[
Date Prev][
Date Next] [
Thread Prev][
Thread Next]
[
Date Index][
Thread Index][
Author Index]
TheBrokenMusicBox: an online looping experiment
I discovered a very cool free sample site last night
http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/
run coincidentally by my friend Bram who is one of the freeware plugin
developers at the marvelous SmartElectronix.com collective.
One of the interesting things about the site is that you can preview the
free samples there by either triggering them as a one shot or
by hitting a loop button and then triggering them as a continuous loop.
I was searching for toy piano, music box, old wheezy organ and out of
tune
piano samples because, hey, I'm weird
and so I found a sample pack of Toy Music Box samples.
Much to my delight I discovered that I could improv on the site by turning
the loops of the individual Music Box notes on and off.
I also discovered that I could run as many loops as I felt like it in real
time.
So the tune is in the spirit of the real time looping (in this case using
my
mouse and my computer only)
It's called "The Broken Music Box" and if you are curious, below is the
process I used to improvised the piece.
It's free to download and hear at www.looppool.info/TheBrokenMusicBox/
I hope you like it.
**************
Here's a description of my unconventional process:
I used the preview looping capabilties of the FREESOUND site to do an
improv
with all of the toy music box samples...............looping and turning on
and off the various samples, running simultaneously............I recorded
this improv in real time into Sound Forge.
Then I took that improv and played it back in real time as I used the
mouse
to
grab the moving cursor and manipulate it in ways that screwed up the
computer
(I even crashed it with the blue screen of death once...........I'm never
even seen a blue
screen as long as I've run Win XP.............lol).
I love this technique for confusing the computer while playing back in
Sound
Forge.
all of this I recorded into Cool Edit Pro (because Sound Forge won't allow
multiple instances
to run simultaneously.
I took the results and then basically just slashed sections out of it
until
I like the final result..................then I threw it into Fruity Loops
and played with speed of play back and triggering heavily verbed instances
of the tracks: sometimes synchonously, sometimes not.
Next, I tried to think of what Ravel would do to the piece if he were
alive
today and I wrote the String parts in Fruity Loops.
Everything I did with a mouse and the computer.
It's sort of neo classical/glitch music and is pretty outside of the
mainstream but I'm really happy with it.