Posted by Grant
Grant
December 1, 2015
Day 97: Tuesday 1 Dec 2015
The Heels Of Time:
A Beatscape with Spoken Word/or a poem/or a lyric/or something.
Whew, that was a hard track to put together! I started as usual around 8.30 this morning and finally finished at 8.30 at night. Of course there was the usual interruptions, driving wife and son to work and school, washing clothes and dishes, cooking etc etc. But it took ages to come together and that’s for sure. I didn’t think I’d pull it off.
I used Poseidon, Fugue Machine, ElasticDrums, and AnalogKit along the way; but they all ended up being ditched before the final product.
What did end up getting used were Auria and AudioShare (of course), TwistedWave, and Sector. Along with Emo Chorus, Vandelay, Altispace, and Dedalus on the vocals.
Time for a lie down.
Grant
November 30, 2015
Day 96: Monday 30 Nov 2015
How Come It’s So Smokey In Here Ma?:
Genre unknown. From now on if it’s got drums and bass and notes and vocals and stuff…I’m just gonna call it a Song.
I started with Arpeggist driving iMini, MitoSynth, iFretless Bass, Animoog, and Animoog For iPhone, through MiMix in AudioBus into AudioShare. That’s a lot of apps to make one little bassline, but there you go. It actually ended up as only a small part of the track.
I made a matching beat in ElasticDrums and recorded it into AudioShare before adding Dedalus and AUFX:Dub. Then I combined all three in Auria and made an arrangement.
Next I turned to Addictive Synth and added: an occasional synth stab, another occasional synth stab (with a different patch of course), two long synth crashes (slightly different and panned hard left and right) which became the intro, an arpeggiated line, and another arrpeggiated line at twice the speed.
Now it’s already a much more complicated track than I usually do; 14 apps and 9 audio tracks. My stuff is usually far simpler, not necessarily in app numbers but certainly in tracks, but some people regularly get much more complicated.
I’m confused about this. Am I too simple? Should I aim to be more complicated? Is my modus operandi of ‘making shit up as I go along’ and ‘do it, move on’ enough? Does it produce decent music?
I don’t know.
It does suit this blog I suppose 🙂
Anyway It was beginning to sound a little song like, so I decided to try some vocals. Gulp.
I wrote some words and sang them into two tracks which I panned and effected etc. I’m not sure I did a good job but what the hell…
Oh and I decided that one of the arpeggiated tracks didn’t fit so I muted that.
Thanks for listening.
Grant
November 29, 2015
Supplementary Post: The Prophet Series
The last three days posts have each centred around one vocal line from the inimitable Trudi McBoody (fictional presenter at Station FCKU), so I thought I’d present them all together in one playlist for easy listening. Plus I’ve added two other tracks that belong in the same series.
I hope you enjoy.
Grant
November 29, 2015
Day 95: Sunday 29 Nov 2015
Bald Headed Prophet:
Soundscape with vocal.
This track began in Cyclop with a noise patch that I made months ago, I changed the sample which is at the heart of it to Day 93’s ‘Profit Of The Bored’ (so this track already utilises all the apps from that track: iSpeech TTS, AudioShare, Altispace, TwistedWave, Patterning, Dedalus, Poseidon, Auria, and PhaseRings) and recorded a take into AudioShare with Dedalus, AltiSpace, and AUFX:Dub before slowing it a lot in TwistedWave and putting it into Auria.
Next I loaded the vocal from ‘Profit of the Bored’ into Sector and did two takes with different settings, loaded them into Auria, and added some synth hits from Addictive Synth.
Grant
November 28, 2015
Day 94: Saturday 28 Nov 2015
It Tolls For Thee:
A Beatscape.
Related to yesterdays post, this track also began with Patterning, in this case a Beatscape that I made in September. I cut out a small piece and looped it in AudioShare with AUFX:Dub doing it’s thing. This became the backbone of the track, I loaded it into Auria and added a few elements: two of Jacob Haq’s bell patches for Thor, and one of my own patches from Addictive Synth.
Finally I added a small vocal element using Trudi’s vocal from yesterday (which used iSpeech TTS, AltiSpace, and TwistedWave). I loaded it into Turnado for a little glitching and cut out a few choice moments.
Grant
November 27, 2015
Day 93: Friday 27 Nov 2015
Profit of the Bored (featuring Trudi McBoody):
Genre Unknown 🙂
Another play with my Patterning drum kit into AudioShare effected with Dedalus was the start of this track. I loaded it into Auria and added a Poseidon arp bass patch that I made the other day. Then I loaded PhaseRings into a track and jammed along.
Finally a wrote a little lyric and typed it into iSpeech TTS, imported the result to AudioShare, effected it with AltiSpace, slowed it by 80% and lowered it by 1 semitone in TwistedWave, and imported the result to Auria for arranging.
Ta Da!
Grant
November 26, 2015
Supplementary Post: The Metal Heart Trilogy
The last three days posts are all related; here they are in one playlist for those interested 🙂
Grant
November 26, 2015
Day 92: Thursday 26 Nov 2015
Metal Embryo:
Beatscape.
Today’s track is the third of a trilogy which began with an AnalogKit drum beat recorded into AudioShare with AUFX:Space, AUFX:Dub, and Dedalus. Today I took a version of the beat which I had slowed by half in TwistedWave and ran it through: Altispace and Echo Pad, then just Altispace, then Altispace and Caramel. All four versions were loaded into Auria for panning and mixing. Next I added a piece from yesterdays post created with Soundscaper and TwistedWave (just the last few seconds), and some drum hits from a cool drum set in Alchemy.
Grant
November 25, 2015
Day 91: Weds 25 Nov 2015
Metal Heart Rusty Blade:
Beatscape.
Todays post is directly related to yesterdays. They both began in the same place; a Beatscape that I made using AnalogKit, recorded into AudioShare using AUFX:Space, AUFX:Dub, Dedalus, and FLUX:FX. Yesterday this was the scaffolding around which I built the track only to find that it had become superfluous. Today I began again because I loved it and felt it had more to offer.
They are also related because I used one of the ThumbJam recordings from yesterday; the flute. I added both to a new project in Auria but I wanted todays track to remain focused on the Beatscape, so I cut up the flute track into single notes or short phrases and distributed them around. Next I loaded Soundscaper and recorded it, I took a segment of that into TwistedWave and reversed it, then used both pieces. Next I added the flute file into Borderlands Granular, recorded a take, put that into Auria and time stretched it.
Peace Out.
Grant
November 24, 2015
Day 90: Tues 24 Nov 2015
Slowly Melting My Metal Heart:
Ambient.
ThumbJam was my main app today. It’s not one I use a lot, though I should, it’s way cool. I messed around with it loaded in AudioShare and recorded a few jams with different instruments in the same scale. Then I loaded them all into Auria and did my assemblage/disassemblage/collage thing 🙂