OT sound design question here, i just want to bat around some
ideas and see what shakes out.
how would you make the sound of “crystals forming” on the OT?
I have been asked to provide the music for a modern dance
production that requires the sound of “crystals forming” as the
basis of the overall sound.
I’d like to use the OT to manipulate the sounds in real time.
What do you all think? When you combine Crystal Formations and
the OT, what pops into your mind as a starting point for samples,
scenes, whatever…?
I’ve tried a few things…
got a sample of shattering glass, tried reversing it, slowing it down,
delay. pretty cool but the sample is kinda short so slowing it down you
lose some of the crystal sounds. any ideas on other sample raw materials?
using a flex machine assigned to listen to another track and playing with
the length of the RLEN with playback loop on PIPO can
cause some cool controllable reverse sounds.
I’ll post some sounds if I come up with something decent.
p.s. i’m trying to redeem myself for my meandering f-bombing about the
SRC3 light bug in that other thread
Put ice cubes in warm water and capture the sound with a mic.
Snapping dry bits of wood or crumpling dry leaves might get you close too.
Inside the OT, maybe add a random lfo sweeping thru the sample start points or re-trigger time.
You might also try using a fractal effect in a DAW before loading the sample into the OT.
i think your idea of reversed, high attack, closing sounds sounds right, crucially i think you need overlap, either by delay or a couple of tracks, i think of brittle fm tones, i’d suggest using a zero res hi-pass or eq and perhaps setting up a slice grid to play it live and set scenes up to intensify delay or vary eq or micro adjust pitch to give it life, i use random lfos on every play, so if you used those to vary the attack /decay etc you may get a more organic varying texture, sounds like you’re on the right tracks, make your sample longer
& if i had tracks to burn, i.d set up a slice array to play, mute that track and have a few other tracks randomly sample from the muted track with varying playback parameters to create a live texture, the idea of letting samples merely play on the OT is anathema to me
Thanks for the wonderful suggestions.
So far we have:
Fast sequence of sinewaves
Ice cubes in warm water
Snap dry wood/leaves
Random LFO on start points/retrig times/attack/decay
Reversing high attck sounds
Overlapping sounds
Brittle FM tones
Fractal DAW fx
Sliced array as source for other tracks
that sonically charging crystal thing is super funny! …
anyways… in my head… use the sound of 2 metal objects sliding on top of each other, increasing, or descreasing in frequency until they come to a halt with a snappy sound at the end …
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would also record metal needles falling on a surface maybe even another metal plate …
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.if you wanna get super crazy and this might be the best one … record a fly walking over a BIG sheet of tinfoil / aluminium foil which is slightly curved and not flat on surface …
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also retrig function of the OT from low to super fast would give me the impression of of something forming into a shape … (reverb always give the impression of further away space /distance imho)
good luck with that project, please update us on the final results…cheers
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.just my 2ct …
Yep, this one’s real easy … Wha . . .?? Do you have huge domesticated flies over in berlin, not to mention an anechoic chamber and a Neumann mic or three Like your thinking tho
fly on tinfoil … the other day, it was summer, and probably more than 15 years ago … i am serious here … there was a piece of tin foil / aluminium foil on a ktichen table … it was NOT flat out on the table, it was sitting on a crest, still VERY VERY flat and un-indented !!! … hence it acted as a gigantic membrane for the fly feet (6 of them right? ) … i can vividly remember how amazed I was by being able to pick this sound up with my ears … no domesticated flies over here in berlin, i have in fact a ton of lady bugs in my appartment… willing to trade for CV patch cables, or … = ?
tl dr: no special mic needed to record a fly walking over tinfoil
One trick that could be worth trying is t create one flex track with crackling sound make ur real sparse then resample the output to a pickup track of different length. Over time the pickup track will be filled with the crackling from the first track… Then you can use the pickup track as source on an other flex where you can change rate of the cracks and sort of slow them down…
I’m still trying to get a decent crystal sound.
It’s more tricky tha. I first thought.
If the sound is too sparse, it sounds jerky and too random
If it’s too busy it gets less crystally.
For the original project I chickened out and used this new
Kawai k5000 synth. I don’t think it makes anything but crystal
sounds.
I’m actually skiing in Utah right now. And while going down the
slopes I was thinking about the crystals. Skiing produces an amazing g
Crystally sliding sound. It seems that it would be mostly high hz
content but it’s much low hz in there.
The best octatrack crystals I got were layering very high pitched
Coins rolling sound and the sound of a campfire underneath.
I will put up what I have even tho it’s not mindblowing (yet).
. .?? Do you have huge domesticated flies over in berlin, not to mention an anechoic chamber and a Neumann mic or three 
Like your thinking tho