, 20000.0)), Pwhite(166.0, 199.0), \exp, inf),
hpf: Pseg(Pdup(2, Pexprand(20.0, 80.0)), Pwhite(166.0, 199.0), \exp, inf),
hpq: Pseg(Pdup(2, Plprand(0.0, 0.125)), Pwhite(166.0, 199.0), \wel, inf) * Pkey(\hpf).explin(20, 80, 2, 0.5),
lhf: Pseg(Pdup(2, Pmeanrand(0.2, 0.8)), Pwhite(166.0, 199.0), \lin, inf),
fsh: Pseg(Pdup(2, Pmeanrand(-1.1, 1.1)), Pwhite(166.0, 199.0), \lin, inf),
fsm: Pseg(Pdup(2, Pmeanrand(-1.1, 1.1)), Pwhite(166.0, 199.0), \lin, inf),
rma: 1/8,
rmf: Pseg(Pdup(2, Pexprand(0.0001, 1000.0)), Pwhite(166.0, 199.0), \exp, inf),
rdf: Pseg(Pdup(2, Pexprand(0.0001, 1000.0)), Pwhite(166.0, 199.0), \exp, inf),
spd: Pwrand2([-1, 1], [1, 100], inf),
cav: 8,
cai: Pseg(Pdup(2, Pwhite(0.125, 1.0)), Pwhite(166.0, 199.0), \lin, inf),
cvl: Pseg(Pdup(2, Pmeanrand(0.5, 0.8)), Pwhite(166.0, 199.0), \wel, inf),
sustain: 16,
])
)
).play;
1140.wait;
Pdef(0).stop;
120.wait;
s.stopRecording
}.play
)I soldered together a cute little electronic noise instrument from a pcb kit I ordered from noise.technology which is run by Max Wainwright who is a guy I studied composition with. He pledged to donate all of the profits from the sales of these kits during the month of October 2023 to Disarmament Solutions which is a donation program which supports Ukraine with urgently needed demining equipment. I thought that all sounded great so I ordered a kit. It arrived quickly, was easy to solder together and super fun to play in real time. I did my sort of ususal thing and recorded 8 three minute recordings in 192kHz mono 24 bit. These samples are all somewhat steady states, but they all have a little life to them. This kit has my warmest recommendation. Briefly about the title of this composition; I started just spontaniously naming the sample pack something with three letters, like how I usually do. The circuit is called Simple & Radical so first I thought I’d use snr but then I realized that name is already in use in SuperClean. I settled on sar as in Simple And Radical. After I had gotten to a point where I felt content with how the music sounded I started thinking about Ukraine and about Russias illegal war and about their tactic of putting mines in fields where crops grow, making it impossible to steward the earth and grow the land. I thought then that the land is full of scars which will take great effort and a long time to heal. Sår is scars in Swedish and without the umlaut it’s sar. Sår doesn’t work as the name of a sample folder because computers. I translated scars into Ukrainian and I got шрами.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("~/snd/sar")
(
Routine{
//s.record;
//1.wait;
Pdef(0,
Pseed(9991,
Pbind(*[
type: \cln,
snd: \sar,
bgn: Pdup(Pexprand(9, 99), Pwhite(0.0, 0.9)).trace(prefix: ", "),
pan: Pseg([0.0, 1.0, 0.0], Pwhite(30.0, 60.0), \wel, inf),
ddv: Pwhite(0.33, 11.0),
ddp: Pkey(\ddv).linlin(0.33, 11.0, 1, 8),
dur: 1 / Pdup(Pkey(\ddp), Pkey(\ddv)),
jpr: 1/16,
jpg: 32,
num: Pdup(Pwhite(39, 119), Pxshuf((0 .. 7),inf)),
spd: Pdup(Pwhite(39, 119), Pexprand(1/4, 3.75)).round(1/7),
atk: Pexprand(4.0, 12.0),
hld: 2,
rel: Pexprand(4.0, 12.0),
crv: 0,
legato: 25,
amp: Pseg(Pdup(2, Plprand(0.5, 2.0)), Pwhite(15.0, 30.0), \wel, inf),
lpf: Pseg(Pdup(2, Phprand(32, 20000)), Pwhite(15.0, 30.0), \wel, inf),
lhf: Pseg(Pdup(2, Phprand(0.025, 0.5)), Pwhite(15.0, 30.0), \wel, inf),
cav: 1/2,
cai: Pseg(Pdup(2, Pwhite(0.25, 1.0)), Pwhite(15.0, 30.0), \wel, inf),
dfm: 1,
dfg: Pseg(Pdup(2, Pwhite(1.0, 2.0)), Pwhite(100.0, 200.0), \wel, inf),
])
)
).play;
1140.wait;
Pdef(0).stop;
120.wait;
s.stopRecoding;
}.play
)
I recorded some feedback through through my Rundgång prototype and a small metal plate using the nice mics and the nice micpres. I felt I was not satisfied with the amount of width in the recording. I made an edit where I split the file in half and then used only one channel from the original Stereo file. I put one part of it in the left channel and the other in the right channel. This reminds me of how I used to overdub and hard pan guitars back in the day. I think this dual Mono idea still works, and also that it is a classic. I think that I will use this technique again. Nice to pair this with the recently added flp parameter that flips the channels in a Stereo file. The folder contains a single three minute Stereo file recorded at 192kHz and then exported at 48kHz, two octaves down.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("~/snd/swp")
(
Routine{
//s.record;
//1.wait;
Pdef(0,
Pseed(9,
Pbind(*[
type: \cln,
snd: \swp,
bgn: Pxshuf((0.0, 0.05 .. 0.5), inf),
amp: Pseg(Pdup(2, Phprand(1/16, 0.55), Pwhite(5.0, 20.0), \sin, inf)),
atk: 19,
hld: 9,
rel: 19,
crv: 6.0,
crt: -6.0,
cav: 1/2,
cai: Plprand(0.0, 1.0),
pan: Pmeanrand(0.1, 0.9),
legato: 99,
stretch: Pseg(Pdup(2, Pmeanrand(1/4, 4.0)), Pwhite(5.0, 20.0), \sin, inf).trace,
scale: Scale.chromatic,
degree: Pdup(Plprand(1, 5), Pwrand2((0 .. 12), [20, 1, 20, 1, 20, 1, 20, 1, 20, 1, 20, 1, 20], inf)),
val: Pwrand2([4, 5], [1, 20], inf),
octave: Pdup(Pkey(\val).linlin(4, 5, 20, 1), Pkey(\val)),
flp: Pseed(0, Pwhite(0, 1)),
])
)
).play;
1200.wait;
Pdef(0).stop;
240.wait;
s.stopRecording;
}.play
)
I made this music from the recordings I did of the lowest keyboard register on the organ at Lötsjö kapell. I chose this registration because it had the fewest overtones out of the registrations available. It’s called Rohrflöjt 4’. The perceived tonality in this music is entirely derived from the instrument itself. The recordings are all 192 kHz, 24 bit. I recorded about three minutes worth of every note in this registration using the same gain settings for each one. The differences in amplitude and panning in the files themselves are a result of putting the microphones in this one particular spot that I prefered over other places I tried. Because I made such long recordings and there were 56 notes, this .zip file is pretty big. 11.83GB in fact. Please be advised. In the code I liked how I was able to create a relationship between the stochastic operations that yield the values for the volume envelope. I connected the sum of that continously changing envelope calculation to the durations. I then found that I could trim things down to get the density I wanted by dividing those values by five. This gave the amount of overlapping notes I wanted. In the past I’ve tried to limit the amount of data I put into RAM. With this one, things really got out of hand tho. I was really struggling to get this to play back without hickups, although thankfully recording did work. I might be imagining things, but I think increasing the block size helps, so I included that line at the top. This later got solved nicely when redFrik added the ability to read sound files from disk to SuperClean.
Download this sample pack here.
Server.default.options.blockSize = 4096;
~clean.csf("~/snd/lsh");
(
Routine{
//s.record;
//1.wait;
Pdef(0,
Pseed(20,
Pbind(*[
type: \cln,
snd: \lsh,
atk: Phprand(16.0, 64.0),
hld: Plprand(8.0, 64.0),
rel: Phprand(16.0, 64.0),
dur: ((Pkey(\atk) + Pkey(\hld) + Pkey(\rel)) / 5).trace,
legato: Pkey(\dur) * 2,
crv: 2.0,
num: Plprand(0, 55),
spd: Prand([1, 1/2], inf),
pan: Pseq([0.5, Pmeanrand(0.0, 1.0, inf)], inf),
cav: 1/4,
amp: (0.7 / Pkey(\num).linlin(0, 55, 1, 3)) * 1.25,
//aux: Pseed(2, Pxshuf(((0 .. 5) ++ (7 ..10)), inf)),
])
)
).play;
1140.wait;
Pdef(0).stop;
240.wait;
s.stopRecording;
}.play
)
A friend of mine who is a really great percussionist let me borrow one of his bows. It’s a custom made bow. It’s made with fishing line and it is quite short but it has at least the height of a Contrabass bow, might even be bigger than that. This means you can really dig in. The short travel of the bow is great I realize now after using it for a while. It affects the way I think about bow changes a whole lot. Because they have to happen more often it creates this kind of breathing or rhythm even. I really enjoy how these give a kind of life to the sustained parts of the sound. The thing being bowed is a stainless steel baking bowl. I’ve used these before a lot but not this particular one. This one is my biggest one yet. It was fun to play it and to find a certain node and a certain angle on the rim of the bowl. I recorded in my usual way with the fancy mics and the double soundcard setup. There is a single 192kHz 24 bit Stereo sound file at around three minutes in duration inside the sample folder.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("~/snd/nsb")
(
Routine{
//s.record;
//1.wait;
~a = {|seed, pan, aux|
var b =
Pbind(*[
type: \cln,
snd: \nsb,
dur: Plprand(1.0, 5.0),
bgn: Plprand(0.0, 0.9),
atk: 0.5 * Pkey(\dur),
hld: 2.0 * Pkey(\dur),
rel: 0.5 * Pkey(\dur),
crv: 0.0,
legato: 5 * Pkey(\dur),
scale: Pdup(Plprand(13, 17), Pxshuf([
Scale.harmonicMinor(\sept1),
Scale.mixolydian(\sept2),
Scale.aeolian(\sept1),
Scale.enigmatic(\sept2),
], inf)),
degree: Pdup(Plprand(3, 7), Pmeanrand(-7, 7)).round,
octave: Pdup(Plprand(3, 7), Plprand(3, 5)),
mtranspose: Pdup(Plprand(13, 17), Pmeanrand(-1, 3).round),
lpf: Plprand(15000, 20000),
acc: Pfunc{|ev| ev.use { ~freq.value() }},
acp: Pfunc({|ev|
var root = 60.0;
var freq = ev[\acc];
var xa = root / freq;
var xb = 0.222; // Exponent
xa.pow(xb);
}),
amp: (Pseg(Pseq([0.15, Plprand(0.25, 0.5, inf)], inf), Pseq([19, Plprand(3.0, 90.0, inf)], inf), \wel, inf)
* Pkey(\acp)).trace,
cav: 2,
cai: Pseg(Pseq([0, Phprand(0.0, 1.0, inf)], inf), Pseq([90, Plprand(3.0, 90.0, inf)], inf), \wel, inf),
pan: pan,
aux: aux,
]);
Pseed(seed, Pseq([b], inf));
};
Pdef(0, ~a.(3480, Pseq([0, Phprand(0.1, 0.5, inf)], inf), 0)).play;
Pdef(1, ~a.(5690, Pseq([1, Plprand(0.5, 0.9, inf)], inf), 1)).play;
(19 * 60).wait;
Pdef(0).stop;
Pdef(1).stop;
240.wait;
s.stopRecording;
}.play
)
I bought a cymbal real cheap at a second hand store close to were I live. I used the nice mics and the nice preamps to record it. I layed the cymbal on a table with the bell down and bowed it over the side of the table. It was a little finicky to get the mics in the right position because if I had them too close the stereo field varied way too much with each bowing. I figured out after a while that there was a mic position which was a little bit backed off from as close as possible that kept the stereo field stable while still picking up that low end that comes with proximity that I was looking to capture. This kind of thing is just great on it’s own and to my mind doesn’t need much passed just doing it. In the code I wanted to keep things simple and not do a lot. I just wanted to have a slow and steady presenting of the material in some different combinations of transpositions. I just had the one little idea where I wanted the rounding of the playback speed to switch from 1/7 to 1/13 after 5/8 of the total duration. There are two files in the pack. One is about two minutes long and the other is about four minutes long. Both were recorded at 192kHZ in stereo.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("~/snd/bcm")
(
Routine{
//s.record;
//1.wait;
Pdef(0,
Pseed(9678,
Pbind(*[
type: \cln,
snd: \bcm,
num: Pwhite(0, 1),
seg: Pseg([0, 1], 1200, \lin, 1),
bgn: Pseq([Pwhite(0.0, 0.5, 1), Pwhite(0.5, 1.0, 1)], inf),
amp: Pseg(Phprand(0.2, 0.4), Plprand(30.0, 90.0), \sin, inf),
spd: Pdup(Plprand(2, 4),
Plprand(1/4, 4.0).round(1 / Pkey(\seg).linlin(0.624, 0.625, 7, 13))).trace,
atk: Phprand(9.0, 19.0),
hld: Phprand(9.0, 19.0),
rel: Phprand(9.0, 19.0),
dur: Pwhite(1.5, 6.0),
cav: 1,
legato: 99,
//aux: Pseed(0, Pxshuf((0 .. 10), inf)),
])
)
).play;
(19 * 60).wait;
Pdef(0).stop;
240.wait;
s.stopRecording;
}.play
)
I put a long, thin metal shelf on a box with a pickup and a speaker in it and got some feedback going through the shelf itself. The shelf acts as a complex resonator. I bought the shelf at a thrift store for real cheap. It was made by the dominant cheap furniture franchise (you know the one), and has since been discontinued. My friend Jon made the box with a pickup and a speaker in it. It’s called Rundgång. I have grown quite fond of this contraption. It’s an interesting iterator. I don’t reach for it quite as often as a bow, but that’s alright. It’s very good at what it does. It felt nice to make another track using it with the nice mics. The feedback teeters through some steady states and I vary the amplitude with small nudges now and then, striving to maintain those delicate steady states. I used my regular recording setup. The result was one Stereo file recorded at 192kHZ. In the code it felt very liberating to be doing a kind of compacti glissandi music again. I’ve been wanting to get back to making a music which allows for a wider gamut of pitch relationships for some time now. I am grateful for the degree of detailed variation which is possible utilizing the parameters that deal with the glissandi. It’s a subtle thing, but I enjoyed making a connection between the amount of glissando and the panning position.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("~/snd/fms")
(
Routine{
//s.record;
//1.wait;
Pdef(0,
Pseed(3471,
Pbind(*[
type: \cln,
snd: \fms,
dur: Plprand(1.0, 4.0),
bgn: Pwrand2([Pwhite(0.0, 0.5, 1), Pwhite(0.5, 1.0, 1)], [2, 1], inf),
scale: Scale.bartok(\sept2),
octave: Pdup(9, Pmeanrand(3, 7)),
degree: Pdup(Phprand(6, 9), Pmeanrand(-7, 7)),
mtranspose: Pdup(Phprand(4, 9), Phprand(0, 7)),
harmonic: Pdup(Phprand(2, 9), Phprand(1, 4)),
calcFreq: Pfunc{|ev|ev.use{ev.freq.asStringPrec(48).postln}},
frq: Pfunc{|ev|ev.use{ev.freq}},
amp: Pseg(Pmeanrand(0.333, 0.666), Phprand(30.0, 90.0), \sin, inf) / Pkey(\frq).linlin(209, 4735, 1, 4),
bnd: Pmeanrand(-0.25, 0.25),
bno: Pmeanrand(3.0, 9.0),
bnt: Pmeanrand(3.0, 9.0),
pan: Pkey(\bnd).linlin(-0.25, 0.25, 0.1, 0.9),
atk: Pwhite(9.0, 18.0),
hld: Pwhite(3.0, 9.0),
rel: Pwhite(3.0, 9.0),
crv: 0,
legato: 99,
cav: 1,
cai: Pseg(Plprand(0.0, 1.0), Phprand(30.0, 90.0), \sin, inf),
stretch: Pseg(Phprand(0.5, 1.0), Phprand(30.0, 90.0), \sin, inf),
//aux: Pseed(0, Pxshuf((0 .. 10), inf),
])
)
).play;
(19 * 60).wait;
Pdef(0).stop;
240.wait;
s.stopRecording;
}.play
)
I wanted to make a slower and more subtle music than what I’ve been making as of lately. Still I wanted for there to be changes, but just more gradual. Also I wanted to see if I could do something with fewer parameters which still felt interesting to me. I wanted to take a conscious step away from complexity and just present more of a phenomenon or a kind of state. I knew I wanted to come back to glass because it has a very distinctive sound to it which kind of reminds me of additive synthesis. I like how the transpositions add up and how the speed of the iteration follows suit. A while back I rescued the mechanical guts of a piano from an old piano technician that would have thrown them away otherwise. I’ve been slowly taking it apart and saving the felt hammers. For this recording I used one of those felt hammers on a fairly large glass bowl. It’s the kind you might use for a salad or maybe some fruit. The shape of the bowl is quite plain. It’s more of a kitchen utility. I got it for next to nothing at a thrift store a while back. I used my new mics real close and my regular setup with my mic pres and soundcard. I used the piano hammer and played real soft right in between the mics. One 3 minute recording at 192KHz. That little code block has a couple of connections between parameters using Pkey. I had the idea that I wanted there to be a gap in the range. I made that case sit up a little more as what it is by applying a lowpass filter at 200Hz only for that lowest octave. I also gave the low end a boost in amplitude. I’ve used linear mapping for this lately, and I think I prefer it now over exponential mapping for this kind of spectrum tilt despite that being counterintuitive.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("~/snd/phg")
(
Routine{
//s.record;
//1.wait;
Pdef(0,
Pseed(3626,
Pbind(*[
type: \cln,
snd: \phg,
dur: Plprand(4.0, 8.0),
legato: 199,
spd: Pdup(Plprand(1, 3), Plprand(1/32, 7.0).round(1/12)),
octave: Pkey(\spd).linlin(1, 1/16, 4, 5),
lpf: Pkey(\octave).linlin(4, 5, 200, 20000),
rel: Pkey(\spd).linlin(1/32, 7.0, 180.0, 90.0),
crv: -4,
pan: Pwhite(0.0, 1.0),
amp: (Plprand(0.75, 1.5) / Pkey(\spd).linlin(1/16, 4.0, 1/8, 4)).trace,
cav: 1/2,
])
)
).play;
(17 * 60).wait;
Pdef(0).stop;
240.wait;
s.stopRecording;
}.play
)
A while back I borrowed two ebows from a friend who lives close to where I live. That got the grand total up to three ebows for a while. At first I tried my big Zither thinking that it would work well with changing to new strings a lot. That was not working, so I went the other route and I got out my smallest little red Zither that I bought for five euros at a fleamarket in Berlin a long time ago. In some weird way I feel like that is my best one. I have the strings all tuned real low on that one. I lined up all three ebows at the bridge end of the Zither and then slowly moved one at a time a tiny bit forward. Because the strings are tuned so low there’s all kinds of strange glissandos and interactions between the ebows and the strings. The ebows themselves assume the role of preparations, interfering with the strings physically. I made the recordings with my Line Audio CM4’s, because this was a while back, so I didn’t have the new mics yet. It was tricky to get a good placement of the mics because the Zither is so tiny and it was very crowded with ebows all over it. I got the mics as close as I could. Later, when I was doing the editing, I decided that the stereo field was off somehow, in a way that is hard to explain. After I had something cooking with the code I went back and split the two stereo files from the two takes apart, and that made everything better. I think that is cool. You have two takes, and each take has two mono versions with slightly different phase information in them. The sample rate resolution is 192KHz. When I had originally made these recording and got halfway working on the code, I put the piece to one side, because I felt I had already done Zither, and that I should focus on getting other instruments recorded. I love working with Zithers though and now that I’ve done some work putting together some ensemble music, I don’t think that’s a problem any more. Different styles of playing with different preparations yield very different sounding results, even though the recordings might be done on the same instrument. I am very happy and grateful that I get to do whatever I want to do when I am making music. One take is a about 15 minutes and the other take is obout 19 minutes. In the code I ended up doing something a little new, for me at least, and I think that this little idea could prove very useful in future. I realised that I needed to change values for \cav, which is a global effect, much more often than I wanted to produce new events and trigger more samples to play back. I realized I needed to take care of that because in the beginning of the track I could hear the send into the reverb was being updated far too seldomely, so it sounded terraced. I did not want that for this music, so I came up with this Ppar wrapping around the two Pbind objects, with a single Pdef wrapped at the top to keep a single name for when I need to stop the carousel. The lower Pbind only handles the send into the reverb, which at that hastened update rate makes for a buttery smooth interpolation for the reverb send. Since it is a global effect, it works. It looks kind of strange like that I think, but that’s as few lines as I could get it to do the job in. I also took some time to add some form enhancing details on various keys. Especially in the introduction where a faint sound is heard in one channel, and then after a while the reverb starts filling out the empty channel. It’s subtle, but it’s there. I used various Pkey references and also deliberately allowing some Pseq objects to get stuck at various points. When I first encountered this behaviour in Pseq I regarded it as a kind of bug, or at least an unwanted outcome. Now it has become a valuable stategy instead. I enjoy noticing when I’ve changed my mind about things.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("~/snd/thb");
(
Routine{
//s.record;
//1.wait;
Pdef(0,
Pseed(2883,
Ppar([
Pbind(*[
type: \cln,
snd: \thb,
num: Pxshuf((0 .. 3), inf),
bgn: Pwhite(0.0, 1.0),
atk: Plprand(30.0, 100.0),
hld: Pmeanrand(30.0, 100.0),
rel: Phprand(30.0, 100.0),
crv: Pdup(Pseq([1, 1, inf], 1), Pseq([8, 4, 2], 1)),
amp: Pseq([0.33, Pdup(Pwhite(1, 8), Plprand(0.33, 0.88))], inf),
dur: (300 / Phprand(1.0, 9.0)),
pan: Pseq([1, Pmeanrand(0.0, 1.0)], inf),
cav: 1.5,
cai: Pseg([0, 1, 0.5], 560, \wel, inf),
spd: Plprand(Pkey(\cai).linlin(0.0, 1.0, 0.5, 0.33), Pkey(\cai).linlin(0.0, 1.0, 2.0, 1.0)),
bnd: Pmeanrand(Pkey(\cai).linlin(0.0, 1.0, 0.0, -1.0), Pkey(\cai)) / 10,
bno: Pkey(\atk) + Pkey(\hld) + Pkey(\rel) / 2,
bnt: Pkey(\atk) + Pkey(\hld) + Pkey(\rel) / 2,
sustain: 300,
legato: 300,
]),
Pbind(*[
type: \cln,
snd: \sin,
amp: 0,
dur: 1/99,
cav: 0.75,
cai: Pseg([0, 1, 0.5], 560, \wel, inf).trace,
])
])
)
).play;
1050.wait;
Pdef(0).stop;
240.wait;
s.stopRecording;
}.play
)
I bought a tiny Piamino for real cheap. It only has 55 keys. It is not a good idea to try to move a piano on your lonesome so, I paid professional piano movers to bring it up the stairs to the apartment. I definitely think it was a fair price for what they did. After I got it into the livingroom I spent some time tuning the piano to get it roughly up to pitch. It was about a half step sunk. I went through and tuned it a bunch more times because I was curious if I could get it into a passable state. I could not. It’s real finicky work. You need to have gone to school for that kind of work. It just so happens I have a friend who I used to play in bands with who later went to school to learn how to tune pianos. He came over and I sat with him when he tuned the piano. It was such a trip. As a listening exercise it is really trippy is what I mean here. My friend did a really good job and the piano is at the time of writing still in tune. I need to be more precise with what I mean by in tune. I’ve come to regard the piano as an instrument to be very strongly entangled with the way that it is commonly tuned. That tuning is ET12. Not only that but there is also a kind of stretching that is most prononuced in the lower register. I wanted to have access to that. Playing it now, in a particular way, with the softening pedal pressed down, and with a light touch, I am reminded of the first pinao I ever had access to as a kid. It was at my aunt’s house. I knew I had to have that most common of tunings because that’s how my aunt’s piano was tuned. I sat and noodled with that kind of “composer’s piano”, playing softly, for long stretches. I started to notice that the mechanical action of the keys are different when played very softly. It affects the speed at which you can play new notes, I’m guessing it’s because the hammer does not have time to travel back all of the way. There is a delicate way of playing that can be reached there. A way of playing that is unique to this particular instrument. I recorded C’s in four octaves. I felt that struck the balance I am looking for. Sampling every key five times at different velocites is not what I want to do. In the recordings I made I oscillate both in tempo and velocity over that threshold which is unique to that particular key, which in turn affects the phrasing, as the hammer at times does not have time to fall back entirely before being pushed forward again. Each recording is a different length somewhere between two and three minutes. This was a very strong experience. It felt very hypnotic and eerily familar somehow. Like reliving something vaguley recolleceted from childhood. The mind couldn’t really remember. Not in any susbstantial detail, not really. It was more of a feeling. Thinking back now I think of it more as a ritualised channeling than anything else. I finally got those new microphones I’ve been waiting for and used them to record. They are a matched pair of Sennheiser MKH-8040. They are the best microphones that I have ever gotten a chance to use. Last time I had access to them was when I did my master. So now I have the complete kit. The mics, preamps and soundcard that I like. Nice feeling of wholeness. I put the microphones extremely close. Right up next to where the hammer meets the string. I changed up the microphone positioning for each of the recordings. There are four samples recorded at 192KHz. In the code there was a tricky bit that took a while to get right. I think now once I have the solution I foresee having use of it in future. The problem I had was that when low notes got chosen and held for longer durations the music got a kind of empty feeling to it. I got around that by having pitches under a certain threshold multiply the durations by a factor of eight. This led to an increase in amplitude and in strain on my CPU when there were longer passages with this fast material. I wanted to have some of those fast low notes be rests instead, so that I could thin the music out a little for just the low fast notes. I got in trouble for a bit and I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working and in the end I figured out it was because of order of execution. The type: key is always the first thing I set so it is such a common pattern I couldn’t think outside of that. It looks weird to me to have that key all the way at the bottom but that’s how it needs to be. Otherwise it makes up it’s own value for duration. The default is 1 and that does not give an error and was tricky for me to work out. I am imagining this could be used as a kind of life insurance or speed limit. In certain situations it would be better for me to generate pauses instead of totally choking up my CPU.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("~/snd/pno")
(
Routine{
//s.record;
//1.wait;
Pdef(0,
Pseed(2356,
Pbind(*[
snd: \pno,
atk: 15.0,
hld: 15.0,
rel: 15.0,
crv: 0.0,
bgn: Plprand(0.0, 0.5),
scale: Pdup(Plprand(999, 9999), Pxshuf([
Scale.ionian,
Scale.superLocrian,
Scale.lydian,
Scale.phrygian,
Scale.neapolitanMajor,
Scale.dorian,
Scale.mixolydian,
Scale.locrian,
], inf)),
degree: Pdup(Plprand(19, 199), Pwhite(-7, 0)),
octave: Pdup(Plprand(29, 299), Pwhite(3, 5)),
calcFreq: Pfunc{|ev|ev.use{ev.freq.asStringPrec(48).postln}},
frq: Pfunc{|ev|ev.use{ev.freq}},
dur: (Pseg(Plprand(30.0, 40.0), Plprand(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf) / 256
/ Pkey(\frq).expexp(66, 67, 8, 1)),
num: Pdup(Plprand(9, 99), Pxshuf((0 .. 3), inf)),
pan: Pmeanrand(0.0, 1.0),
amp: Pseg(Plprand(1/4, 1/2), Plprand(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
cai: Pseg(Phprand(0.1, 1.0), Plprand(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
cav: 1/3,
legato: 699.0,
stretch: Pseed(0, Pseg(Plprand(1.0, 3.0), Plprand(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf)),
type: Pfunc {arg event;
if (event.dur < 0.02) {
[\cln, \rest].choose
} {
\cln
}
},
//aux: Pseed(1, Pxshuf((0 .. 10), inf)),
])
)
).play;
(19 * 60).wait;
Pdef(0).stop;
240.wait;
//s.stopRecording
}.play
)
A while back I found a cigar box guitar for real cheap at a second hand store close to where I live. It was handbuilt. I think whoever made it spent a lot of time on it, but in the end regarded it as a disappointment. It took me quite a while to figure out how to play it and get good recordings out of it. It is not very loud. I think that has something to do with the rather small and thin balsam wood box, which also lacks a sounding hole. Another interesting design choice is the bridge which is made out of metal. The bridge is slanted at an angle and the way the broom handle is set through the box lets the string have quite a bit of close proximity to the rather elongated bridge. The result is a metallic buzzing sound. At first this was a lot more subtle because I was playing it with a pick and trying to get different pitches out of it by placing my left index finger on the string and resting it against the broom handle. This made the string muted and the sustain very short. I tried it with an ebow. Took me a while to realize that the ebow needed to be propped up on one side to get to the right height without muting the string when the instrument was laid on it’s back. It was starting to sound good at that point, but it was still too faint. I dug out an old idea I had years ago. I soldered together three 9 volt battery clips so that they can supply the ebow with 18 volts coming from two 9 volt batteries. This works fine and is probably sort of what the Bass ebow is doing. The string got a little too chaotic with all of that juice at low tensions, so I added a voltage regulator in between the batteries and the ebow. This way I could dial in the voltage somewhere between 9 and 18 volts. It really felt like a goldilocks kind of just right state. I tuned the string as low as I could without the fundamental falling apart and then tuned it up to the nearest et12 semitone. I then proceded to record in my usual way at 192kHz. I got the mics real super close to where the front of the ebow was, about halfway up the box. I was real particular about tuning it and I made 90 second takes. Each one of these tensions yielded a unique interaction between the string and the ebow that I really got a kick out of. So I made one recording for each semitone. I got up to 17 of them, then the tension got too high and the signal coming from the string got too low to record properly. I also did not want to break the string as I think it would be difficult to replace given the design of the instrument. Added a bit of fading in and out and there you go. In the code I finally got to use the sequencing the tunings and the scales separately trick that I had been waiting to make use of for a while. In a way I kind of ruined it by having the num key actually do chromatic(\et12) transpositions. For the longest time things where not working, but then after days of thinking about it I remembered the old Feldman trick of slowing things down until I got everything to my liking. I also fought for a long time to have this one in a higher register but I was not feeling it. Taking the whole range down an octave really helped. I think it’s that metal bridge with that great buzzing sound that got me in trouble there for a while. It’s a wild sound and it has all of this high frequency energy going on inside of it.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("~/snd/cbg");
(
var scales = Pseed(0,
Pxshuf([
Scale.augmented,
Scale.bartok,
Scale.minor,
Scale.harmonicMinor,
Scale.mixolydian
], inf)
).asStream;
Routine{
//s.record;
//1.wait;
Pdef(0,
Pseed(1240,
Pbind(*[
type: \cln,
snd: \cbg,
num: Pdup(Plprand(1, 15), Phprand(0, 16)),
dur: Plprand(1.0, 8.0) * 3,
bgn: Plprand(0.0, 0.5),
tun: Pdup(Plprand(10, 20), Pxshuf([
Tuning.pythagorean,
Tuning.just,
Tuning.sept1,
Tuning.sept2,
Tuning.vallotti,
Tuning.wcSJ,
], inf)),
scale: Pdup(Plprand(10, 20), Pfunc {|ev|
var scale = scales.next;
scale.tuning = ev[\tun];
"% : %".format(scale.name, scale.tuning.name).debug('scale');
scale;
}),
degree: Pdup(Plprand(10, 20), Plprand(0, 7)),
octave: Pdup(Plprand(10, 20), Pmeanrand(3, 5)),
mtranspose: Pdup(Plprand(111, 222), Plprand(-5, 2)),
calcFreq: Pfunc{|ev|ev.use{ev.freq.asStringPrec(48).postln}},
frq: Pfunc{|ev|ev.use{ev.freq}},
legato: 999,
sustain: 999,
atk: Plprand(9.0, 15.0) * 2,
hld: Plprand(11.0, 17.0) * 2,
rel: Plprand(7.0, 13.0) * 4,
crv: Phprand(2.0, 6.0),
pan: Pdup(Plprand(1, 2), Pmeanrand(0.0, 1.0)),
amp: (Pseg(Plprand(1/3, 1/2), Plprand(15.0, 115.0), \wel, inf)
/ Pkey(\frq).expexp(130, 523, 0.75, 1.0) * Pkey(\num).linexp(0, 23, 1, 3) / 3).trace,
cav: 2/3,
cai: Pseg(Phprand(0.0, 1.0), Phprand(90.0, 180.0), \wel, inf),
//aux: Pseed(0, Pxshuf((0 .. 10), inf),
])
)
).play;
(19 * 60).wait;
Pdef(0).stop;
240.wait;
s.stopRecording
}.play
)
)
A friend from England came to stay in the apartment during a guest composer residency at EMS. A buddy of mine who lives nearby lent a Cello to my friend from England for the duration of the residency. I negotiatied to hang on to the Cello for a lil bit after my friend from England left, before giving it back to my buddy who lives near by. This allowed me to make some recordings with the instrument. It was fun to play it, and I got all hopnotized playing the lowest open string. I sat up my usual dual soundcard rig. I placed one microphone real close right at the bridge, and one microphone real close at the edge of the fretboard. Both microphones faced flat onto the string. These two signals I then panned hard left and right and increased the width of the stereo field in post. I got pretty far into making music before I felt I had to go back and edit out the bow changes. I kept at it making the music with no bow changes but then I realized that I needed to have some bow changes in there some of the time in order to measure out time. I felt as though I needed some fixtures in the scenery along the road, otherwise I felt I was stuck in place. I did some fun stuff in the code that I won’t usually do. I made some linear sequences of scale degrees. I wouldn’t call these melodies because I keep changing the scale. I made one sequence that starts on each one of the eight scale degrees I was using. These linear sequences all have their own amount of steps in them. That’s a little nod to isometric stuff there even though, as stated above, the switching out of scales adds this layer of interpretation on top there. All of the sequences deplete all of the eight scale degrees. This idea keeps coming back. I want to present all of the available pitches because it yields a kind of variation that I’m fond of. I connected the envelopes to the durations which then get stretched back and forth which gives the music a kind of breathing that I enjoyed. There are these peaks and valleys of density. The way this panned out felt fresh to me. There is some crosstalk between parameters there that gives the music a sense of direction. I exported two stereo file at 192kHz. One with bow changes and one without them. The latter is an edit of the former.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("~/snd/vcl")
(
Routine{
//s.record;
//1.wait;
Pdef(0,
Pseed(10,
Pbind(*[
type: \cln,
snd: Pseq([\vcl, Pwrand2([\vcl, \r], [1, 2], 1)], inf),
num: Pseq([1, Pdup(Plprand(1, 8, 1), 0)], inf),
dur: Plprand(5.0, 11.0),
scale: Pdup(Plprand(15, 30), Prand([
Scale.ionian(\wcSJ),
Scale.mixolydian(\wcSJ),
Scale.whole(\wcSJ),
Scale.phrygian(\wcSJ),
Scale.bartok(\wcSJ),
], inf)),
degree: Pdup(Plprand(3, 7), Pxshuf([
Pseq([0, 3, 5, 4, 6, 2, 1, 4, 3, 6, 5, 7], 1),
Pseq([1, 0, 3, 2, 4, 3, 6, 5, 7], 1),
Pseq([2, 3, 0, 7, 5, 3, 4, 2, 5, 1, 3], 1),
Pseq([3, 7, 1, 2, 0, 6, 5, 4, 6, 7, 4, 2], 1),
Pseq([4, 5, 3, 2, 6, 1, 0, 7, 5, 6], 1),
Pseq([5, 4, 7, 6, 7, 3, 5, 1, 2, 0, 4, 5, 3], 1),
Pseq([6, 7, 6, 5, 6, 4, 5, 3, 2, 4, 1, 0], 1),
Pseq([7, 0, 6, 1, 5, 2, 4, 3], 1),
], inf)),
octave: Pseed(5, Phprand(4, 6)),
bgn: Pwhite(0.0, 0.9),
amp: Plprand(0.15, 0.55) * Pkey(\octave).linlin(4, 6, 1.5, 0.75),
crv: 0,
atk: Pkey(\dur) * 7,
hld: Pkey(\dur) * 3,
rel: Pkey(\dur) * 5,
legato: 999,
cav: 2/3,
pan: Pseq([0.5, Plprand(0.1, 0.9, 1), Phprand(0.1, 0.9, 1)], inf),
stretch: Pseg([1, 1/8, 1, 8, 1], Pmeanrand(20.0, 40.0), \sin, inf).trace,
//aux: Pxshuf((0 .. 10), inf),
])
)
).play;
(19 * 60).wait;
Pdef(0).stop;
240.wait;
s.stopRecording;
}.play
)
The other day when I was making the rounds to the local second hand shops and flea markets, like I do. In the middle of the vaguely familar, there stood upon a shelf a golden vase. It was of some unknowabale alloy. Probably copparish in reality, but the neurons in charge of finding gold tones clearly won out. I took my headphones out of my ears, held the vase close to one ear and struck it softly with the palm of my hand. I could tell it was special. Very resonant. Later, when I got home, I used a cartoon-chicken-yellow electric oatdrank latte wisk on that golden vase. The metal spool on the wisk has come halfway off of the rod. This made for a very interesting recording, as I have come to realize more and more of late, metal on metal action has a ton of that high frequency energy I am looking for. The signal chain during recording was as is now custom. In post I added a small increase in energy at 32Hz and applied a tiny bit of transparent limiting, being careful to keep as much of the dynamics as I could. I exported a single stereo file at 192kHz.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("~/snd/gvs")
(
Routine{
//s.record;
//1.wait;
Pdef(0,
Pseed(2,
Pbind(*[
type: \cln,
snd: \gvs,
dup: Plprand(5, 11),
dur: Plprand(1.0, 9.0),
scale: Scale.minor(\just),
degree: Pdup(Pkey(\dup), Plprand(0, 7)),
octave: Pdup(Pkey(\dup), Plprand(4, 5)),
mtranspose: Pwhite(-4, 4),
bgn: (Plprand(0.0, 0.5) + Pwrand2([0, 1], [50, 1], inf)).trace,
atk: Pkey(\bgn).linlin(0.0, 0.5, 1.0, 19.0),
hld: Plprand(19.0, 29.0),
rel: Plprand(19.0, 29.0),
crv: 6,
amp: Pseg(Plprand(0.125, 1.0), Plprand(15.0, 60.0), \wel, inf),
legato: 99,
pan: Pmeanrand(0.1, 0.9),
cav: 1,
cai: Pseg(Plprand(0.0, 1.0), Plprand(15.0, 60.0), \wel, inf),
hpf: Pwrand2([20, 5000, 10000], [8, 4, 1], inf) + Pkey(\bgn).linlin(0.0, 1.0, 0, 8000),
// aux: Pseed(0, Pxshuf((0 .. 10), inf)),
])
)
).play;
(19 * 60).wait;
Pdef(0).stop;
240.wait;
s.stopRecording;
}.play
)
I was looking for cheap instruments on used instrument sites, like I do, when I saw that you can get a Recorder for real cheap. Then I had a faint recollection that there might be a Recorder somewhere in the house, so I asked my wife who replied “I actually have two!” We had a go playing together. It is almost impossible to stay in tune while sustaining long durations. Overblowing is also a very likely outcome. This made for a very silly and fun little interaction. At that point I almost decided against trying to make one of these pieces, but then I thought that I should give it a try because I had identified it as a difficult task. I recorded using the same mics I always use, with the same double soundcard setup at 192kHz. In the end I exported the files two octaves down at 48kHz. I was listening in headphones with realtime passthrough when I was recording and it was impossible to get any kind of stability going at low pitch and amplitude with close micing, so I had to switch things up. I stepped away from the mics to the other side of the room and turned around so I was facing away from the microphones. The Alto Recorder was a total no go. The most stable pitch turned out to be the highest pitch on the Soprano Recorder. I recorded five breaths worth of that. I had to do a lot of editing, and as a result the files have different durations. That editing also led to some inconsistencies in how the waveforms lined up during crossfades which I felt was interesting. There are quite a few different crossfades throughout the five files which all ended up having their own unique little waverings. I have grown to understand that these kinds of imperfections are of great value later in the process when I stack a bunch of different transpositions on top of each other. I finally got around to using an old idea for scale material that I used to do all the time in the before times but now it’s been ages since the last time I did it. I used ten out of the twelve available pitches. I think any ten out of the twelve work. I just really dig that omisson of any two out of the twelve. I am happy I had a chance to come back to that idea and that I still feel that it works like a charm.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("~/snd/rec")
(
Routine{
//s.record;
//1.wait;
Pdef(0,
Pseed(3565,
Pbind(*[
type: \cln,
snd: \rec,
drv: Plprand(1.5, 15.0),
dur: Pdup(Pkey(\drv).linlin(1.5, 15.0, 8, 1), Pkey(\drv)),
num: Pxshuf((0 .. 4), inf),
atk: Plprand(15.0, 45.0),
hld: Plprand(15.0, 45.0),
rel: Plprand(15.0, 45.0),
crv: Pmeanrand(-8.0, 4.0),
pan: Pmeanrand(0.1, 0.9),
bgn: Plprand(0.0, 0.1),
scale: Scale.chromatic,
degree: Pdup(Plprand(9, 21), Prand((0 .. 3) ++ (5 .. 8) ++ (10 .. 12), inf)),
legato: 32,
octave: Pmeanrand(1, 6),
calcFreq: Pfunc{|ev|ev.use{ev.freq.asStringPrec(48).postln}},
frq: Pfunc{|ev|ev.use{ev.freq}},
amp: (Pseg(Plprand(1/11, 1/4), Plprand(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf) * Pkey(\freq).expexp(65, 587, 2.0, 0.75)),
brf: 200,
hpf: 200,
cav: 1,
cai: Pseg(Phprand(0.0, 1.0), Phprand(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
])
)
).play;
(19 * 60).wait;
Pdef(0).stop;
240.wait;
s.stopRecording;
}.play
)
I’ve been collecting bowls and various other metal objects from thrift stores for quite some time now. I for sure got the idea from first hearing and then playing with Henrik Olsson who is a truly gifted percussion player. I selected four of these metal objects and recorded myself playing them with a mallet. I used my usual double sound card setup. I tried to play in time, or in the same tempo within each take. I then actively tried to forget about the tempo I had used in the previous take. Which was not that hard to do, as it took me quite some time to reposition my two Line Audio CM3 microphones and set the gain for each take. There are four takes. These recordings went through quite a bit of post processing. I squeezed the dynamics in a couple of different ways using multiband and single band compression. I also spent quite a bit of time sculpting the transients. There was a lot of back and forth there. The four files all have their fade ins and outs baked in. I recorded and exported at 192kHz.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("~/snd/met")
(
Routine{
//s.record;
//1.wait;
Pdef(0,
Pseed(5,
Ppar(
3.collect{
Pspawn(
Pbind(*[
method: \seq,
pattern: Pfunc{|ev|
Pbind(*[
type: Pwrand2([\cln, \r], [1, 4], inf),
snd: \met,
num: Pxshuf((0 .. 3), inf),
dur: 2.0 / Pdup(Plprand(3, 9), Plprand(9.0, 17.0)),
legato: 239,
pan: Pmeanrand(0.0, 1.0),
scale: Scale.chromatic(\sept1),
degree: Pdup(Plprand(1, 3), Plprand(-9, 3)),
octave: Plprand(3, 5),
calcFreq: Pfunc{|ev|ev.use{ev.freq.asStringPrec(48).postln}},
frq: Pfunc{|ev|ev.use{ev.freq}},
amp: Pseg(Plprand(-16.5, -7.5), Plprand(5.0, 90.0), \wel, inf).dbamp / Pkey(\frq).expexp(39, 294, 1, 2),
atk: Phprand(12.0, 16.0),
hld: Pmeanrand(8.0, 32.0),
rel: Phprand(16.0, 64.0),
crv: Pmeanrand(4.0, 8.0),
sustain: Phprand(32.0, 128.0),
bgn: Plprand(0.0, 1.0),
cav: 3,
cai: Pseg(Phprand(0.0, 1.0), Plprand(5.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
hpf: Pseg(Plprand(160, 1200), Plprand(5.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
fsh: Pdup(Plprand(3, 13), Pwhite(-5.0, 3.0)),
fsm: Pdup(Plprand(3, 13), Pwhite(-5.0, 3.0)),
hai: Pseg(Phprand(0.0, 1.0), Plprand(5.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
hal: 0.75,
rts: 15,
hlp: 4000,
dla: 1,
dlf: 0,
dlt: 16,
dls: Pseg([Pdup(2, Plprand(0.0, 1.0)), 0], Plprand(5.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
stretch: Pseg([Pdup(2, Plprand(1.0, 4.0)), 1], Plprand(5.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
])
},
])
)
}
)
)
).play;
(19 * 60).wait;
Pdef(0).stop;
240.wait;
s.stopRecording;
}.play
)
I made some recordings of a trumpet I bought ages ago when the municipality was replacing it’s music school instruments and selling the old ones at an amazingly cheap yard sale. I had been putting it off for a long time because I knew that it would be difficult because I was never any good at playing the trumpet and my embouchure for sure is shot nowadays. Luckily I could utilize magics like doing many takes and, editing, lots and lots of editing. I scraped together 1 minute and 44 seconds worth of a single sustained note. It’s a Mono recording done at 192kHz. I used this broken Silent Brass mute which I was happy I still had kept back from when I used to play more. Even though the microphone inside it has given out, it is still the most silent trumpet practice mute I ever tried. It’s kind of like how an escalator that breaks down can still be used as stairs. I put this cheap little no name lapel microphone inside the mute and wedged it in tight with the cable coming out of the side of the horn, and it worked like a charm. I think it sounded better than I remember the microphone that came with the thing sounded. I kept some of the diminuendos that are due to me running out of breath in the recording, and that gave it this pulsing kind of thing that I really enjoyed. After struggling to get the kind of releases I wanted, I decided to bake them into the file so I made four copies of the file with four different fadeout lengths. In the code the thing that was new for me this time is a really old idea. I don’t remember exactly who told me this story but I’m pretty sure it was some kind of teacher from when I was in high school. It was about this conceptual art film where the film was looping and each time it looped it got one frame longer each time. I remember imagining how annoying that must have been to watch. In my code here the thing starts over after a minute, then two, then four, then eight. After that there’s a little bit of going backwards. So instead of addition my thing is multiplication and then a retrograde at the end. Not quite the same, but It felt nice to finally get around to hearing this idea put into practice. I was curious to see if it might lend a sense of form sort of creeping in to the listener, maybe on more of a subliminal level. It deals with memory in some way, as it is presenting the exact same material more than once. I have rarely, if ever done this in my music.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("~/snd/trp")
(
Routine{
//s.record;
//1.wait;
Pdef(0,
Pseed(206,
Pbind(*[
type: \cln,
snd: Pwrand2([\trp, \r], [1, 2], inf),
num: Pwrand2((0 .. 3), (4 .. 1), inf),
dur: 4 / Pdup(Plprand(1, 11), Plprand(5, 11)),
atk: 39,
hld: 29,
rel: 19,
crv: 6,
sustain: 89,
bgn: Pwhite(0.0, 0.75),
pan: Pseq([Plprand(0.0, 0.5, 1), Phprand(0.5, 1.0, 1)], inf),
scale: Pdup(Plprand(9, 29), Pxrand([
Scale.augmented(\just),
Scale.whole(\just),
Scale.mixolydian(\just),
Scale.ionian(\just),
], inf)),
degree: Pdup(Plprand(1, 9), Plprand(0, 7)),
octave: Pdup(Plprand(1, 9), Plprand(3, 6)),
mtranspose: Pdup(Plprand(1, 9), Pwhite(-5, 3)),
amp: Pseg(Plprand(1/16, 1/4), Plprand(75.0, 150.0), \wel, inf).trace,
cai: Pdup(Plprand(1, 11), Plprand(0.0, 1.0)),
cav: 2.0,
hpf: Pseg(Plprand(40, 400), Plprand(15, 90), \exp, inf),
brf: Plprand(20, 20000),
brq: Pwhite(0.0, 1.0),
brn: Pwhite(0.0, 1.0),
bro: Pwhite(0.0, 1.0),
])
)
).play;
60.wait;
Pdef(0).reset;
(2 * 60).wait;
Pdef(0).reset;
(4 * 60).wait;
Pdef(0).reset;
(8 * 60).wait;
Pdef(0).reset;
(4 * 60).wait;
Pdef(0).stop;
(2 * 60).wait;
s.stopRecording;
}.play;
)
One morning as the old clock radio woke me, I heard a piece of music that included Glass Armonica. I was reminded I’ve been wanting to record glass for a long time. I bowed a glass with some water on my finger. It’s the kind you would use for water. The glass is quite thin. In the manufacturing the rim of the glass has been cut, so there is no ring on it, as is found on the other glasses in the kitchen. This glass was once in use as a water glass, but because all of the other one’s in it’s set have met with various accidents over the years, this is the last of it’s kind. It has been delegated to a bookshelf where it now houses various seedlings as part of a small flock of other orphaned glassware. I spent quite some time playing it, and gradually came to understand that a delicate balance between pressure and speed had to be upheld in order to not flood the timbre with too many overtones. I was able to salvage over two minutes worth of usable material from a much longer recording. I recorded in Mono using a borrowed Røde NT 1000 microphone and my regular combination of soundcards at 192kHz.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("~/snd/gls")
(
Routine{
//s.record;
//1.wait;
Pdef(0,
Pseed(7,
Ppar(
7.collect{
Pspawn(
Pbind(*[
method: \seq,
pattern: Pfunc{|ev|
Pbind(*[
type: Pwrand2([\cln, \r], [5, 1], Plprand(5, 11)),
snd: \gls,
dur: Pdup(Plprand(5, 11), Phprand(1.0, 60.0)).trace,
scale: Pdup(Plprand(5, 11), Pxshuf([
Scale.harmonicMinor(\sept1),
Scale.romanianMinor(\sept2),
Scale.neapolitanMinor(\sept1),
Scale.minor(\sept2),
Scale.mixolydian(\sept1),
Scale.ionian(\sept2),
Scale.locrian(\sept1),
Scale.superLocrian(\sept2),
Scale.phrygian(\sept1),
Scale.bartok(\sept2),
Scale.whole(\sept1),
Scale.marva(\sept2),
], Plprand(5, 11))),
degree: Pdup(Plprand(1, 3), Plprand(0, 7)),
mtranspose: Pdup(Plprand(1, 3), Plprand(-5, 2)),
octave: Pdup(Plprand(1, 3), Plprand(2, 5), Plprand(5, 11)),
bgn: Plprand(0.0, 1.0),
pan: Pmeanrand(0.0, 1.0, Plprand(5, 11)),
legato: 70,
atk: Phprand(10.0, 30.0),
hld: Plprand(1.0, 10.0),
rel: Phprand(10.0, 30.0),
crv: 0,
cav: 2,
cai: Pwhite(1/8, 1/2),
amp: Pdup(Plprand(5, 11), Plprand(0.25, 0.75) * Pkey(\octave).linexp(2, 5, 1, 1/8)),
//aux: Pseed(0, Pxshuf((0 .. 11), Plprand(5, 11))),
])
},
])
)
}
)
)
).play;
(19 * 60).wait;
Pdef(0).stop;
240.wait;
s.stopRecording;
}.play
)
I bought a used toy guitar for real cheap. The body is approximately an eighth of full size. Four steel strings. I laid it flat on it’s back and put an ebow on it. I tuned the two middle strings real low and the two outer strings high to get the ebow so close to the second string from the top that it’s touching the string in part of its oscillation. This gave it a kind of hurdy gurdy feel. I recorded it in Stereo at 192kHz and exported an octave lower at 96kHz. I enjoy how the cycle of the string’s contact with the ebow is played at different speeds for the different pitches. At times there are interesting polytempic interactions between the different layers. In the code I got back into using Pspawn which I haven’t used in a while and now I feel really good about this approach. I get the feeling that it is very CPU efficient.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("~/snd/tgt")
(
Routine{
//s.record;
//1.wait;
Pdef(0,
Pseed(837,
Ppar(
99.collect{
Pspawn(
Pbind(*[
method: \seq,
pattern: Pfunc{|ev|
Pbind(*[
type: Prand([\cln, \r], 2),
snd: \tgt,
atk: Plprand(60.0, 90.0),
hld: Plprand(5.0, 15.0),
rel: Plprand(30.0, 60.0),
crv: -6,
bgn: Pwhite(0.0, 0.6),
pan: Pseq([Plprand(0.0, 1.0, 1), Phprand(0.0, 1.0, 1)], 2).trace,
scale: Scale.pelog(\just),
degree: Pdup(Plprand(1, 2), Plprand(0, 7)),
octave: Plprand(4, 5),
mtranspose: Phprand(-2, 2),
amp: Pdup(Plprand(1, 99), Plprand(1/64, 1/8)),
cav: 8,
])
},
])
)
}
)
)
).play;
(19 * 60).wait;
Pdef(0).stop;
240.wait;
s.stopRecording;
}.play
)
Quite a while back I made an informal recording to try out a new kind of fan on my steel string parlor guitar. It’s a Levin. I’ve been trying to find a good fan to use on guitar for years and years. A long time ago there was a white little handheld fan called Draget that a bunch of improvisors all got at the same time. My favourite sound that came out of that is David Stackenäs’s. He did a whole concept album called Bow that came out on Kning Disk. On the record he only used that style of playing. It is strikingly beautiful. Focused and reduced to perfection. I did that first informal recording in mono with my handcomputer. The plan was always to do a proper recording later. I had done some work on the code but then I put it to the side. Months pass. Then one night I start messing with it again and I start to feel that it’s getting to where It needs to be so I decide to do that proper recording I had planned to do. I rig up my whole set up with the double sound cards. Out of that recording I get three good samples. One where I stay on the highest string. The sound I like is right on the second fret. There is something nodal there. The other two takes I move up through the strings and then the other way around. It’s wild. Extremely dynamic. When I swap out the informal recording I realize I need to keep that alongside the new material. I think that was interesting the way that worked out in the code on the num line. There are these two different colours in there this way. The informal mono recording is 44.1kHz. The other ones where recorded in Stereo at 192kHz and exported at half speed at 96kHz.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("~/snd/bfn")
(
Routine{
//s.record;
//1.wait;
Pdef(0,
Pseed(940,
Pbind(*[
type: Pwrand2([\cln, \r], [1, 5], inf),
snd: \bfn,
dur: 0.125 / Pdup(Plprand(3, 13), Plprand(3, 13)),
num: Pdup(Pseq([1, Plprand(1, 4, 1)], inf), Pseq([Pxrand((0 .. 2), 1), 3], inf)),
atk: Plprand(9.0, 19.0),
hld: Plprand(9.0, 29.0),
rel: Plprand(9.0, 39.0),
legato: (Pkey(\atk) + Pkey(\hld) + Pkey(\rel) * 9999),
crv: Plprand(0.0, 8.0),
bgn: Pwhite(0.0, 1.0),
pan: Pdup(Plprand(5, 11), Pseq([Plprand(0.0, 1.0, 1), Phprand(0.0, 1.0, 1)], inf)),
scale: Pdup(Plprand(5, 11), Pxshuf([
Scale.harmonicMinor(\sept1),
Scale.mixolydian(\sept2),
Scale.whole(\vallotti),
Scale.romanianMinor(\mean4),
Scale.diminished(\mean5),
Scale.lydianMinor(\mean6),
Scale.dorian(\wcSJ),
], inf)),
degree: Pdup(Plprand(5, 11), Plprand(0, 6)),
octave: Pdup(Plprand(5, 11), Plprand(4, 8)),
mtranspose: Pdup(Plprand(5, 11), Plprand(-5, 2)),
amp: Pseg(Plprand(1/7, 0.65), Plprand(6.0, 60.0), \wel, inf).trace,
cai: Pseg(Plprand(0.0, 1.0), Plprand(15.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
cav: 1/2,
fsh: Plprand(0.0, 10.0),
fsm: Plprand(0.0, 2.0),
bnd: Pdup(Pseq([1, Plprand(1, 4, 1)], inf), Pseq([Phprand(-0.25, 0.0, 1), 0], inf)),
stretch: Pseg([Pdup(2, Plprand(1.0, 16.0)), Plprand(1.0, 16.0)], Plprand(15.0, 90.0), \sin, inf),
])
)
).play;
(19 * 60).wait;
Pdef(0).stop;
240.wait;
s.stopRecording;
}.play
)
I’ve been trying to find a cheap used snare drum for a while now but I haven’t found one that I think would work for me. Then I got to thinking that just the snare part is cheap and that most likely I could use that as a preparation because I like rattly stuff and hey, a snare for sure does that. I made as long of a recording as my arm had strength for in one go. I shook the snare real close to my CM3’s. I recorded in 192kHz thinking that I would be using The Quincy Jones Trick later because I could hear straight away that it had this nice high pitch thin metal sound that I was real curious to hear played back slower. So I messed around with the code and after a while of changing up the numbers for the envelope times I felt I wanted those to always stay the same. Then I had the idea to connect the playback speed to the scaling of the envelope. So I switched over to Reaper and cut up the file and applied the amplitude envelope there. This gave me 26 files. Each file is 33 seconds in duration. I exported them at 48kHz. After a while Working on the code side of the things I realized that I needed to be able to calculate the duration for each sample at the different playback rates and to give that value to legato. There was some number juggling but I think that in the end it came out alright with that variable up top and that formula in the legato line at the bottom. This solution proly I will have use of again.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("~/snd/snw")
(
Routine{
var a = 261.6255653005986232528812251985073089599609375;
//s.record;
//1.wait;
Pdef(0,
Pseed(238,
Pbind(*[
type: \cln,
snd: \snw,
num: Pxshuf((0 .. 25), inf),
seg: Plprand(15.0, 180.0),
dur: (3 / Pdup(Plprand(5, 11), Plprand(5.0, 11.0))),
amp: Pseg(Plprand(1/6, 6/9), Pkey(\seg), \wel, inf),
scale: Scale.chromatic(\sept1),
degree: Pdup(Plprand(3, 15), Plprand(-5, 7)),
one: Pseg([0.0, 1.0], 1140, \lin, 1),
octave: (Pdup(Pmeanrand(2, 17), Pmeanrand(2, 6)) + Pkey(\one).linlin(0.89, 0.9, 0, 2)),
fsh: Pdup(Plprand(3, 9), Plprand(-6.5, 7.5)),
fsm: Pdup(Plprand(2, 8), Plprand(-2.5, 3.5)),
cav: 2,
cai: Pseg(Plprand(1/8, 1/2), Pkey(\seg), \wel, inf),
stretch: Pseg(Pwhite(1/4, 4.0), Pkey(\seg), \wel, inf),
brf: Pseg([Pdup(2, Plprand(20, 20000)), Plprand(20, 20000)], Pkey(\seg), \sin, inf),
brn: Pseg([Pdup(2, Plprand(0.0, 1.0)), Plprand(0.0, 1.0)], Pkey(\seg), \sin, inf),
bro: Pseg([Pdup(2, Plprand(0.0, 0.5)), Plprand(0.0, 0.5)], Pkey(\seg), \sin, inf),
brq: Pseg([Pdup(2, Plprand(0.0, 1.0)), Plprand(0.0, 1.0)], Pkey(\seg), \sin, inf),
calcFreq: Pfunc{|ev|ev.use{ev.freq.asStringPrec(48).postln}},
frq: Pfunc{|ev|ev.use{ev.freq}},
legato: a / Pkey(\frq) * 66,
])
)
).play;
(19 *60).wait;
Pdef(0).stop;
240.wait;
s.stopRecording;
}.play
)
I bought a strange flute made out of metal for next to nothing. I bought it used like I try to do for most things. I recorded 16 takes of the same low note. But that’s not where I started. Lemme back up here. I was messing around with some Karplus Strong synthesis. It’s the stuff that sounds sort of like a string maybe, if you squint your ears. I was trying to solve something along the lines of interpolating to a stochastic value, then holding at that value for a variable duration, then interpolating to a new value from the held value. The thing kind of got away from me and became something else. A something else that I liked. I could hear that it had something, but I wanted to stay on track with this idea of making music out of sample packs. I put it aside for a while. Then I remembered a story a friend of mine told me about how one time he came up with a sound he liked from doubling up and letting some of the sawtooth wave he’d used to tune a string blend with the string. That package of the string and the sawtooth then went into the granulation, and that, was the sound. I mean it was just overdubbing in my case, but anyway, remembering that story made me think I should try to replace my Karplus Strong synthesis with this flute sound instead. I messed around and it took me a real long time to get the thing to stay in tune as I was playing it because, hey, I don’t really play wind instruments, but also because the thing is spectacularly poorly made and on top of that you can tell from lots and lots of dings all over it that it’s been through a lot. There is a piece of wood inside the mouthpiece that I think is supposed to be held in place by the metal but it has shook loose at some point so it’s real finicky. You gotta hit it just right with the air pressure or else it moves forward, at which point you get no sound, and you gotta shake it loose again. So I was doing that for quite a while to get the 16 takes of the same low note. I of course did the trick of recording at a higher sample rate (192kHz). Then slowing it down and exporting at (44.1kHz) like I’ve been doing for a while now. I will in future posts refer to this as The Quincy Jones Trick. After I while of trying to make it work I realized that it’s a good idea, but, wanting to keep both the string synthesis and the flute recording was not going to work out this time. I’m going to keep that on the backburner for the next phase, where I’m looking to make ensemble music out of these single sample pack log entries. I then ran into a bunch of trouble with the code. In the end I had to use factory style to make the thing fit this postcard size because I had three stems playing at different speeds and then I had the doubling on top of that. My initial thinking was to keep these postcard code block small in size but also very simple in terms of their content. It proved difficult to stick with that idea. Maybe in the future I could have another crack at refactoring some of these that got a little too big. Who knows, future me might have a few new tricks up his sleeve. So anyway, I ended up with six stems in total, but only three of them are meant to be unique in terms of pitch and duration information. The two different groups combine to form something together. I enjoy how the two halves have different filter and reverb values attached to them but the same pitch and duration material going through them. This is thanks to using the same set of seeds, so they’ll have this intertwined ebb and flow, getting brighter and darker. Also towards the end, the three darker stems (more often lowpassed and twice the amount of cav) make their exit before the brighter group. It might give a subtle sense of preample to the ending. I thought that was neat.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("~/snd/mtf")
(
Routine{
//s.record(numChannels: 4);
//1.wait;
~arc = {|seed, snd, dur, amp, sustain, cav, aux, lpf, lhf|
var bin =
Pbind(*[
type: Pwrand2([\cln, \r], [1, 2], inf),
snd: snd,
dur: dur,
num: Pseed(5, Pxshuf((0 .. 15), inf)),
scale: Scale.mixolydian(\wcSJ),
degree: Pdup(Plprand(5, 22), Pdup(Plprand(1, 32), Pbrown(-9, 12, Plprand(1, 5)))),
pan: Pmeanrand(0.0, 1.0),
amp: amp / Pkey(\degree).linexp(-9, 12, 1, 3),
sustain: sustain,
cav: cav,
aux: aux,
atk: Plprand(8.0, 10.0),
hld: Plprand(8.0, 10.0),
rel: Plprand(8.0, 10.0),
stretch: Pseg(Pmeanrand(0.5, 1.0), Plprand(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
lpf: lpf,
lhf: lhf,
calcFreq: Pfunc{|ev|ev.use{ev.freq.asStringPrec(48).postln}},
]);
Pseed(seed, Pseq([bin], inf));
};
Pdef(0, ~arc.(11, \mtf, 1/8, Pdup(Plprand(1, 5), Pseg(Plprand(-39.0, -15.0), Plprand(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf)).dbamp, Plprand(25.0, 50.0), 1, 0,
Pseg(Phprand(2000, 20000), Plprand(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf), Pseed(2, Pseg(Phprand(0.05, 0.5), Plprand(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf)))).play;
Pdef(1, ~arc.(22, \mtf, 1/4, Pdup(Plprand(1, 5), Pseg(Plprand(-39.0, -15.0), Plprand(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf)).dbamp, Plprand(25.0, 50.0), 1, 0,
Pseg(Phprand(2000, 20000), Plprand(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf), Pseed(2, Pseg(Phprand(0.05, 0.5), Plprand(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf)))).play;
Pdef(2, ~arc.(33, \mtf, 1/2, Pdup(Plprand(1, 5), Pseg(Plprand(-39.0, -15.0), Plprand(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf)).dbamp, Plprand(25.0, 50.0), 1, 0,
Pseg(Phprand(2000, 20000), Plprand(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf), Pseed(2, Pseg(Phprand(0.05, 0.5), Plprand(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf)))).play;
Pdef(3, ~arc.(11, \mtf, 1/8, Pdup(Plprand(1, 5), Pseg(Plprand(-33.0, -15.0), Plprand(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf)).dbamp, Plprand(5.0, 10.0), 2, 1,
Pseg(Plprand(200, 20000), Plprand(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf), Pseed(2, Pseg(Plprand(0.05, 0.5), Plprand(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf)))).play;
Pdef(4, ~arc.(22, \mtf, 1/4, Pdup(Plprand(1, 5), Pseg(Plprand(-33.0, -15.0), Plprand(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf)).dbamp, Plprand(5.0, 10.0), 2, 1,
Pseg(Plprand(200, 20000), Plprand(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf), Pseed(2, Pseg(Plprand(0.05, 0.5), Plprand(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf)))).play;
Pdef(5, ~arc.(33, \mtf, 1/2, Pdup(Plprand(1, 5), Pseg(Plprand(-33.0, -15.0), Plprand(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf)).dbamp, Plprand(5.0, 10.0), 2, 1,
Pseg(Plprand(200, 20000), Plprand(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf), Pseed(2, Pseg(Plprand(0.05, 0.5), Plprand(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf)))).play;
(17 * 60).wait;
Pdef(3).stop;
Pdef(4).stop;
Pdef(5).stop;
150.wait;
Pdef(0).stop;
Pdef(1).stop;
Pdef(2).stop;
240.wait;
s.stopRecording;
}.play;
)
I recorded a small metal bowl which was suspended above a contraption called Rundgång that my friend Jon who is a master luthier made. It is a kind of testbed for feedback. It’s great. I’ve been beta testing it for Jon for a while now. It has a humbucker pickup, a strong amp and a speaker in it. I suspended some rubber bands just above the pickup and the speaker. I played this rig by slowly changing the amplitude and the timbre of the feedback via the contraption’s precise controls, which in turn changed the way the bowl vibrated and moved around. I enjoy how the small metal bowl is mostly caught in the magnetic field of the pickup but still has some degree of movement thanks to the rubber bands. Recorded at 96kHz using a Zoom H1 in extremely close proximity to the source.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("~/snd/smb")
(
Pdef(0,
Pseed(19,
Pbind(*[
type: \cln,
snd: \smb,
frm: Pseg([0, 1], 1140, \lin, 1).trace,
dur: Pdup(Plprand(1, 11), Plprand(0.045, 4.5)),
bgn: Pseg(Plprand(0.0, 1.0), Plprand(18.0, 180.0), \wel, inf) + Pseg(Plprand(0.0, 1.0), Plprand(18.0, 180.0), \wel, inf),
legato: Pseg(Plprand(4.0, 32.0), Plprand(18.0, 180.0), \wel, inf),
tri: Pseg(Phprand(0.5, 1.0), Plprand(18.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
shp: Pseg(Phprand(0.5, 1.0), Plprand(18.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
sha: 0,
shi: Pseg(Plprand(0.5, 1.0), Plprand(18.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
sho: Pseg(Pmeanrand(0.25, 0.75), Plprand(18.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
slo: Pseg(Phprand(0.25, 1.0), Plprand(18.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
hit: Pseg(Plprand(0.25, 1.0), Plprand(18.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
lot: Pseg(Phprand(0.25, 1.0), Plprand(18.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
fsh: Pseg(Phprand(0.25, 1.0), Plprand(18.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
fsm: Pseg(Pmeanrand(-2.5, 2.5), Plprand(18.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
rma: Pseg(Plprand(0.0, 0.5), Plprand(18.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
rmf: Pseg(Plprand(20, 200), Plprand(18.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
pan: Pmeanrand(0.1, 0.9),
rdf: Pkey(\rmf) / 2,
rdt: Phprand(3.0, 90.0),
atk: Pkey(\dur) * 3,
hld: Pkey(\dur) * 3,
rel: Pkey(\dur) * 3,
crv: 0,
lpf: Pseg(Phprand(2000, 20000), Plprand(18.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
lhf: Pseg(Phprand(0.25, 0.5), Plprand(18.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
spd: Pseed(Pkey(\frm).linlin(0.36, 0.361, 19, 21), Pseg(Plprand(0.5, 1.0), Plprand(36.0, 360.0), \wel, inf)),
nth: Pseg(Plprand(0.5, 1.0), Plprand(36.0, 360.0), \wel, inf),
amp: (Pkey(\frm).linexp(0, 1, 0.5, 1)
* Pseg(Pseed(Pkey(\frm).linlin(0.36, 0.361, 19, 22), Pmeanrand(-12.0, -3.0), Plprand(18.0, 90.0), \wel, inf))).dbamp,
zip: Plprand(18.0, 90.0),
ocd: Pseg(Phprand(0.5, 1.0), Plprand(18.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
ocq: Pseg(Plprand(0.5, 1.0), Plprand(18.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
dla: Pseg(Plprand(0.0, 0.5), Plprand(18.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
dlf: Pseg(Plprand(0.0, 0.5), Plprand(18.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
dlt: 16,
cav: 2,
cai: Pseg(Phprand(0.75, 1.0), Plprand(18.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
cai: 1,
cvt: Pseg(Phprand(0.75, 1.0), Plprand(18.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
cvd: Pseg(Pwhite(0.0, 0.25), Plprand(18.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
cvl: Pseg(Phprand(0.0, 0.25), Plprand(18.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
hpf: Pseg(Plprand(30, 200), Plprand(18.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
smr: Pseg(Plprand(0.0, 0.6), Plprand(18.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
])
)
).play;
)
I recorded my larger zither with some preparations on it. Magnets and glass marbles. Four takes recorded in stereo at 192kHz, then transposed down to half speed and exported at 96kHz. There are a couple of low drones and then a couple of busier, prepared recordings in the folder. The scale material is a minor scale, but I added one sharp and one flat alteration in the degree parameter. The tuning is five limit just intonation. There are two different rooms. Also there is some octave down and quarter octave effects added, which at times can sound like a synth doubling the unprepared sounds. There is also some subtle ring modulation in a low range at times. I very much enjoy this added fizzy, torn paper kind of effect that the ringmodulaiton gives. I think it augments the prepared sounds nicely. The first event is unique in that it has its duration and attack doubled. This acts as a kind of intro. I am fond of this idea, as it offers me a way to amplify the sense of a particular point of departure, which is separate from how the material is presented in the rest of the finite unfolding of combinations of values.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("~/zth")
(
Pdef(0,
Pseed(22,
Pbind(*[
type: \cln,
snd: \zth,
bgn: Plprand(0.0, 0.75),
num: Pdup(Plprand(0, 5), Pxshuf((0 .. 3), inf)),
crv: Pwrand2([Phprand(-3.0, 0.0, 1),
Plprand(0.0, 3.0, 1)], [1, 4], inf),
atk: Plprand(16.0, 64.0)
* Pdup(Pseq([1, inf],inf), Pseq([2, 1], inf)),
rel: Plprand(16.0, 64.0),
legato: 140,
dur: (Pwrand2([20, 22, 24], [4, 2, 1], inf)
/ Pdup(Phprand(5, 11), Phprand(5, 11))
* Pdup(Pseq([1, inf],inf), Pseq([20.0, 1.4], inf))),
octave: Pwrand2([2,3,4,5,6], [1,4,16,64,16], inf),
scale: Scale.minor(\just),
degree: Pdup(Plprand(1, 10),
Pwrand2([-6, -5s, -3, 0, 2, 4b, 5],
[1, 2, 4, 8, 4, 2, 1], inf)),
pan: (Pseq([Phprand(0.0, 0.5, 1),
Phprand(0.0, 0.5, 1)], inf)
/ Pdup(Pseq([1, inf],inf), Pseq([8, 1], inf))).trace,
amp: Pdup(Plprand(10, 100), Pwhite(-21.dbamp, -9.dbamp))
/ Pdup(Pseq([1, inf],inf), Pseq([1.5, 1], inf)),
ocd: Pwhite(0.0, 1.0),
ocq: Pwhite(0.0, 1.0),
cav: 1,
cai: Pseg(Pwhite(1/3, 23),
Pwhite(60.0, 120.0), \wel, inf),
hal: Pseg(Pwhite(0.0, 1.0),
Pwhite(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
hhp: Pseg(Phprand(20, 10000),
Pwhite(30.0, 90.0), \exp, inf),
rts: Pseg(Plprand(1.0, 5.0),
Pwhite(30.0, 90.0), \exp, inf),
lpf: Plprand(20, 20000),
val: Plprand(20.0, 2000.0),
rep: Pkey(\val).explin(20.0, 2000.0, 10, 1),
hpf: Pdup(Pkey(\rep), Pkey(\val))
* Pdup(Pseq([1, inf],inf), Pseq([1.125, 1], inf)),
rma: Plprand(0.0, 0.5),
rmf: 152.25 * Pdup(Plprand(5, 50),
Pwrand2([1/4, 1/2, 1, 2, 4, 8],
[2, 4, 8, 4, 2, 1], inf)),
])
)
).play;
)
I recorded 183 very short transient sounds using bamboo kitchen utensils. I used the Audient iD14 as the preamp but recorded in a NI Komplete Audio 6 MK2 because the iD14 has way better preamps but only allows a maximum of 96kHz while the KA6 can go up to 192kHz. The recordings are not as clean as I’d like but they are ok I think. I need to get better microphones. I used a pair of Line Audio CM3’s, which I think are great for the asking price. They sound a lot more expensive then they are in the high end. They also really shine live because they can amplify a whole lot before starting to feed back. But hey, for recording these kinds of faint sounds, especially with the great iD14 pres, you end up hearing the noise in the microphones themselves. I tried denoising but that came out like complete mush. The room tone and the noise floor are all tangled up together in the tail there. I used a gate to gently sculpt the tail of the release and then slam shut. There are 183 stereo files exported at 192kHz in this pack. The files are all very short. All but one are under a second in duration.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("bbu");
(
Routine{
//s.record;
//1.wait;
~pat = {| num, aux|
var pattern = Pbind(*[
type: \cln,
snd: \bbu,
dur: Pseg([1, Plprand(0.25, 4.0), 1],
Pwhite(30.0, 90.0), \sin, inf),
amp: Pseg([0.45, 0], Plprand(45.0, 90.0), \sin, 1)
- Pdup(Pseq([4, inf], 1), Pseq([0.45, 0], 1)),
pan: Pseg(Pmeanrand(0.0, 1.0),
Pwhite(30.0, 90.0), \sin, inf),
spd: Pdup(inf, Plprand(0.5, 1.0)),
num: num,
//aux: aux,
dur: Pseg([1, Pwhite(0.25, 1.0), 1],
Pwhite(30.0, 90.0), \sin, inf),
]);
Pseq([ pattern ], inf);
};
Pdef(184, Ppar( 183.collect{|patnum| ~pat.(patnum, patnum)})).play;
t = Task({
{
Pdef(184).reset;
exprand(15, 90).round.wait.postln;
}.loop
});
t.start;
(20 * 60).wait;
Pdef(184).stop;
2.wait;
s.stopRecording;
}.play
)
I recorded an accordion’s lowest note, held for as long as I could sustain it. I chose the registration that had what sounded to me like the most overtones with a single tongue. I then mimicked the sound of the registration with the least overtones in post using a filter. This way the zero crossings are in the same place in the two files. Recorded and exported at 192kHz. The files are 2 minutes and 21 seconds in duration.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("acf")
(
Routine{
//s.record;
//1.wait;
(
Pdef(0,
Pseed(1467,
Pbind(*[
type: Pseq([\cln, Pwrand2([\cln, \r],
[1, 75], inf)], inf),
num: Pwrand2([0, 1], [1, 6], inf),
snd: \acf,
pan: Pwhite(0.0, 1.0),
baz: Plprand(150.0, 180.0),
crv: -8,
cav: 15,
cvt: 1,
cvd: 0,
cai: Pseg(Phprand(0.5, 1.0),
Pwhite(90.0, 180.0), \wel, inf),
dur: 1 / Pdup(Phprand(5, 11),
Phprand(5, 11)),
scale: Scale.melodicMinor(\wcSJ),
degree: Pwrand2([Phprand(-18, 0, 1),
Plprand(-8, 0, 1)], [1, 4], inf),
octave: Pwrand2([5, 6, 7], [4, 8, 1], inf),
mtranspose: Pseed(0, Pdup(Plprand(99, 1099),
Pseries(0, 1, inf))),
amp: Pdup(Plprand(1, 35),
Plprand(-18.dbamp, -15.dbamp)
/ Pkey(\degree).linexp(-18, 0, 1, 5)),
lpf: (Plprand(2000, 20000)
/ Pkey(\degree).linexp(-21, 0, 1, 5)).trace,
ocd: Pseg(Pmeanrand(0.0, 1.0),
Pwhite(60.0, 120.0), \wel, inf),
//aux: Pxshuf((0 .. 11), inf),
hpf: 80,
])
)
).play
);
(19 * 60).wait;
Pdef(0).stop;
240.wait;
s.stopRecording;
}.play
)
I recorded a sine wave onto a cassette tape using a JVC UX-T20BK. When I played it back I recorded it at 192kHz. I then transposed it down to 44.1kHz and exported it. The file is 2 minutes and 36 seconds in duration.
~clean.loadSoundFiles("tap")
(
Pdef(0,
Pseed(183,
Pbind(*[
type: \cln,
scale: Scale.mixolydian(\just),
dev: Pwhite(-18, 34),
der: Pkey(\dev).linlin(-18, 34, 19, 1),
degree: Pdup(Pkey(\der),Pkey(\dev)),
snd: Pwrand2([\tap, \dfd], [5, 1], inf),
amv: Pwhite(1/2, 8.0),
amt: Pkey(\amv).linlin(1/2, 8.0, 10.0, 90.0),
amp: 0.3 / Pseg(Pkey(\amv), Pkey(\amt), \exp, inf)
/ Pkey(\degree).linexp(-18, 34, 1/3, 1.5),
dur: 1,
atk: Phprand(7.5, 15.0)
/ Pkey(\degree).linlin(-22, 34, 1, 2),
rel: Phprand(7.5, 15.0)
/ Pkey(\degree).linlin(-22, 34, 1, 2),
crv: 0,
bgn: Pwhite(0.0, 0.1),
pan: Pwhite(0.0, 1.0),
lhf: Pwhite(0.3, 0.6),
lpv: Phprand(20, 20000),
lpr: Pkey(\lpv).explin(20, 20000, 8, 1),
lpf: Pdup(Pkey(\lpr), Pkey(\lpv)),
hpf: Pseg(Plprand(20, 300), Plprand(20, 200), \exp, inf),
stretch: Pseg(Pwhite(1/11, 2.0),
Pwhite(10, 20), \exp, inf).trace,
cav: 1,
legato: Pkey(\atk) + Pkey(\rel) + 1,
tri: Pseg(Pwhite(0.0, 1.0),
Pwhite(10.0, 100.0), \sin, inf),
shp: Pseg(Pwhite(0.0, 0.25),
Pwhite(10.0, 100.0), \sin, inf),
sho: 1,
shi: Pseg(Pwhite(0.0, 0.05),
Pwhite(10.0, 100.0), \sin, inf),
ocu: Pseg(Pwhite(0.0, 0.5),
Pwhite(10.0, 100.0), \sin, inf),
ocd: Pseg(Pwhite(0.0, 0.5),
Pwhite(10.0, 100.0), \sin, inf),
])
)
).play
)
I wanted to make sure that I had gotten rid of that pesky bug where a little bit longer files would play back all rotten. Sounded like low sample rate. This was due to round off errors. I recorded my tele laid flat on my desk with an ebow and a little glass marble sat on top of it. The little glass marble connects two adjacent strings. I tuned down the strings a whole lot. I had to tune down the adjacent strings to get the ebow down real low so it’d be close enough to sustain the third wound string from the top. I propped up the head just so. Took a while to find the right angle where the ebow would make the string vibrate, which in turn made the marble move around within about half a fret’s worth. This gave me just the right amount of variation while still maintaining the fundamental. I recorded at 192kHz. The slightest fadein at the top of the file and right at the end I pick up the ebow off of the string. The file is 12 minutes and 13 seconds in duration. It’s a Mono file because I recorded straight out of the guitar into the soundcard. Didn’t even use a compressor.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.loadSoundFiles("mrb")
(
Pdef(0,
Pseed(949,
Pbind(*[
type: \cln,
snd: \mrb,
spd: Plprand(1/4, 7.0).round(1/7).trace,
dur: Phprand(10.0, 20.0),
amp: Plprand(0.1, 0.9)
/ Pkey(\spd).linexp(1/4, 7.0, 0.5, 6.0) / 2.25,
bgn: Pwhite(0.0, 0.9),
atk: Pwhite(5.0, 30.0),
hld: Pwhite(9.0, 99.0),
rel: Pwhite(9.0, 99.0),
pan: Pwhite(0.0, 1.0),
crv: 8,
cav: 0.5,
])
)
).play;
)
Anything can be bowed. Even a black metal stove guard I bought for 10 sek at a thrift store one time ages ago. I finally got around to bowing it and found some ways to get some different sounds out of it. At first I thought the main thing was bowing the sides of the frame because that made the loudest sound in the room but once I got to listening through a condenser microphone up close I heard that there was more to the thin rod that ran between the ends of the frame. After a while of messing around with microphoe placement I tried it in combination with a bass humbucker pickup I had soldered an XLR jack to a while back. That was the sound. Tons of bass as well as really clean soaring high pitched sounds. Bowing at an angle made a big difference also in terms of controlling which node rang the loudest. In the end I opted for only using the pickup because it was the cleanest. Recorded in 192kHz. Did a tiny, tiny bit of very delicate denoising. Played back at half speed. Chopped up the recording into 8 mono files at aroundabouts 90 seconds each. Exported at 44.1kHz.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.loadSoundFiles("bwm")
(
Pdef(0,
Pseed(293,
Pbind(*[
type: \cln,
snd: \bwm,
dur: Pdup(Pwhite(1, 3), Plprand(1/7, 13.0)),
num: Pxshuf((0 .. 7), inf),
atk: Phprand(1.0, 4.5) * Pkey(\dur),
hld: Plprand(1.0, 4.5)
* Pkey(\dur).linlin(1/7, 13.0, 1.0, 13.0),
rel: Phprand(1.0, 4.5)
* Pkey(\dur).linlin(1/7, 13.0, 1.0, 13.0),
crv: 0,
amp: Pdup(Phprand(3, 11), Phprand(1/11, 1/2)),
bgn: Pwhite(0.0, 1.0),
pan: Pwhite(0.0, 1.0),
cav: 1/2,
hal: Pseg(Pwhite(0.0, 0.5),
Pwhite(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
dla: Pseg(Pwhite(0.0, 0.5),
Pwhite(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
dlf: 0,
dlt: 16,
rts: Pseg(Pwhite(0.0, 9.0),
Pwhite(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
spd: Pwrand2([1, 2, 4, 8], [12, 8, 4, 1], inf),
lpf: Pkey(\spd).linexp(1, 8, 20000, 20),
lhf: Pkey(\spd).linlin(1, 8, 0.5, 0),
hpf: Pseg([20, 200, 20, 20],
Pwhite(30.0, 90.0), \wel, inf),
scale: Scale.prometheus(\mean5),
degree: Pdup(Phprand(9, 19),
Pwrand2([0, 2, 4, 5], [8, 4, 2, 1], inf)),
])
)
).play
)
I started off the day by recording some chuggy stunt guitar sounds in 192kHz. I made six short samples of the zeroth and first fret using three playing styles. Open long, open staccato and palm muted. I made two takes of all three styles and hardpanned them left and right. I denoised them, careful not to leave marks. I beefed things up a little bit while still keeping some of the dynamics inherent in the playing styles. I thought that I would be making some kind of chuggy rhythmically driven music, but that did not happen today as you can hear in the example below. Maybe some other day.
Download this sample pack here.
~clean.lsf("~/snd/stn");
(
Pdef(0,
Pseed(17,
Pbind(*[
type: \cln,
snd: \stn,
num: Pdup(Pexprand(1, 48), Pxshuf((0 .. 5), inf)),
dur: 1 / Pdup(Pexprand(2, 5),
Pexprand(1, 7).round) * Pwhite(1, 2) / 5,
amp: Pdup(Pexprand(1, 96), Pexprand(1/8, 8.0)),
atk: Pmeanrand(0.0, 1.0),
hld: Pmeanrand(1.0, 2.0),
rel: Pkey(\dur) * 8,
crv: Pdup(Pexprand(1, 24), Pmeanrand(-8.0, 8.0)),
lpf: 20000 - Pexprand(20, 20000),
pan: Pmeanrand(0.0, 1.0).trace,
lhf: Pexprand(0.01, 0.98),
bnd: Pwhite(-0.125, 0.125),
scale: Scale.chromatic,
degree: Pdup(Pexprand(1, 192),
Plprand(-18.0, 9.0)).round(0.5),
sustain: Pkey(\atk) + Pkey(\hld) + Pkey(\rel),
spd: Pwrand2([-1, 1], [1, 64], inf),
cav: 1,
cai: Pseg([0.0, 0.025, 0.0], 100, \sin, inf),
])
)
).play
)