Experimental Project

Hey! Over the last few weeks I have been working on a smaller project to keep me inspired. I have been listening to a lot of Thom yorks new album ANIMA. Thom York Released this album a few months ago and I was immediately captured by the sounds that he had incorporated into this album. I couldn't put my finger on alot of them but that is the beauty of sound design. I watched this interview with him to inspire me.

He talks alot about the struggles of writing experimental music at times and he finds it hard to convey his intentions with his producers. This got me thinking that maybe this project wouldn't be as easy to pull off as I had first thought. I've done a fair bit of studio recordings recently but incorporating them both is something that has always intrigued me and scared me. That is why I wanted to challenge my self with this project and not record another band. I have alot of time to do that but I feel like this will show off another aspect to my skills when it comes to compassion and creativity as an addition to my portfolio.

So, firstly I had to start some where with the composition. It has been a while since I used my favourite creative DAW Logic, I thought that this project would be easier to predominantly do in Logic and use protools to mix and record live elements. I decided I would keep the song structure, chords and melody simple and use some techniques and added elements to make this track interesting. I new that I wanted to pretty much make all the sounds I was going to use including all the drum sounds from samples I would take. At first I just used some one shots from my collection I had to give me a beat to work with. I worked out some chords, a bass line and a little guitar riff I would record in the studio to make a scratch track. This took me longer than I expected its hard not having all the elements you want while also trying to keep inspired. I honestly didn't know how this was working out and was doubting my self a little.

After I slept on this concept I went to SAE and got a Zoom recorder for the weekend to take some drum samples. I pretty much just walked around my house kicking things a using various tools to hit stuff to try and get some of the sounds I'd use. This took me a while and was frustrating at times because its not a quick process. I was exporting things from the SD card on to my computer ,then into protools to edit, then back out and into logic in to a midi track too see if they were possibly going to make the cut. This process of switching between DAW's is rewarding when it works out and after a day of trying things like this I had worked out a work flow that was fast and effective.

So now I had some of the drum samples in logic in their places but not completely mixed - that's fine. I also had some simple chords and sine wave melodies that I was then planning on using distortion to make sound more textual and more like 'real' instruments. However I didn't want them to sound like real instruments I just didn't want that digital sound of a synthesiser.

So here are some screen shots from my logic session of the synths I made in the ES2 in Logic. I make a pad sound, bass, an arp and some variations of these layered on top of each other. To make the variations I played around the resonance, oscillators and some time based processing using LFOs. All of these were mostly based around simple sine waves to begin with.

For instance this is my Pad sound. This is a more experimental one that has a fast LFO rate. This is then being sourced from the bender which makes the chord over time fo slightly out of tune. The second target is controlling the cut off of the resonance (frequency range). I have this set to hight and the source of the speed at which this opens up is controlled by ENV 2. I have the velocity pretty high here which controls the intensity of the change in frequency. the attack in which that this happens is pretty fast. The decay I worked out through the time in which the chords change if the decay is too long then when the chord is released and the new chord begins there could be a clash in frequency and pitch. I juts played around with this until there was a nice medium in this effect.

I also had this PAD sound underneath in which is a very basic pad sound with little recreance. I thought this would be a good place to begin when re amping.

So now I have some basic drum sounds I have EQ'd a little to create the frequency range needed for their respective drum sound. I also have about 7 different synth sounds I have created in logic ES2 and some random sounds I recored at my house that I thought would make cool textual sounds. I have played them all out in Logic and they sound pretty average but there are some things I can work with there. It sounds like this!

Its clear that at this stage I have a lot to work on still regarding the composition but I wanted to start getting into the experimental side of this project.

I had an idea that I wanted to take the synth sounds from this project and re amp them through some of my guitar pedals to create new textures with them.

So HOW was I planning on doing this. I had a look online and there was not alot of step by step tutorials. A lot of people were doing this at home into Abelton in to guitar amps then recording that amps. Some other people had videos of them just trying to play their analogue synths thought guitar amps. I couldn't find anything about recording in a studio into a desk. I knew that I would need a few things, an interface, A re amping box, a DI, my guitar pedals and maybe some gender bender cables to take signal out of my interface. I was essentially juts trying to use my laptop as an instrument and then recording to protools in the control room. I got some ideas from this forum. I also had chat to tech team to see if they had seen anyone do this before. I talked them through the idea I had using my interface. Pretty much I had a few ideas and everyone I spoke to and from everything I had read some people had had success with this and some people hadn't. I thought id try a few things.

Originally I spoke to someone who said that I wouldn't need a revamping box and I could use a backwards DI and an attenuator to take the signal out of the interface. That set up looked like this:

However, I decided to get a remaking box to try instead of the first DI! This is the option I ended up going with. I couldn't get this first chain to work.

So, I now had my laptop essentially acting as a musician. I was able to then play around with the pedals and the desk EQ's, compression and the input gain to get some more gritty tones. I created a new protools session for this.

I ended up revamping most of the sounds through deferent pedals just to see what kinda of effects I could get!I think that this worked really well I got some weird textures and also the more analogue sound I was after. I you will defiantly be able to hear the difference in the mix! I have exported all the tracks into pro tools now so I can work on mixing it!

Something else I did in this same session was get some vocal samples from Nell. I got her to pitch a middle C so that I could then take this and use it as a base for a synth sound I was planning to create. I used the sampler in logic to import the note and then used it to played the same chords as the other parts of the song.

I then exported this as an audio file into Protools.

I have already panned this to come in left and right!

I have taken some other voice samples from another friend who came in to do some adlib for me. I am not sure how I am going to process this yet. I have also recored a sax player this week who came in and had a jam over the track. I am going to sample the sax and make a new synth sound out of it to use for a new section of the song. I have used one of the solos he did in the current mix because I think it sounds pretty cool. I haven't done much processing on it yet just some delay and reverb to make it more stereo. I really wanted to record an instrument that I handn't recorded before and I though that this would be a good opportunity. one of the band members of Aubergine also plays sax so I asked if he could bring it in when he came to listen to the mix and play some notes for me.

I used a two mics to get some different tones from the trumpet. I used a Royer 121 as this seemed to be the mic that people liked when I was reading about the best mics and mic placement for a sax. I also used an Md441 on the side of the trumpet to get some of the airier tones. This combo worked nicely I juts had to play around with the placement. I also did this in the S6 control room as I thought it would be an easier way to capturing this performance and to communicate with Oli. I ran straight into the Avalon pre amps for both of these mics. I was pretty nervous about this as I had never recorded in the S6 before. However it was a really simple set up and I ended up with a great result!

I am pretty much up to now mixing/ composing about another minutes worth of audio to finish of this weird experimental track. I think I have enough material now to work with and sample. The only thing I have planned left to record is guitar next week!

So here is the current state of this project. I am keen to work out some ways I can enhance this and make the instruments I have created come more to life.