Nathaniel Clark » synthesizer

Ongoing Sound Research

nathaniel — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 05:44:59 +0000

.…research has gone well, in retrospect. There were some frustrations, and I wasn’t ultimately happy with the two major “creative” attempts today (one attempt at grainy, scream-esque vocals that just fell painfully short but left me with a ragged throat, and one attempt to insert a motif-expanding break into a driving song– the result was actually sort of interesting, but it dropped the energy of the song way below an acceptable limit, so it must be (a) scratched, or (b) slivered into the end portion of the song, where I am already doing some discordant/chromatic stuff), but overall, advances were made. Played around with Logic’s wild and woolly ES2 in search of a mean and fat analog bass, something way overdriven with that warm analog detuning .… didn’t get it, but found some fine settings along the way. Also, downloaded some weird mellotron voice samples for the EXS24 and drew some faux-middle-eastern modal lines over the end of snakeskins, which I am re-working for about the 100th time.

I am sipping some Theraflu, trying to nurse the final stages of the weekend illness that gave my family a microbial uppercut, and poking through images of old modular synthesizers. The weekend just went and dissipated into the blurry atmosphere, and it’s difficult to turn one’s mind back to work already. So it goes. So no clever turn of phrase to end this post, just one last sip of medicine-flavored lemon drink and then it’s off to tuck my head into a pillow of sleep. Or something that resembles sleep, which is just about where things are at, at night, in this hilltop aerie.

The Invisible Noise Experience

nathaniel — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 17:56:22 +0000

Going along with the idea that “if you build it, the ideas will come”, I have created homes for my recent audio work. Guitar/Synth/Band format stuff I believe will become Engine Ares {working band name, based off an old song from my former band and one that hit me with the force of epiphany this morning on the walk around Avocado Lane}; experimental synth/noise work will probably go to The Invisible Noise Experience, a name that’s better than the ones that kept circling through my head about quiet noise, though that’s the way I think about a lot of my sound work — quiet noise. Invisible Noise opens up the world to paranormal audio, methinks.

In honor of the truth, the picture above is not my audio set up — but oh, how I wish. No, it is an image from an MIT Media Lab veteran who has been building this thing incrementally, for years, or so I just read today. Here are some audio works from the owner’s webpage.

Posting the “cart” before the “horse” is an attempt to trick myself into disciplined action — now that I’ve put it out there, I need to fulfill it properly or know myself as truly, deeply “lame”.

Symbiosis

nathaniel — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 05:04:28 +0000

So interesting thing sort of just happened… I was too tired to tackle the “music” music tonight (though I got a few ideas off a deep-listening to the scratch tracks), so i decided I should play with some of Logic’s software instruments and make some cool and non-specific textures.

OK, wait, back up, important point skipped: Aunt Jenny gave Lucian a sleep-noise machine (I forget what its real name is) which has several different settings. Currently, he is in there past the gates of deeper slumber whilst digital waves crash with white-noise crests on the virtual shore. Lest you think I am making fun, I am not: I love white-noise machines, could listen to them all day long (cf. my sound art). I am ‘monitoring’ the baby through a ‘monitor’ which is sitting next to me, god’s-eye view of my son curled up asleep.

A highly compressed, noisy, distortish-type sound comes thru to me, through this monitor, but I really didn’t notice it before, mostly because I had on my recording headphones on which heavily (though not completely) filter out ambient sounds.

Anyway, I set up some synthesizer through a series of compression, eqs, and distortion, then played with an EVOC Filter which, in total coolness, allows one to chop up the harmonics in two ways and gently morph them into each other, fueled by an LFO. I got the sound meditatively cool, deep grainy distorted breaths of sound heaving in waves, sort of liquid noise undulations. I looped it for a while, trying to think to what purpose I might put the sound…

Now to the meat of the story: taking off the headphones, blinking my eyes, and realizing the sound i just spent 20–30 minutes crafting and zoning on was pretty much the sonic equivalent of the waves being hushed out by Lucian’s sleep-noise-machine. I mean, nearly identical. Must have leaked through and bent the synapses towards the sound. Sort of viral, or invasive. Or maybe my brain is just sort of ‘yield’-y lately.

There you have it, the funny/odd/interesting thing. Two ends of a psychic electrode touch. An aural ouroboros. Sort of.

Except, in the end, i have to say: my sound was better.