Thinking out loud...

[komanderkin]

related to the first part of the thread (regarding cassette tapes and how they affect the sound) - have any of you guys tried making impulse responses of your gear? the IRs won't capture any changes to the dynamics, but will (if done right) capture the frequency response, and thats exactly what i love about my cassette tape recorder. that, and a bit of noise.

anyway, i've tried capturing impulses from three different bits of gear i have (two old cassette decks and a tape delay) so that i can use some of that lofi feel without reconnecting the cables everytime i want to record something. the resulting impulses turned out pretty good, but they're still not 100% the same as what i get when actually recording to and then capturing from tape. i've experimented with using 1 sample long pops to trigger the tape, as well as short white noise bursts, but i got much better results with just short pops.

if anyone's interested i can post the impulses here and if someone has any tips about capturing IRs, please share!

retry.

[nowaysj]

This thread is actually so fruitful it is like manure. So, in the mix some things can get lost. Yes, post them up. I have no experience with IR's. I've tried a few IR reverbs but think I prefer algorithmic, and as far as impulses of other stuff, honestly over my head. Would be interested though.

[alphacat]

I've always had issues with convolution 'verbs and such eating the hell out of my CPU...

[wub]

Had a read up on impulse response reverbs last night, ended up being quite a fruitful evening all things considered. I am fully in the same boat as nowaysj, it's a bit over my head to begin with but honestly I'm in a swamp of learning right now and geeky sound shit is my Atreyu. [Bonus points if you get that reference]

Anyhows, following the initial Google sprawl that follows the initial investigation of a new phrase, I got the following;

Convolution Processing with Impulse Responses - http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr05/a ... mpulse.htm
Making Impulse Responses with Logic's IR Utility - http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb08/a ... h_0208.htm

Both SoS articles, so the quality is as high as the technical jargon used, but it's all good. Bit that got me from the Logic themed one was this;

The theory behind convolution goes something like this: if I take a single sample of audio (in effect, a very short click or impulse), then play it into a room via a very accurate speaker system, I can record the resulting reverberant sound (impulse response) at some other point in the room and capture all I need to know about the way that room behaves in terms of reverberation. To recreate the result using a dry audio file elsewhere, all I need to do is multiply every single sample in my own recording by the impulse response recorded in the room, and the exact sound of that room will be added to my own audio. This actually works, but have you spotted the potential problem? A click the length of a single audio sample is so short that the amount of sound produced would be tiny. Furthermore, no speaker system I know of can reproduce a pulse of that short a duration without adding its own coloration.

Which for obvious reasons went a long way to helping me get my head round it. I did some further investgation on FL, using the stock reverb plugins (imaginatively titled Reverb and Reverb2, good ol' IL), but as with most things FL you can't get under the hood as much as you'd like and barring real time variations with the two plugins I couldn't really tie it together with the whole Impulse Response thing much.

I did some more digging, and found a neat looking tutorial on impulse respond creation, which whilst verging on the side of geeky again made me want to get out there and field record. Also, I was particularly a fan of this short video from an MSTU lecturer (I think, his channel is a little sketchy);



The pre-ample aside, the sound he finally gets from those two bits of wood made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Just so rich and characterful. Mhmmm. Basically made me want to go back and watch the video on Inception Sound Design again.

[nowaysj]

Fruity has an included ir reverb. It allows you to capture as well as use just about any ir response. They produced a video of capturing an ir in their bathroom.

[wub]

Fruity has an included ir reverb. It allows you to capture as well as use just about any ir response. They produced a video of capturing an ir in their bathroom.

Would that be Convolver;



Hmmm, that's not with FL8, must be a later release add-on.

[wub]

(((Speaking of which I found these earlier;



From the accompanying blurb;

Product Information

Philips CC-1 professionaly made endless loop continuos cassette. 1 minute duration, continuos repeat.

Sorry what? A looped cassette? Well how about that! See, this is the sort of shit I'd like to play with. Get it set to record, and then just have it with some instruments/the Chimera etc etc and see how long the tape will record for before it starts to heavily degrade from having layer after layer of sound recorded onto it. Then obviously bounce it all back in and see what background artifacts the whole thing has picked up.)))

This interests the fuck outta me, esp. modding it into some kind of smaller, portable Frippertronics rig...

Found them on Tapeline's homepage, they also do 30s, 3min and 6min that I could see.

The variable length opportunities are massive...even my old school Sony twin tape deck mini hi-fi thing I could use as a sort of dubbing rig. Hell, there was even a flaky sounding high speed dubbing option on there, so in theory a 30s loop of drone sound (for example) set to high speed dub onto a 3min endless loop tape could realistically be left for days at a time (as the tape would never 'run out').

Given that I was this time last week emptying sand out of my shoes, I'm even considering dropping some intentional dirt into the heads to get some proper grit onto the recordings...or at least having at the tape itself with a paperclip for some sound colouring. Fripp was using primarily twin reel-to-reel tapes of varying lengths, so this is a much scaled day version of how they'd do it but the principle is the same. See, now I've just had an interesting idea...

• Get a twin tape deck (hi-fi seperate) with high speed dubbing function
• Run the output into the reccord and run it via an effects unit (my first choice here would be the RedSound Federation Pro)
• Set to record let it play, whatever you've got on the audio cassette that is being dubbed will run through the effects unit, which can be manipulated in real time.
• The tape would endlessly record the sound onto itself over and over with the effects in place. Again, not sure how long it would take artifacts to build up via this method
• Could take it a step further and have real time recording outputted from the effects unit (assuming dual output is possible) and record in addition to one long piece of signal as well as the continuously looping sounds on the tape

Woah. If anyone can understand that as well as I've got it in my head, then fair play to you. As an aside to anyone whose not got a scooby about this, I recommend the following;

Frippertronics - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frippertronics
Soundscapes by Robert Fripp - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundscape ... bert_Fripp

[JTMMusicuk]

wub im going to steal all your ideas...

..that tape idea would be great for making dub influenced tracks with realime delay manipulation, i think it would be quite easy to get carried away with it all though haha

[wub]

wub im going to steal all your ideas...

..that tape idea would be great for making dub influenced tracks with realime delay manipulation, i think it would be quite easy to get carried away with it all though haha

Feel free man, this is all about thinking out loud and the free exchange of experimental ideas when it comes to music and production. TBH, it's pissed me off a lot recently that if I ever google EXPERIMENTAL DUBSTEP (for example), the stuff that comes up isn't experimental at all, it's just the same kind of thing maybe with a different patch.

Truly ground breaking stuff doesn't seem to exist as much as I'd like within the amateur ranks of production, big league names like Shackleton et al aside with their interpretation. It's almost a curiosity, because as per the links throughout this thread there are plenty of examples of lo-fi hiphop, techno, house etc etc...but not all that much lo-fi dubstep.

The majority of research and investigation into that lo-fi sound within the D-word genre often doesn't appear to extend further than what bitcrusher/distortion VST folk should use. Not for once second advocating that analogue grit is vastly superior to it's digital emulating counterparts, but the fact of the matter is that there doesn't seem to be evidence of it as prominently as within other genres.

This evening I'm going to get myself a blank cassette tape, fire up the Darkstar and just jam whilst recording. Not even sure if it'd be called jamming now I think about it, more just twisting the controls and seeing what comes out. FL8 isn't as verstatile a live program as many out there, but I've developed templates with presets etc that allow (albeit limited) live performance capabilities with my Oxygen controller doing a lot of the business. It's still stopping short of the z-plane filter emulation I'd like...

z-plane filters

Z-plane filtering, in a nutshell, is a way of getting a more organic feel to your filters. Imagine a filter effecting the sound on 2 axis', X & Y. Now add a third, Z. Ok, that make bollock all sense now I read it back. Imagine you've got 2 complex filter types setup, and you're using a single parameter to sweep between them.

You can recreate this in FL (of sorts) by running your synth pattern out into a mixer channel, and on that mixer channel having 2 seperate filter plugins. Again, am using filters as an example, but it works well with other effects once you've got the gist and want to start fucking around.

- Link the dry/wet volume effect dial on the right hand side next to both filters to a single MIDI controller parameter; jog wheel or rotary is a good one.
- Now, make sure the REMOVE CONFLICTS box at the top of the LINK TO CONTROLLER dialogue box is left unchecked.
- Set one of the dry/wet volumes as normal, and the other as inverted, so INPUT and 1-INPUT respectively.
- Linked to the jog wheel/rotary, that should mean that as you twist the knob one should go up and the other should go down. Leaving it in the middle will have 50% wet of both.

Fiddle with the parameters on each filter until you've got a pleasing sound, then try automating the input of the master controlling rotary/wheel so that you can sweep between the two filter states as you go. Usual guidelines apply with anything I put on here i.e. don't take it as gospel, experiment, do things different ways etc etc, bounce always bounce your output to see what works and build up your sound library etc etc.

Note that this is not z-plane filtering in the truest sense of the world. Z-plane filters are found within the EMU samplers and tbh try as I might I've not found an accurate representation of them within FL, so have gone about bodging my own together as per the above.

For more info on z-plane filters;

SOS: Synth School, Part 8: Wave Sequencing To Z-Plane Synthesis - http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun98/a ... chool.html
DOA: wtf are z-plane filters? - http://www.dogsonacid.com/showthread.ph ... adid=21985
DNBF: Z-Plane Filters? - http://dnbforum.com/showthread.php?1005 ... ne-Filters
KVR: Z-Plane Filter - http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1705168

...but tbh I'm happy with where it stands. My glitch VST effects are allowed ample enough control on their parameters, and I can still cut between channels/patterns relatively swiftly, then capture everything in Edison and see what happens. I did a random track of sorts a while back for one of the sample pack competitions that followed this protocol...end result was weak as hell in places (samples didn't help tbh) but it had that raw feel I was after.

Also thinking I might mess around with Tal Dub or NastyDLA this evening, insert into the input chain after the Darkstar and see how that works. New delays are something I can generally always find time for, that Tyres track last night was drenched in reverb & delay in one way or another.


Assuming you don't already have a cheap twin cassette seperate to do this with, get yourself down a car boot on a Sunday morning...reckon you can pick one up for a tenner at most.

[JTMMusicuk]

Correct me if im wrong but can you not emulate the z-plane effect in massive by setting the two filters up so theyre working parallel to each other, have each osc assinged to go into both filters then either assign the 'mix' slider to a midi controller or use an env/LFO to morph between them?

[wub]

Correct me if im wrong but can you not emulate the z-plane effect in massive by setting the two filters up so theyre working parallel to each other, have each osc assinged to go into both filters then either assign the 'mix' slider to a midi controller or use an env/LFO to morph between them?

That's not true z-planing I don't think, that's just cross fading (in essence) between the two filters.

[JTMMusicuk]

so with z-planing you have the origional sound feeding through into the mix aswel?

[wub]

so with z-planing you have the origional sound feeding through into the mix aswel?

More like this;

the couple of filter stages:


and the '3d' control


So generally its just a morphable eq-curve, but you can exchange the morph targets on the fly, so you go from shape A to B, but then you change A to C and morph back to it.

[nowaysj]

Wub wub wub:

Lofi Dubstep:


Have you ever tried this:

Really shitty video, but have gotten priiiity far out with this thing, back in the day.

I think I made this with it:
Soundcloud
But don't hold me to...

Performance functions of Fruity:

Honestly man, I know you're a Luddite, but they have implemented a lot of subtle and major improvements since 8. Just the ability to cut audio and have the slice be a new audio file (rather than a slice of the original sample) saves me like 2 hours a day.

[wub]

I will get round to upgrading one day, but tbh it's hassle. The studio machine isn't connected to the Internet, and hasn't been for a while. Plus I still don't feel like I know all of the synths that came with 8 (Morpheus/PoiZone/Toxic) well enough yet...and I'm loathed to upgrade and dump a load more extra bits on top of the learning tower until I know at least one of those three inside out.

That tape delay thing looks ridiculous...have just snaffled a copy to play with this evening, biggups man


EDIT - That tape delay thing IS ridiculous! Seriously, so much fun throwing sounds into it and automating the parameters. Had a random live jam last night which was bounced and chopped into smaller sections to give an example of the sort of thing it was doing;

Soundcloud
Basic chord sequence, low level pad pattern with some weird degrading plugin I found on it. Vocal sample is from some old sci-fi movie I sampled.

Soundcloud
Really basic drum loop with some added crunch onto it, synth pattern I had left over from another project.

Soundcloud
Aborted bass patch, old trumpet/jazz loop I had laying round, then some rhodes (I think?) chords sequences and some more jazz feeling samples. Was going for an Avalanches feel on this, fell a bit short of the mark, but the style is there if not the vibe.

Still needs a bit of twiddling, this was just a very basic patch, nothing too fancy. Had to remember to put a limiter on the master so as not to blow my speakers, other than that only thing we've got there is the delay itself and maybe a light dusting of some rearrangement onto the beats to give some movement.

[nowaysj]

cracks cracks cracks!

Don't learn any more synths, but learn the new bits of the daw. Major workflow improvements (plus that live mode shit which is priitty seriously in a new direction).

[Sharmaji]

i love IR verbs. someone posted IR's of their bricasti m7 and someone else posted IR's of their EMT plates... both of which i use in every mix. that's like $20k worth of super reverb...

i'm also using the verb from my boss re20 pedal a bunch, as well as my space echo-- though the space echo really needs some repairs done

thinking of buying an electro-harmonix holy grail pedal as well-- cheap, and nothing else sounds like the "flerb"

all of these things being discussed-- tape, IR verbs, space echos, etc-- all essentially bandpass sounds and add sustain. that's where the vibe is mang!

not making any dubstep either, which is.... fucking fantastic. like the shackles have been lifted.

[nowaysj]

And when the hell did you get this wub?

[wub]

And when the hell did you get this wub?

I've got it's big brother, the DarkStar;




Reckon my evening will be this, that delay you recommended, and a tape recorder

[wub]

Sound is waaaaaaaaaaay off (fixed this now with the Vimeo cut) but this documentary is "This documentary film by the dublab.com creative collective is an experiment in sound recycling. Secondhand Sureshots features four amazing, LA-based beat makers: Daedelus, J-Rocc, Nobody and Ras G in a secret mission to create new musical magic from the dusty remains of thrift store vinyl."





And here's some more of Ras & dibia$e as they're both fire;



And an except from a Dutch documentary on hip-hop profiling Stones Throw;



And a 30min documentary on Dilla;