One Sample Dare #42

[Codehead]

Thanks to everyone that voted!

This was recorded at the entrance to a bike trail at a national park.

I apologize for both the length and sound quality of this field recording. There is a deep rumbling noise throughout :frown: .

That being said, It has A woman laughing, a toddler yelling, a truck passing, bicycles, a door closing and an airplane overhead. A lot went on in those approximately 3 minutes.

I hereby challenge you (yes, you) to do something special with this sample:

https://soundcloud.com/ao_onesampled...42-sample-file

If you decide to accept this challenge, you must follow the rules below:

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The idea of the contest is to create ambient track using only one sample.

Rules are:

1. Additional samples, soundfonts, synths, samplers are NOT permitted (except instruments which will use only given contest sample loaded). Any other processing of contest sample is permitted.

2. You can use as many copies of original sample as you want, each processed with respect to Rule 1.

3. Time for submissions is 16 days, counted to midnight, UTC, of 16th day.

4. Submissions should be uploaded to place available for all AO members. Links should be posted in thread dedicated to given round. Please, do not use hosting with countdown, CAPTCHA and other obstacles.

5. Sample is provided under CC0 (public domain) license.

6. Winner of contest is chosen by votes of AO members.

7. Winner of contest chooses sample for next contest.

8. Participants SHOULD disclose the formula for winning track for the benefit of community.

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Good luck!

[MetaDronos]

Amitrinuagnama

Synths: Granite, Windchimes, WOK Stretcha.
Effects: graidelVerb v3, GrainGeheurer, ProbaGate, Skidder, TymeSepha, ValhallaRoom, Voxengo Pristine Space.
Tools: Audiobulb Ambient, FScape.

Layer 1: Denoised and desilenced sample played by WOK Stretcha. ValhallaRoom follows.
Layer 2: Windchimes generating random notes for Granite playing denoised and desilenced sample.
Layer 3: Cut-ups from denoised and desilenced sample prepared in FScape played through FX chain of GrainGeheurer, TymeSepha, graidelVerb and ValhallaRoom.
Layer 4: Repeated denoised and desilenced sample played through Skidder, ProbaGate and Pristine Space with cut-up sample used as impulse response, with ValhallaRoom closing the chain.
Layer 5: Denoised and desilenced sample transformed in Audiobulb Ambient.

[synkrotron]

I wanted to try something completely different this time.

I did no mangling of the supplied sample at all. Bu that, I mean I didn't do any chopping up, reversing or stretching of the sample.

I only opened the sample in Soundforge in order to resample at 41.1, which is my normal setting when working with Sonar.

I brought sample into Sonar and, because I wanted my finished piece to be a bit longer than the supplied sample I copied it onto the same track in Sonar and arranged it to give me around five minutes of audio, with a cross fade in the middle.

So, that's it, no other tracks where created.

I wanted to experiment with effects only. I had in mind R-Mix, which is something that I have never used since it was bundled with Sonar a few years ago.

Altogether I have nine busses and I placed all of the effects, Breverb, Timeless 2, R-Mix (four off), Guitar Rig (two off) and Tantra.

The then created a send to each of the various busses, except for the reverb and delay bus, because I did not want any part of the original sample to get through to the master bus without going through R-Mix first. All of the sends were pre-fader so that I could wind the track fader down to infinity.

I used R-Mix to filter out certain parts of the frequencies. Some automation was used to vary the frequencies filtered.

One instance of Guitar Rig utilised a grain delay component and the other instance the psychedelic delay component. I automated some of the grain delay settings.

Tantra is a very subtle effect on this piece and you can hardly tell it is there.

I also added quite a bit of automation to the faders in order to thin out the noise a little.


This is the result:-



cheers

andy

[synkrotron]

Nice work yet again MetaDronos. I've listened to your piece quite a few times now and I think it's amazing what you create with those tools of yours.

[MetaDronos]

Nice work yet again MetaDronos. I've listened to your piece quite a few times now and I think it's amazing what you create with those tools of yours.

Thank you!

It is interesting to read description of your track with method "single instance of sample, multiple parallel busses with FX".
This is the method I experimented with, while constructing one of my "microphone-driven drone generators". My construction was
less complex than yours, yet the idea itself seems to be very fruitful.

[ablaut]

Interesting technique, synkroton! I had a somewhat similar idea, using the sample basically as-is, and routing it through different FX chains. Tho I do want to use some cut-out fragments as well. Let's see what I can brew up this weekend.

[synkrotron]

yet the idea itself seems to be very fruitful.

Thanks, yeah... I do this sort of thing with my "normal" pieces more and more. I'm not sure why, but I seem to like the concept of parallel processing rather than placing all of the effects in the track FX bin, and then messing with the effect from its bus, and even routing busses to other busses. The original idea came from learning how to use parallel compression on a drum bus. I thought, "I wonder if I could use this method with other types of effect."

I'll admit that it's a bit hit and miss at times... A bit like throwing many tins of different coloured paints on the floor and seeing what comes out, but I am enjoying this rather experimental method of construction at the moment. So much different from what I have done over the years whereby I had to think of a more formal song construction with parts, harmonies and melodies.

cheers

andy

[synkrotron]

Interesting technique, synkroton! I had a somewhat similar idea, using the sample basically as-is, and routing it through different FX chains. Tho I do want to use some cut-out fragments as well. Let's see what I can brew up this weekend.

Thanks ablaut

I certainly look forward to your piece. I call in hear a couple of times a day once the challenge kicks off and I'll add it to my playlist as soon as it arrives.


I may do a second entry because, like you, I fancy using some chopped up sections of the sample too...

cheers

andy

[Ahornberg]

Reaching The Orbit

Inspired by the spacecraft Juno ...

I don't know how the magnetic field of Jupiter sounds like, so I imagined this:



I used Iris 2 to isolate some sound source for Paulstretch.
Then I ran the whole sample through Kaleidoscope several times and mixed everything together.

So enjoy the journey!

[synkrotron]

Listening now Birgit. I like the slow evolving textures you have achieved. Nice work


I'm still sitting on the fence regarding Iris 2. I installed it and tried it out for a bit but I didn't really bother getting to grips with it. Now that it's currently reduced I am kind of tempted but it is still a lot to pay for something I may not use that often...

[Ahornberg]

Listening now Birgit. I like the slow evolving textures you have achieved. Nice work


I'm still sitting on the fence regarding Iris 2. I installed it and tried it out for a bit but I didn't really bother getting to grips with it. Now that it's currently reduced I am kind of tempted but it is still a lot to pay for something I may not use that often...

Thanks!

I'm not sure if I go for Iris 2. It's not that easy to use.

[ablaut]

Here is my submission:


I imported the sample as-is into Reaper, repeated and cross-faded it on the first track. The original sample can't be heard but sends pre-fader audio to seven other tracks: 3 times krush, 3 times moodal, 1 permut8, each with a narrow bandpass EQ. The lowest EQ'd krush then sends its audio pre-fader to another instance of moodal. It is moodal that gives those bell-like resonant sounds. I added Reaper's JS Stereo Width to several tracks, and some volume automation.

I finally added one track with a short outtake from the original sample, of the rattle of a passing bike, which is then mangled thru sanford delay, sanford reverb, tweakbench grumblebum with its randomizer, and JS Stereo Width.

I thought for a long time about a title, but eventually came across Mondriaan's painting of a mangled tree, which seemed apt, and led to the Spanish form árbol.

[davedorgan]

Field Trip



- Nine Tracks/clips all together. I chopped up the sample with Audacity. Audacity Noise Reduction was used to get the alien voice sounds. One clip was run through Ambient_v0.3.
- I started in Logic Pro, but wasn't coming up with anything I liked, so I decided to use Ableton Live. My first time with an OSD piece.
- The 9 samples were put into Ableton with various fx applied (all stock I believe).
- I used an AKAI MPKmini to map the controls to manipulate various clips and fx during recording, so this was essentially a live piece.
- The only post-recording manipulation was some minor level changes on two tracks.

[synkrotron]

Interesting stuff from ablaut and Dave

I noticed that Krush is free, so I thought I'd install it and try it out. Not sure about it yet. I've used it in my second submission but I wasn't that pleased with the results so I've turned it down quite a bit. It's still there but very subtle.

I also decided to spend a tenner on Ambient too.

And, on top of all that I took the plunge into the world of Iris 2. I'm only just scratching the surface of that thing and not even started to experiment with the modulation possibilities.

So, this next track of mine features three instances of Absynth 5 and five instances of Iris 2. The only external sample mangling I did was cropping the original sample into four pieces and running each one through Ambient. I then placed those four resulting wave files into one of the Iris 2 instances to create one of the patches.

All the other synth instances use various cropped sections of the original sample.

In my busses I had my usual Breverb 2 and Timeless 2 along with an R-Mix (again) and Guitar Rig. Oh, and a Krush instance too.

Not as much automation on this piece this time, just a bit of fading in and out on just a couple of tracks.

If I was asked if I was happy with the results my answer would be, "not entirely," but I think that's a good thing. It means I've still got plenty to learn and, in the long run, all this OSD stuff is coming in handy for my "other stuff."

[Tuonela]

The ‘organ’ layers were obtained by stretching the sample (Paulstretch) using tonal settings, harmonics and pitch shifting. These were then “folded” over on themselves to halve the length and obtain more complex harmonics.

The sample was processed ‘live’ using a demo copy of The Mangle. This provides every other sound. Some were selected and looped into rhythmic tracks, or pitch/tempo shifted to accentuate the weird vocal effects. A lot of multi-tracking was used, with each layer being treated differently with delay, pitch shift and equalisation to bring out different tonal qualities.