Cinema Volta: Daily Ambience

I think this one shows promise, so I'm going to work on developing it further. I've added another cello and viola, each at 110 bpm and this time playing the melody a fifth higher. It's twice as long too, because the new tempo takes that long to get back in sync.

2005-10-01

I added two half-tempo basses to the track. Because they're exactly half tempo, the length is not changed, but they fill out the track quite nicely. 2005-10-02

Exploring further on the same track. I've thinned it out a little bit, having each instrument rest for a few bars determined by a bilaterally symmetrical pattern. 2005-10-03

Getting away from the highly structured approach of the last few days and back to my usual disorder.

This is a looping piece, sort of. There are loops, buy they're slightly different each time they show up. There's also lots of simulated tape saturation in this to give it a bit of a 1970's sound. The Wurlitzer on this is a sample, unfortunately. Mine is currently buried in a storage space in Södermalm.

To me, this has a definite autumnal feeling. 2005-10-04

This is based on the same processes and structures as yesterday with a bit of fiddling and different instruments. 2005-10-05

I took the output of the last two days and laid them on top of each other out of sync. I'm pleased with the way they work together. 2005-10-06

I'm finding many different ways to combine these two tracks. This time I'm convolving the two tracks - basically the spectral information from one track controls the frequency information of the other, or as Wikipedia puts it, "In mathematics and in particular, functional analysis, convolution is a mathematical operator which takes two functions f and g and produces a third function that in a sense represents the amount of overlap between f and a reversed and translated version of g. A convolution is a kind of very general moving average, as one can see by taking one of the functions to be an indicator function of an interval."

This is the same technique that is used to apply the sampled acoustics of a space to a sound source, which, as you know, I do quite a bit. 2005-10-07

An audio-specific explanation of convolution can be found at Barry Truax's webpage.

This is the same approach as yesterday, I just switched the source and filter tracks. The result is quite different. 2005-10-08

Also, by doing five of these, I've broken the symmetry with the "Symmetry" series, so this is truly asymmetrical.

Another self-generating feedback piece. This is all generated by a single note on the piano. There are filtering delays, multitap stereo delays, MIDI delays and arpeggiators, pitch shifters and feedback networks at work here. And it all goes into the acoustic space of Laukyrkan with its standing waves. 2005-10-09

Same setup as yesterday, but I've tweaked all the processors and put the whole mix into the cistern. 2005-10-10

Lather, rinse, repeat. 2005-10-11

I used two feedback machines triggered by the the same piano note. Then I convolved both the left and right outputs of the two feedback machines and fed that back into the feedback machines. I then ran that into a resonating multitap delay and then through another multitap delay with analog tape modeling. I stuck the whole thing in a stairwell. 2005-10-12

I hate to go back on a promise, but I took yesterday's configuration and ran it through a ring modulator. Not only that, but I even interfered with the process by tweaking the settings of the ring modulator throughout the course of the track. I had fun doing it too - I just don't know what's come over me. 2005-10-13

This is just an old-fashioned, non-synched looping piece with almost no effects, just a little flanging and a little reverb. Nothing being done here that couldn't have been done in the 70's at one thousand times the price. 2005-10-14

This has the same instrumentation as yesterday with a few tweaks. The compositional approach is similar to yesterday's as well, but I'm trying to be more melodic, sparser, but a little more structured. I'm still not quite where I want to be with this type of music, but I'm getting closer. I've been playing around with pieces like this for about 15 years, and I'm still finding them a challenge. 2005-10-15

By the way, this marks the 2/3 point of this project. There have been 244 songs so far, adding up to 21 hours of music. I've only got 122 more to go.

A guitar improvisation. It's pretty simple, my Strat and EBow played into a couple of harmonized delays and placed in Gasverket thanks to Rayverb. 2005-10-16

I really enjoyed playing with the setup from yesterday, so here's another guitar improvisation in a similar vein. 2005-10-17

I've kept the same seup and added a multitap delay at the input. This time, I'm using a pick instead of an EBow. It's sort of a blues in E. 2005-10-18

I've taken the processes of the last few days in a new direction. I'm using my 20 year old MIDI guitar controller, a Casio DG-20, instead of a real guitar. This allows me to play with new sounds. It also allows more control over the harmonizers. The now track the notes that the guitar is playing, so I can build up much denser clouds of notes. This is all thanks to Pluggo and the Harm-Z plugin from the PeRColate package. 2005-10-19

I'm using yesterday's setup with the MIDI guitar, but I've changed the synth patch to something a bit more simple. I also had to tweak the harmonizers a bit to get them better in tune with what I'm playing. This setup is fun to play with - I feel like I've got a new toy. 2005-10-20

Upon review, I found that the tracks from the 16th through the 20th had some problems related to encoding them as MP3s, so I've remixed them so they work better in that format.

By the way, if you use iTunes, I strongly recommend that you go into "Preferences" and under the "Playback" settings, turn the effect called "Soundcheck" off. It will balance out the volume levels, but it does not work well for dense classical music and lots of ambient tracks like these.

2005-10-16
2005-10-17
2005-10-18
2005-10-19
2005-10-20

This one is made of lots of looping and multitap delays put into a beautiful acoustic space. Still guitar-based, and still the same scale I've playing around with for days.

Almost all of the effects I'm using are freeware - some of them are quite amazing. The C3 multiband compressor from Slim Slow Slider and ApluSoft is a must-have. I'm using it for both limiting and maximizing on this track. I'm also using the mda Looplex and ExSIMultitap - both freeware as well.

One important lesson I've learned from this track - no matter how tight your budget, using a 15 year old guitar cable is probably never a good idea. 2005-10-21

I used the same setup as yesterday, but this time, I played with my EBow and, finally, a new scale.

I also dug out another old piece of gear - my SansAmp. I have the very first model, from when they were being built in the back room of Rogue Music on 30th St. in NYC. I used it to thicken the guitar sound a bit. 2005-10-22

Still exploring what can be done with a guitar and multiple delays. This one has four harmonized multitap delays going into four cycling loops with different lengths. Once again, most of the effects used are free: Harm-Z, Delayifier and Looplex. 2005-10-23

After listening to yesterday's track a couple of times, I thought it might go well with other instruments. I took all the delays and synced them to a tempo and added a fairly traditional rhythm section to it, playing a slow groove. 2005-10-24

I was pleased with the way this setup worked with traditional backing, so I tried it with non-traditional accompaniment. I had the feedback machine play along with the track from the 23rd. 2005-10-25

I've brought back the EBow. This is using the harmonized delays and the four loopers. Other than that, no tricks, just a guitar improvisation. 2005-10-26

All these delay pieces have inspired me to go back to a way I worked a long time ago - slowly building up layers to create a soundscape and then cutting away sections to form a structure. Over the next few days I'll be doing that with this track. 2005-10-27

I've carved it up a bit and let the delays take more of a role. We'll see where this leads us. 2005-10-28

No big change, I just added another instrument doing something slightly different. 2005-10-29

Next step in the development. I've added another track and made a lot of modifications as far as the routing sounds to the delays go. Just trying to thin it out a bit to give the echoes more room to breathe. 2005-10-30

Did some tweaking and added something on the low end. 2005-10-31