spatial music.
creative work - intelligent life.
(Played at Sound Spectrum 20.2 Spatial Music Concert)
After leaving the world of electronica and EDM for one and a half years, I decided to get back into it by doing the most in-your-face disaster electronica piece I could muster about aliens and conspiracy theories, simply called intelligent life.
After leaving the world of electronica and EDM for one and a half years, I decided to get back into it by doing the most in-your-face disaster electronica piece I could muster about aliens and conspiracy theories, simply called intelligent life.
process.
I have a LOT of back-catalogue in scores, whether that be scrapped ideas or fully fledged piece that I through to the curb-side. This means that I can fish from a lot of unreleased ideas, but also, there isn't a lot that I haven't done. Skip to the start of semester two, and I'm given the task to do a 5.1 piece. I start getting ideas of doing something disorientating; a piece that rapidly changes between speakers. I also wanted to do a song in a similar vein to Sungazer's Electro, but after a couple nights of deliberation on what to do, I realised that I've already tried to do something like this before, but with less speakers.
Back in 2019, I found this world of electro-jazz with weird instruments, and I tried to replicate it, and it didn't come out to my liking (probably because Sibelius sounds are the worst). It was called Cereology (the study of crop circles). It had a cool vibe and a awesome bass-line, so I saved it, hoping that one day I'll revisit it and make it better.
Cut back to the now, and I remember Cereology, so I grab the score and a blank Ableton session and get to work. After the bass was thrown in, I think it would be neat to have a news report as a sample all chopped up. I've seen ads for this new Netflix documentary called John Was Trying to Contact Aliens, and had a vague memory about seeing something about him yonks ago, so I search for a news reporter interviewing John, and found this.
Back in 2019, I found this world of electro-jazz with weird instruments, and I tried to replicate it, and it didn't come out to my liking (probably because Sibelius sounds are the worst). It was called Cereology (the study of crop circles). It had a cool vibe and a awesome bass-line, so I saved it, hoping that one day I'll revisit it and make it better.
Cut back to the now, and I remember Cereology, so I grab the score and a blank Ableton session and get to work. After the bass was thrown in, I think it would be neat to have a news report as a sample all chopped up. I've seen ads for this new Netflix documentary called John Was Trying to Contact Aliens, and had a vague memory about seeing something about him yonks ago, so I search for a news reporter interviewing John, and found this.
After that was found, I chopped the sample up, chucked it into two tracks (one for hard left panning, one for hard right), and added some more things. I tend to sort of go into fugue states while working, so it's hard to remember what I do, but I started to work at about 10pm, and ended up somewhere at 3am, with about 2 minutes of music. After procrastinating for a while, I chucked another verse and chorus, added an arpeggiator and an outro, with some additional panning on all the MIDI instruments, and then vamoose: the piece was done... binaurally.
See my copy of Ableton Live 10 is Lite, which means, amongst other things, I can't get plug-ins, which would've allowed me to do 5.1 surround mixing. So, the next step was to convert all of the tracks into .wav files, with all the mixing centralised (my favourite). After about 6 different attempts to convert the stems, and then scrapping them due to either having a new idea or the audio exporting didn't go well, I finally had it on a USB to stick into a computer and chuck into Logic.
After exporting everything into Logic and messing around with the automation and effects, I realised that I had only gotten half of the time wanted for the concert, so I added more, including another instrument with a solo, as was originally intended in the old version a year ago. Exporting the stems yet again and chucking them into logic yet again, and about 4 hours of fiddling with different knobs and automation, I finally had a track I was happy with.
See my copy of Ableton Live 10 is Lite, which means, amongst other things, I can't get plug-ins, which would've allowed me to do 5.1 surround mixing. So, the next step was to convert all of the tracks into .wav files, with all the mixing centralised (my favourite). After about 6 different attempts to convert the stems, and then scrapping them due to either having a new idea or the audio exporting didn't go well, I finally had it on a USB to stick into a computer and chuck into Logic.
After exporting everything into Logic and messing around with the automation and effects, I realised that I had only gotten half of the time wanted for the concert, so I added more, including another instrument with a solo, as was originally intended in the old version a year ago. Exporting the stems yet again and chucking them into logic yet again, and about 4 hours of fiddling with different knobs and automation, I finally had a track I was happy with.
process images.
sources.
Image from Google Images, edited by me.
All MIDI instruments, MIDI effects and most audio effects are pre-packaged in with Ableton Live 10 Lite.
Spatialisation and some audio effects by Logic.
Sample is from a Michigan Magazine video interview with John Shepard, a man who is obsessed with contacting aliens, at his research centre/home in Torch Lake.
Thanks to Stuart James for looking through the piece a handful of times and giving me great ideas and advice into how to write and mix EDM.
All MIDI instruments, MIDI effects and most audio effects are pre-packaged in with Ableton Live 10 Lite.
Spatialisation and some audio effects by Logic.
Sample is from a Michigan Magazine video interview with John Shepard, a man who is obsessed with contacting aliens, at his research centre/home in Torch Lake.
Thanks to Stuart James for looking through the piece a handful of times and giving me great ideas and advice into how to write and mix EDM.
assignment - ablutophobia.
The task was to write for a madeup game using FMOD, a DAW specifically made for game design. I had a couple ideas going in, which included utilising the multi-instrument to make strange, new and whacky sounds, and the constant drips that my showerhead produces. Thus, I made Ablutophobia, which slowly morphed into the concept of this horror game where you are being chased by a sentient shower, which slowly ramps up it's drips in relation to how much "fear" you produce. It's not that well thought out. As the fear parameter increases, other things happen, such as more distorted and worrying sounds coming from the interactive objects and music, and the rate of footsteps increasing.
Sadly I can't upload a file of it's size to this website, nor demo it for whatever reason, so you'll have to trust me that it exists somewhere in the ether.
Sadly I can't upload a file of it's size to this website, nor demo it for whatever reason, so you'll have to trust me that it exists somewhere in the ether.
Thank you again to Stuart James for running this class and definitely getting me more involved with digital music creation and making music easier. If you are intruiged, click on his name and check out his personal stuff.