Archive for the Spoken Word category
Grant
May 28, 2016
Day 274: Saturday 28 May 2016
When?:
An Ambient piece today, long and slow and gentle. Must be the hangover speaking.
Mainly Shoom but with a little DM2 and a little Trudi spoken word (iSpeech TTS, AltiSpace, TwistedWave). Also some help from Auria, AudioShare, Caramel, Crystalline, DubFilter, and ApeDelay.
I particularly recommend the Shoom, DubFilter, ApeDelay, Crystalline combination. It sure is a thing of beauty.
Peace Out trackers, I hope that you enjoy your saturday.
Grant
May 25, 2016
Day 271: Weds 25 May 2016
Grace:
Today we have a Beatscape with Spoken Word.
I enjoy the tracks where I include some voice; whether it be Trudi or myself, whether it be spoken or sung, or maybe even without understandable words but merely denoting a recognisable human presence.
Three things hold me back from doing this more often: Firstly I find writing words difficult, they don’t always come when needed. Secondly I don’t have a great voice and am reluctant to use it (hence Trudi). Thirdly I’m lazy and can’t always find the energy to set up a mike etc, go into another room on another floor so that my poor family doesn’t have to suffer, and struggle with my own fears of inadequacy and foolishness.
Tracks often seem whole without a vocal of course but today I really felt this needed something and fortunately something came to me; just a little text (or possibly poem) of four lines it’s true, but it took as long as the rest of the track to get it sounding this right. I think it could do with a bit more fine tuning but hey I told you I was lazy. Also it’s called ‘Track A Day’ not ‘Track Whenever The Damn Words Are Good Enough Which Might Be Never’.
Anyway I constructed this in the car while waiting for my son’s exam to finish, so the vocal is just recorded through the headphones inbuilt mike. The rest of the beatscape was made using LaunchPad, iSpark, and Patterning. Assembled in Auria and flavoured with Dedalus and ApeFilter.
I hope you enjoy.
Grant
May 13, 2016
Day 259: Friday 13 May 2016
He Wept:
iMaschine 2 and Alchemy provided the raw materials for today, combined in Auria, shaken then stirred, effected with FLUX:FX, and flavoured with a little Addictive Synth and a little Trudi (iSpeech TTS, AudioShare, TwistedWave).
Peace Out Tracklings.
Grant
May 10, 2016
Day 256: Tuesday 10 May 2016
Trudi Muses #1 (Clementine):
Today is a bit of an experiment for me in a couple of ways.
Firstly I began by playing with Blocs Wave which I bought as soon as it came out but had never gotten around to using before, in fact I could’t even remember what sort of app it was so I began by watching a few vids before I plunged in.
If you don’t know; Blocs Wave is a looper app by Novation who also brought us LaunchPad which I have used a few times in this blog. Now I’m not really a huge user of looper apps like these, especially using the inbuilt loops or the in-app-purchase sound packs, mainly because it’s hard to feel something is yours if it’s made up exclusively of other peoples loops. I do it from time to time though. Both LaunchPad and Blocs Wave allow you to import your own loops into them and Blocs Wave allows you to record as you are playing, and that is where they both get very interesting to me. But for today, as I had my first feel around with the app, I did use the built in loops, and I must say I had a ball. I love the way this app works and I can imagine many ways of using it in the future.
I loaded loops at random until I got a combination that I liked then recorded a jam into AudioShare with Dedalus and FLUX:FX in the effects chain. Then I started from scratch and did it again. Next, and this was really to assuage my guilt about using pre-made loops and to make it sound a little more like me, I put them into TwistedWave and slowed them by 80%.
Now I had two loops with the same key and BPM but with different feels because of the different drum and percussion loops used, so I decided to load then into Auria and see if they made sense together (I suspected that they would). I arranged them by going backwards and forwards between them as I felt fit, and though I liked the results I felt there was more lurking within this track.
The next step was to include a simple beat from Patterning to tie everything together.
The final element I added was the words and this is where the second experiment came in.
If you are a regular ‘Tracker’ you will know that when I add words I sometimes speak or ‘sing’ them myself and I sometimes use the Female UK English voice in iSpeech TTS. In fact I’ve used her so much that I call her Trudi and have developed a character and ongoing back story for her. Well she put in an appearance today but instead of reading a lyric or poem I gave her part of a musing that I have been writing, a little autobiographical rambling on my childhood and road to music making. I wasn’t sure if this would work, and though I’ve had it mind for a while I’ve kept putting it off, but today was the day.
Anyway I’m really happy with the results and I hope that you enjoy.
Grant
April 28, 2016
Day 244: Thursday 28 April 2016
Divination:
A treat for you today, three tracks in one! In fact I’m so happy with today’s work that I may release it as an EP; the tracks are so different but they make up a greater whole.
That’s my thought and my hope anyway 🙂
Part One…is an Ambient piece made with Shoom, iMaschine 2, and Auria.
Part Two…is a Vocalscape based around a poem that I read into AudioShare before running it through: Borderlands Granular, Sector, and Samplr. Each resulting file was added to Auria for arranging along with an abstract jam that I made in Addictive Synth.
Part Three…has three tracks of guitar played into Auria using BiasFX along with a track of drums from Patterning and some effecting from FLUX:FX.
It’s funny how things work sometimes. I have had this poem sitting around for a couple of months waiting for a place to use it and this morning after I had made first the ambient and then the guitar pieces, I just ‘knew’ that a vocalscape made from it would fit in the middle and tie everything together.
Hope you like it.
Grant
April 2, 2016
Day 218: Friday 1 April 2016
Skeletal Revisit:
Soundscape/Vocalscape.
This cpmbines two Borderlands Granular files that I made earlier, one using a Patterning file as a source, the other using a lyric Recite processed with AudioShare, AltiSpace, and Sector. The latter has already been used as a part of Day 143’s Skeletal, so this track directly refers to/is related to that one.
I combined both files in Auria and added some Shoom.
Grant
March 29, 2016
Day 215: Tuesday 29 March
And We Will Rest:
A Spoken Word Soundscape directly related to yesterday’s post, as it uses the same vocal.
Vocal made using AudioShare, AUFX:Peak, and AltiSpace. Then ran through Borderlands Granular and effected with Emo Chorus. Then added to Auria along with another Borderlands file made using an iDensity file, made with a piano jam recorded with Module. Some judicious arranging gave this result.
Grant
March 28, 2016
Day 214: Monday 28 March 2016
All Will Be Still:
An Ambient Beatscape with Spoken Word.
Today began with Xynthesizr which I enjoy but don’t use often; I made three ‘songs’ with related scales and bpm’s and jammed them into AudioShare, switching between them and altering parameters as I went. I did this twice and got good but quite different results both times which I effected with Dedalus.
Next I put both into Auria and combined them along with a simple beat from iSpark, again jamming between settings as I recorded. Next I cut out one bass drum hit and repeated it occasionally in it’s own track and effected it with Crystalline.
I felt it needed something more, something abstract; so I turned to iDensity which I loaded with a Module electric piano track in all 4 positions. The result of that was feed into Grain Science and effected with Crystalline and Bias FX. This was then added to Auria and arranged.
The final ingredient was the vocals, I wrote the words and then recorded them using AudioShare, AUFX:Peak, and AltiSpace.
The Video:
iColorama, HyperDroste, PicFrame, Pinnacle Pro, CinemaFXV. In that order 🙂
Grant
March 26, 2016
Day 212: Sat 26 March 2016
Home At Last:
An autobiographical not entirely serious piece of electronica 🙂
It’s how I feel after a small trip away; I’m such a hermit.
Luckily so is my wife. We are hermits together 🙂
Patterning is the drum app, Addictive Synth provides the arpeggio, Trudi reads the words (iSpeech TTS, TwistedWave, AudioShare, AltiSpace), my vocal is straight into a track in Auria, and the background is courtesy of iDensity.
Grant
March 10, 2016
Day 197: Thurs 10 March 2016
Someone To Trust:
An Abstract Soundscape with Spoken Word.
The drone section is from Shoom, the rest is from an iSpeech TTS file that I treated several times in AudioShare with AltiSpace and Flux:FX. All assembled as usual in Auria.
The Video:
I began by making several videos using FluidFX doing it’s thing to some abstract pics I had made in iColorama. I layered some of them in VidBlend, then layered some of those in Vjay. Next I assembled some of these together in Pinnacle Pro arranging them with the music, lyrics, blends etc. Then I processed that through CinemaFX to give a unified colour and texture, then through Generate. Finally I took these last two and blended them in Vjay.