I’ve fiddled with sound design for years.
Over the last few months I’ve spent a lot more time in my home studio, sometimes when I’ve got downtime I arrange noises into what surely nobody considers music…
Here are some of those noises:
[hr top=”0″ bottom=”18″ /]
Outta Time is an experiment on 24/96 audio samples of an antique clock, sliced and inserted into a drum machine. I was inspired by a day of watching Hans Zimmer perform with a live ensemble at Coachella 2017. It definitely has a soundtrack vibe. Guitar tone and intense echo is provided through multiple reverb loops and amp modeling. Synths are programmed in Logic X’s Alchemy.
The track’s BPM is 60, which seemed apropos for a clock-driven track.
[hr top=”0″ bottom=”18″ /]
Minor Surf is an experiment in surf guitar tone in a minor key. the tempo is a blazing 185bpm and it feels frantic, hurried and has a bit of panic.
Something, perhaps Dick Dale himself is chasing you throughout this track.
[hr top=”0″ bottom=”18″ /]
Nipple Teeth (Origin: [Gr. masto`s the breast + ‘odoy`s, ‘odo`ntos, a tooth. ) yeah, I was listening to a bunch of Mastodon tracks the week I made this short jam. It’s nothing like the quality of mastodon, but it would explain some of the phrasing.
No nipples were harmed in the making of this track.
[hr top=”0″ bottom=”18″ /]
Groove Metal – Beatdown is a riff expansion. I found a nice boxed heavy riff when jamming during a lunchtime jam session. I expanded and added some nice groove double-bass drum to it. There’s actually no bass guitar in this track as it’s mostly in drop C, maybe some day I’ll track bass to it.
[hr top=”0″ bottom=”18″ /]
Betsy DeVos is another chiptune experiment. It’s binaural beats are created through two different synths set on alternate rotating pans. The triangle wave arpeggios mimic the pads throughout. The true experiment on this track were the audio accents deep in the track mix. An acoustic-electric guitar with a bridge mounted piezo pickup routed through a modeled bass amp maxed out with the bass cut, Then through a modeled tube guitar amp with the clean channels maxed. From there a bitcrusher was applied and had gain boosted until a level of audibility was heard. I then shouted into the sound hole of the guitar, which caused the strings to vibrate and convey the voice through the amp chain.
The dire warnings of scientist Carl Sagan are heard front and center in the mix.
[hr top=”0″ bottom=”18″ /]
Ch0p1n n0cturn3 is an experiment in chip synths, bitcrushers, and atmospheric sound stage. It features Chopin’s Nocturne Op 9 Nº 1 arranged for 8 bit triangle and sine wave synths as the primary voices. Duplication of tracks add an airy pad to the mix, The tracks are split between channels and lazily rotated in pan to have voices that almost un-noticeably switch positions. The main right hand voice is also bit-crushed to 5-bit and overdriven to give it some force to punch through the mix.
The track’s calm ambience is reminiscent of the rainy day on which it was created.
[hr top=”0″ bottom=”18″ /]
Soundscape is an experiment in ring modulation, tape delay, and feedback. It’s main ring modulation starts as a guitar looped through an old Korg Pandora PX4 and modulated, then fed into Logic X and further processed.
The track is suspenseful and wide, like the soundtrack of a bad dream.