Project Audio File

This project was an ambient, synth and sample based track, taking its main inspiration from the lesson on the sampling of old commercials. I got the commercial samples from the link on Space, and after converting it to audio and playing it for the first time, the first thing that struck me was a section where a woman is speaking quite rhythmically, with a sound underneath that I thought could be used for a kick. This was quite a simple bit of processing; I just cut the section out and then copy pasted it to the grid. After some EQ, and a supplementary kick underneath to round it out (the kick was from a stock Logic Pro instrument), this part was finished.

Kick Before

Kick After

The next part that struck me was a man quoting Shakespeare. Initially I considered using his voice for a bassline, as he had a very deep resonance, however I also really liked the sibilance and percussive quality of the way he said his T’s. I decided to follow this idea, and used these T’s, pitched around and moulded with the sampler’s envelope, to make a high hat pattern. As this was to be an ambient, organic track, I was careful to ensure the drums never got too over processed or ‘modern’ sounding, as I wanted to maintain an element of found-sound natural tone.

T before

T after

Next I took inspiration from Daft Punk, turning a quick, short loop, into a pad using reverb and the sampler. I used a part of an advert that had a loud horn in the background, which I then pitched up, and used the loop function to repeat extremely quickly to give the illusion of a continuous sound. I then added a reverb directly onto the track, instead of mixing between wet and dry, to wash it out and push it back in the mix.

Horn Pad before

Horn Pad after

Similarly, I then used a chime in the background of another ad to make a keyboard/piano instrument. In doing this, I noticed the chime wasn’t tuned to standard tuning, so I had to detune the sampler around 20 cents to the correct pitch, I then moved the trigger root to the note it was making, and dragged each side of it so that I could make an instrument with it.

Keyboard Before

Keyboard after

Next I made a synth patch to have the main melody and chords be played on. Here I used Serum 2, modulating the oscillators, filter, noise oscillator, and envelope to have an evolving, organic sound which responded musically to the velocity I played at on my keyboard. My main focus here was to maintain harmonic richness, and the classic analog synth sound through use of triangle waves, as mentioned in the lesson. 

From that same lesson, I also chose to incorporate an arpeggiated synth. This patch was fairly similar to the pad one, with a different cutoff preset and a slightly purer tone. My aim with this instrument was to add a sense of tension, highlighting the slightly dissonant chords, and complement the rhythm of the drums I had made

The last key component of this track is the tremolo guitar notes in the background of the ending section. These were recorded by me in my house, pointing the mic at my picking hand to get as much of the clicking sound as possible. I chose to incorporate this sound as I have been experimenting with it a lot recently, and I felt that it would fit this track well, being that it has an emphasis on organic natural sound and ambience. Once the guitar was recorded, I added a pitch shifter to one of the recordings. I did this because I find that Logic’s stock pitch shifter is actually quite bad at pitch shifting, but in being bad at this it produces a lot of really musical sonic artifacts, which add a lot of harmonic depth to a sound, if applied correctly. 

Reflecting on this project, I find that although I was going for a more laidback, ambient, eerie sound, the track could do with a bit more movement and progression, as it does get somewhat dull at times. As well as this I would have liked to do more research on sample manipulation, as there were some parts of the advertisement that I tried to sample, but I was unable to include them in the track as I couldn’t get them to do what I wanted sonically.