Cinema Volta: Daily Ambience

A preliminary pass at adding a second section. The sounds and effects are still sketches. It feels as if we've left 70's New York for 90's London. 2005-11-01

I've messed around a bit more with structure, tweaked a few tracks and added a new one. I've also started playing around with mix automation which I haven't done in many years. This is also a MIDI-heavy track, and that's kind of fun. Every since direct to disk recording became easy to do, MIDI has taken a bit of a back seat for me, so it's nice to flex some old muscles. 2005-11-02

I added a guitar track and did a lot more tweaking. Now the middle section doesn't sound so much like The Orb anymore. I think most of the parts are there, so now it's time to really start cutting away at it and give it some form and space. 2005-11-03

Beginning to wrap things up. I changed a number of sounds, thinned out the arrangement and adjusted lots of levels. We're getting near the end here. 2005-11-04

I added a couple more guitar tracks for variety and really worked on the mix. It's done, at least for the moment. It's been an interesting experience, building this piece in public. It's also been interesting for me to go back to a method that I haven't used in a long time. I've learned a lot about working with Cubase as well. I never cease to be amazed at the options that are now available for a relatively small amount of money these days.2005-11-05

After finishing the last track, which was very structured, here's a guitar improvisation. Just a Strat, an EBow and a big, reverberant space. 2005-11-06

Just me, my didj and a big space. 2005-11-07

I'm letting the computer run things today. 2005-11-08

Here's a variation on yesterday's track. 2005-11-09

I was really stuck and uninspired this morning, so I kept fiddling with technical stuff to avoid doing anything real. Anyway, I finally forced myself to record something. I used no tricks, no effects, just a single synth patch and came up with this little phasing piece.

I like it very much. 2005-11-10

I took some of the feeling from yesterday's track and tried another approach. This is based a little bit on some of the ideas found in Steve Reich's works like "Piano Phase." All the voices use the same motive, but half of them slow down in tempo each measure. 2005-11-11

This is really an ambient track - just let it play in the background at a very low level. It's a harmonic drone run through a filter that I'm controlling with a joystick. 2005-11-12

Similar setup to yesterday, just a different sound source. Sort of an old si-fi movie vibe here. 2005-11-13

This is a simple little piece that combines phasing lines and some random generation of sounds along with it. It fits well with this grey November day in Stockholm. 2005-11-14

I've reached the 3/4 point today. There's only 92 more tracks to go. Now would be a good time to consider a donation.

Just a simple track full of seemingly random atmospherics. Actually, it's not particularly random, I just worked hard to make it feel that way. All of the sounds were chosen for their harmonic richness, but they are hard to identify as specific notes.

This is also a totally "pure" mix - no compressors, limiters, reverb, etc. Just the synth patches themselves and a little dither on the mixdown.

2005-11-15

Some more background ambience. Play this at an extremely low volume and just go about your day. 2005-11-16

I'm doing a bit more experimentation with using a game joystick as a MIDI controller. I'm going to follow this line for a while to try to discover what's possible. Some of them will be more musical than others, but I'm having fun. 2005-11-17

Another joystick piece. I'm starting to get a feel for the type of control that's possible with this. 2005-11-18

I don't know about you, but I'm having lots of fun with these noises. I'm using a Junxion from STEIM (the old version) to control both a synth and a filter. Cubase lets me transform the MIDI input on different channels, so I can control more than one thing with the same gesture. There's a bit of a bug with Cubase and the way it handles virtual MIDI inputs on my Mac, so I have to send the stream from the joystick out through my physical MIDI interface and back in again. Other than that, it works like a charm.

I'm having a lot of fun getting away from using a standard keyboard to control MIDI. 2005-11-19

My Odeo Channel (odeo/76284a9ae40e4668)

More playing around with the joystick setup. I changed the synth patch on this one, other than that, everything else is the same. 2005-11-20

Almost the same setup as the last two days, but this time, the only sound generator is the filter itself. 2005-11-21

Still more of the joystick controller experiments. 2005-11-22

Yesterday's joystick performance with different sounds. 2005-11-23

Another joystick track. I'm just enjoying playing free and not thinking about structure or key right now. 2005-11-24

Delay Lama is a free VST instrument that is perfect for using with a joystick controller. I had a great time with this one and want to do more. 2005-11-25

Here's six Delay Lamas singing in Upsalla's Domkyrkan. 2005-11-26

This is a generative loop piece. Each instrument plays one of three notes, and then waits for the sound to decay to silence before playing the next note. The whole thing is placed in the reverb from the cistern which has a 45 second decay. 2005-11-27

I took yesterday's structure rules and applied it to a reverb with a shorter decay time. The piece is much faster and much shorter, but it still retains the space and feeling of slowness. 2005-11-28

This is a variation of the piece using only the voice line. It's back in the cistern. 2005-11-29

This is a piano variation on the original track. It's different than yesterday's variation in that it is not a layering of the same melody line - instead, the piano is playing the lines from all the voices. 2005-11-30