Day 219: Contributing

I get monthly emails from Soundcloud in regards to what's happening in their online community.  Normally, I read the email, maybe click a link, then move on.  This month there was a piece of interest.  Here's the link.  I'll wait here while you read......

Communal sound creation is something I've long been interested in, and, as a nerd, I'm someone who likes to have "assignments".  Needless to say, I immediately jumped on this bandwagon.

Some notes on how I got to what you hear from what was provided:

1) There are NO additional sounds used.  It all came from the source track.
2) Pizzicato strings make good kick drums, especially when tuned down two octaves and compressed like crazy.
3) You can make a snare sound from almost any sample. Chop it, add distortion, apply HP filter, add reverb.  Done.  To create a hi-hat sound repeat said steps, just make the HP filter really high pass.
4) The bass line took a little work, but I ended up taking snippet that I thought would work, compressing it, applying one or two other effects, then applying two LFO's as a gate.  Voila! Instant bass line!
5) Reverb is your friend.  If you take a nice 2 - 4 second sample and drown it in THICK "hall-type" verb you will have an acceptable pad for background.
6) Melody can be a challenge.  In a piece like this, there are lots of melodic pieces, but many of them are accompanied by background harmony.  I ended up take a short, 8-bar, section that had very little harmony and chopping it into enough pieces to create some repetition and something a little "hooky".

Past that there were some time-stretches, sidechains, delays, and octave doublings (all through the use of effects/processing) and we got to what is presented today.  I've never (intentionally) created minimal techno, and this piece may not be "minimal" enough, but hopefully it will suffice for this challenge.

Enjoy.

Day 73: Dark, Quick

Just a short work with horns, celeste, and piano.   The piano and celeste are from the Abbey Road Refills collection from Propellerheads.  One of my favorites.

Day 44: Adagio

Another piece for the imaginary string trio with piano.  It's slow and somber.

Day 43: Waltz for a Snow Day

Another piece featuring "real" instruments today.  I might end up having a suite for String Trio + Others if I keep this up.  Here you have accordion, violin, viola, and cello.  I suppose the accordion could be substituted by piano instead, then I'd have a pair of pieces for the same instrumentation.  A novel idea, for sure.

Day 40: Clocks

This track is probably a commentary on the lack of hours in the day.  Probably.