Category Archives: Playing With Sound

Gatlin’

This song originated when I was listening to a very driving prog rock song, and half-wondered if if it was sort of like the musical equivalent of a machine gun attack. Then, I wondered, what would the musical equivalent of a machine gun firing be? Probably not quite like the piece that resulted, but that was at least the general driving idea behind it (and, at least toward the end, it does take on a bit of an impression of its namesake). Basically, it’s a fast, growing sequence that’s somewhere between music and sonic assault, but I like it nonetheless.

Drums are a custom program (and custom sound programs) done in Logic’s Ultrabeat, guitars are Slayer 2, and synths are Vanguard. There’s also a limiter on the master output which I probably put in a couple of minutes too late. When I say some of this stuff is ear-bleed material, it’s not just your ears I’m talking about…

http://www.idlecircuits.com/digintmedia/gatlin.mp3

Oh, and despite the fact that mashups officially jumped the shark the moment they were featured on “Glee”, I created an experimental mash of Gatlin’ and one of my other tracks (Ambient Distance).

http://www.idlecircuits.com/digintmedia/em_gatlinambdist.mp3

Strange Electroacoustics

Pretty much everything on this track is generated to some extent by Reaktor’s various ensembles. The core of the track is a heavily transformed live playing of Reaktor’s Acoustring ensemble, modified by Traktor effects, and accompanied by a large number of Reaktor algorithmic grooveboxes and sound generators. The overall result is a pseudo-ambient piece with an interesting, pulsating sound that cycles between gentle and gritty. This song was definitely interesting to work with, as it took the original melody line and managed to transform it into something almost unrecognizable compared to the original, but much more interesting.

There are two versions of the track that you can download – the Minimal version, which focuses mainly on the transformed melody accompanied by a couple of generated sounds, and the All-Inclusive version, which includes many additional generators and grooveboxes. The minimal version is good for listening to the essence of the track, while the all-inclusive version has a much fuller sound.

All-Inclusive:

http://www.idlecircuits.com/digintmedia/seall.mp3

Minimal:

http://www.idlecircuits.com/digintmedia/smin.mp3

Not 2001

I was playing around with Wusik EVE when I discovered that you could do some interesting ribbon-controller style sweeps using the mouse on the instrument’s mini-keyboard. This is one of those tracks, where I was playing around with some octave shifts with one of the interesting Mellotron sounds. WHile I was playing it, I thought it sounded slightly like the intro to the movie 2001, but not really… hence the title.

http://www.idlecircuits.com/digintmedia/not2k1.mp3