Good work! And another where the source material is new to me… but I wanted to take the song at initial impression. I really like what I think is the ‘violin-ish from acoustic harmonics’ sound that you came up with - the bending back and forth between notes feels quite organic. The bits of percussive elements offset well against the warmer acoustic guitar which emphasises the unease you mention.
Overall, really enjoyed it and thanks for taking time for writing up a bit about the inspiration and how you wrote it. That’s what is especially valuable about these challenges. And interesting!
This is so, so cool. Love the idea of playing the pitch of a comb filter like an instrument via the crossfader. I like the sort of “sound collage” you have happening in the background a lot too. Almost like a bunch of tape loops spliced together
This reminds me of the new Avey Tare record that just came out, actually. Give that one a listen.
Inspired by Twin Peaks. (The Grace Zabriskie scream probably still gives it away, alas.) This wasn’t childhood for me, but university days, and loads of fun then (and now).
Barebones; this actually may be more a sketch. One of the things I really want to play with the Octatrack for is granular synthesis away from the laptop. I got the effect I was looking for here — I used LFO1 to modulate the start position, and LFO2 the length, of the spoken sample, and copied that across three tracks, each with slight adjustments to the pitch and the filter.
The drone is a chord from the opening; not the opening chord, but another one I liked, trimmed, filtered with a moderate-Q low-pass filter looped.
Gracie’s scream is… Gracie’s scream, dark reverb. Little else done to it. I pitched it up a bit, but she did so well with it it’s hard to do much more with it than that, in my mind, for the effect that I wanted.
What I learned:
How to manually sample (thanks to everyone who helped in my noob question thread!)
Here’s another take. More fun with effects, better ending, I think. Used a couple of scenes, too, to help with adjusting the delay once all three of the granular-ish tracks came in.
I think your two versions are an interesting example of how two similar takes on a song idea can have quite marked differences in how they feel. I tend to prefer your first, the intro with the drone chord seems more organic and amorphous but in a good way then when the little vocal snippets come in they seem bubble below the surface more and the overall effect is a bit more melancholic. The vocal snippets in the second being a little clearer and pronounced make that feel more like a glitchy rhythm which gives it more sense of motion. Not bad or such like, I just like that vibe in the first. Weirdly makes me think of some of the stuff from Download’s soundtrack to (the never released) Charlie’s Family which I’d put in the category of “good thing”.
You can make a bunch of scenes each with a different comb filter note, make a scale with them. With the crossfader fully to that side hold down that scene button and you can play your comb scale on the trigs…
Thanks, @jeye_musik! Somehow I stepped on the opening chord between the two versions. I actually prefer the opening chord in the first more too! I appreciate your looking critically at it — I appreciate it! Thank you. I should go check out that soundtrack if I can find it.
No problem, I think one of the big bonuses of doing these is to be able to share information and ideas in a positive way. So, I’m trying to make a point of listening to everyone’s and feeding back as my contribution as my own endeavours with my first challenge are proving to be slower than a week in the jail.
