Turning an Organic Sample Into a Weird Instrument

Описание: My friend Jasen sent me field recordings he made around his house. One was labeled stool and my first reaction to it was honestly that it was a bit too close to nails on the chalkboard for me. But some EQ and slight pitch shifting in Ableton sanded off the rougher edges and I pushed the fundamental frequency to 523Hz, in range of a C note.

Loaded it into the Digitakt for some mangling and sound design and this is what transpired. Eventually I get to a sequence and then add effects.

I tried to cut out all the long pauses, but this is trying to show start to finish so it’s not exciting. And you will hear the same sound over and over. But that’s the nature of sound design I think. I did cut out running through about all the presets on the Microcosm and various adjustments there. As well as the building of effects on the MESS.

I ended up on SEQ 4 with a triangle shape on the Microcosm and the MESS was another micro looper plus a shaper and a reverb.

Shorter sounds like this really highlight how important the shape parameter is in the Microcosm. An algorithm may be a good fit, but only if you try all the shapes patiently.

Interesting harmonics emerged in lower frequencies and led to a little distortion so watch for that near the end.

If I were recording this in for use in a song, I'd probably route the audio entirely through the effects for a wet signal. Here's I'm just applying a little through the aux send/receive on the mixer.