I attended a Barker ambient show here in Holland last month. It was awesome, even better than the album. Fully corona-proof, seated 1,5m apart with a little table to put your drink. A fantastic way to really enjoy music. No one talking, just sound and visuals. They had a camera at his table: eventide space, octatrack mk1, digitone and controllers. Oh, and a ND2…
I took my OT with me on holiday and experimented with getting this sound. I had some ableton stems of chord progressions on my CF. I made a fast triggering pattern, set the amp envelope and then used the start parameter to scan the (long) recording and gave it more variation using lfos. Works like a charm. Doubled the tracks and offset panning, filtering, lfos, pitch, rate, etc.
So much fun can be had with just the OT… Do I really need all those other machines?
Thanks for the link. Since my music theory knowledge isn’t the best, could someone who has opened the midi file explain a bit more clearly what the files contain?
In his own words from the link in the previous post, the MIDI file contains ‘64 chords, arranged into 8 modes with 8 inversions each, with the first half being major, and the rest minor’.
The idea being that you can feed this MIDI file from a device such as the OT into a synth and capture loads of chords with various inversions. The resulting audio file is perfectly divided into 64, meaning it’s easy to slice in order to get creative.
Not so sure about the specific chords in Barker’s MIDI chain. If you have a program that recognises chords from MIDI notes (such as Logic and Garageband) you could find out. Alternatively it might be worth putting together your own MIDI chord chain, I’ve been inspired to do that myself!
Guys, I’ve been studying the first MIDI chord bank (named C-CH) provided by Barker and have worked out the chords. To clarify, there are eight chords in total per bank, with eight inversions each, totalling 64 chords. I have a screenshot of the MIDI file should anyone wish to check it and make corrections - Feel free to correct me!
C6 (C G A C)
C7 (C A# G E)
CMaj7 (C E G B)
C add2 (C D E G)
C sus4 (C G F C)
??? (C D# G G#)
Cm6 (C D# G A)
Cm7 (C D# G A#)
What I don’t get is the sixth chord in the bank - the only way I can think of it in the key of C is ‘Cm add#5’, which written down sounds like it would sound hideous but it sounds really nice! Can someone help me correctly identify this chord?
Hey thanks for doing this! Since I saw that FACT Video I’m also hooked…and bought a Nord Drum 2
Do you think it is possible to somehow make use of the files with a Digitakt, Digitone or Monomachine?
I really like this approach. What I’ve done is slightly different. I sample chords from a specific scale. For example, in C major I sample all 7 chords in the scale and then have a spacer slice. I then repeat that using alternative voicings and inversions. I do that until I have 64 slices (8 chord sets from the scale in 1 file). This way I can pick a scale and then program a chord sequence. If I want a different (i) chord I use slice 1, 9, 17, 25, 33, 41, 49 or 57. Like Barker, I do this for the major and minor scale in a few different keys, meaning I have access to them all by simply pitching them appropriately.
Probably not the best way to do it but it seems to work for now. As I’m not a keyboard player this is really the only way I can get chords in easily. I plan on doing the same with my guitar.
That seems like the best way to do it, as long as you know which slices relate to which chords and inversions you’re good to go! I see Barker has a few different versions of each chord set - one in C, one in E etc - so he can pitch up or down to the key of the song without the artifacts interest to moving up or down say, five or six semitones. Seems like you do that as well!
Edit: I’ve lightly edited the MIDI chord chain in C that Barker provided so that the first chord is present (seems to have been screwed up somehow) and I’ve started sampling my favourite patches from Absynth and Lounge Lizard. This is going to be awesome for when my Black Box arrives.
Bumping this. Anyone have the Barker chord MIDI file since his link is now dead? @Claid it sounds like yours could be perfect, if you still have it on hand.
