Impossible Acoustic

I’m very proud to announce the release of my newest sample library “Fractured”.  You can see screenshots and listen to a collection of really wonderful demos from a group of very talented composers on the Big Fish site.  It’s a wonderful sense of satisfaction that I feel when I hear awesome music being made from my library.

There are over 100 instruments in “Fractured” representing a wide variety of sounds.  Some instruments were made from acoustic preparations such as pinching off strings with clothes pins or threading strings with bobby pins, business cards, wire and other items.  Other instruments were made by playing the guitar in non-traditional ways like tapping strings with chopsticks, silverware, plastic forks, snapping strings with rubber bands, rubbing wires across strings, rubber balls pulled across the back, drumming on the guitar with hands, mallets, dish brushes, scissors etc.  Then there were other instruments which I altered digitally sometimes subtly sometimes to extremes.  Then of course there’s all manner of combination of the above three categories of instruments .  One of the cooler features of this library is that every instrument comes with an icon that can be clicked on to see a picture and read a description of how exactly I created each instrument.

I’ll post more on the library soon including a video!

No, this is not a post about the affect of violent imagery on young viewers, this is about some cool projects that have been made using Violence – my sample library for VIR2 and Big Fish Audio. The video above is an add for SIFF- the Seattle International Film Festival. Sound designer and composer John Buroker used some sounds from Violence in creating the soundtrack for this piece. There’s plenty more excellent and innovative sound design to check out on his vimeo page.

I’d also like to share my score for the short film “Guilty Shoes” which recently won the Silver Medal for Excellence in Original Music for a Short Film from the Park City Film Music Festival.  My concept for the score was to blur the line between sound design and music.  Violence fit perfectly into this concept and I used it frequently.  You can watch a clip towards the end of the film here.

And finally, here’s a full song I made using Violence and only Violence.

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If you want to learn more about Violence you can do so here and here.  My exploration into all things reversed will continue shortly.

When I was a kid, and my family bought our first computer, I quickly discovered the microphone and the familiar yet unfamiliar experience of listening to recordings of my own voice.  ”Do I really sound like that?”  Then I discovered an even funner game.  I would record myself  saying my name, then reverse it, memorize the result, record myself speaking backwards and then reverse that.  The result is like listening to the bizzaro version of yourself.  Your shadow-self talking back to you from the other side of the looking glass.  Here is an example of each stage of the process; forward, reversed, performance of reversed version, reverse performance reversed.

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Many years later, I found out this very technique was used for the famous red room scene in the television series Twin Peaks.  Apparently the actors memorized all their lines and actions backwards and the resulting performance was playing in reverse.

This trick was also used by the singer Tara Bush to stunning effect.

Reverse is such a simple effect.  It doesn’t actually change the sound at all but rather changes our perspective on it.  Like a sort of sonic mirror. Definitely worth further investigation….

Composer Ellis Hawes has put together a couple of awesome new tunes using Violence, my violin based sample library.  Along with a lot of other instruments from the library, both these tracks feature an instrument from the library called “Claymation” which Ellis described as being his favorite instrument in the library and it’s one of my favorites as well.  It’s definitely an electronic keyboard sort of sound but with some interesting grit and imperfections which betray it’s acoustic origins.  Actually, it’s just bowed harmonics which have been pitched down and key mapped.  Ellis uses this and the other Violence sounds to great effect.

The first song uses only Violence instruments.

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This song uses all Violence instruments with the exception of the bass.

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Be sure to check out more of Ellis’s music over at his site PicoMusic.net

And if you haven’t already, you can pick up a copy of Violence from Big Fish Audio here.

It’s a tale of seduction and the perils of addiction.   A tragic journey from freedom to imprisonment then ultimately liberation and a new chance at life.  Sometime last year, I found a fly stuck inside an empty beer bottle that I had left on the window sill.  This poor creature would have died had I not courageously opened the window and set it free.  After, of course, I shook it around a bit and got some good recordings.

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Now, a year later, as I remember these dramatic events, I am inspired to compose an ode to this brave little fly.  And what better way to pay homage than to use nothing but the recording made on that fateful day.

On the download page are the 6 Kontact instruments I used to make this song which you can download for free.  My favorite instrument, was made of three simple elements.  For the first element, I EQ’d the above sample slightly to bring out the tone of the bottle, then I loaded it into Kontakt and, using the volume envelope and a compressor, I gave it a very sharp attack and gentle decay.  This is what it sounds like at root pitch then an octave lower and and an octave lower than that.

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For the next step I simply ran this through Kontakt’s convolution reverb with a custom IR of mine called “dark space”.

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Then I added another layer of the same sample this time run through a resonator plugin and EQ’d more aggressively to give it a distinct tone.  The resulting instrument, with all the layers together, has a nice full glassy sound with the added textural grit of the fly’s wings flapping.

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And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for…..”Journey of the Fly”.

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Every year, National Association of Broadcasters hosts the worlds largest trade show for all things electronic media.  This years event takes place April 9th through 14th at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas Nevada.  Readers of Impossible Acoustic can register for free, yes for free, by clicking on this link or by registering here and entering the code SM05.  This will get you free access to the exhibit floor, the Opening Keynote and the State of the Industry Address, Info Sessions, Content Theater, Exhibits and PITS – a $150 value.

Composer/producer Darren Solomon has made this very simple but brilliant little website I just had to share.   All these youtube videos can be played in any order you like and mixed using the Youtube volume controls.  Because everything is in the key of Bb they all go together.  Beyond that, I wonder what kind of instructions each performer was given?  Check it out here.

What’s the aural equivalent of negative space?  Silence is the obvious answer, but what we call silence is more often than not just quiet noise.  Practically speaking, the aural equivalent of negative space would be the buzz of the guitar amp between notes, the cellist fidgeting in her seat during the rests, the wind in the trees outside the window next to the man being interviewed.  Great effort is taken to get rid of these little bits of quiet noise  and the tool we turn to is often noise reduction software.  This software is meant to be thought of as well…noise reduction;  but turn it on it’s head and the same software can become a tool to highlight rather than obscure noise.

One of the more popular pieces of noise reduction software, Izatope RX, has a little checkbox in the upper right hand corner of it’s interface which says “output noise only”.  By checking this and adjusting the controls for tonal reduction separately from broadband reduction, it’s possible to separate just the tonal elements of a sound.  This technique applied to the sound of an idling car engine sounds like this.

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Noise reduction plugins work their magic based on a “noise profile” which is supplied by the user.  Normally, this would mean supplying a small portion of just the offending noise.  A little bit of guitar amp buzz from a small section of the recording for example to reduce the guitar buzz throughout the whole recording .  It’s possible however, to use completely unrelated sounds for the noise profile.  The following example clip contains  a series of sounds followed by the same sounds treated with some creative noise reduction.  The first, is of a motorbike driving away with my voice as the noise profile; then a bowed cymbal with a guitar rift as the noise profile.  This is followed by a drumbeat with the previous bowed cymbal sound as the noise profile and finally the sound is of a car driving past in the snow but, instead of outputting just the noise like I did for the others, I did a more traditional noise reduction but with the reduction settings set to max and the filters meant to prevent digital artifacts turned all the way down.

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On the downloads page I’ve included a few free Kontakt instruments made by using these techniques.  For source material I took a long cardboard tube fitted with a metal cap and drug it across the hardwood floors in my living room.  The un-processed result sound like this.

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Then I did quick drags and slow drags with the tube and then processed the sounds with iZotope RX, using different noise profiles including my  voice.   Here’s a song featuring the resulting instruments along with some piano.

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Also, here’s a great link to the work of composer Richard Eigner who has taken denoising to a whole new level.

Shaun Farley over at Dynamic Interface has been hosting a monthly sound design challenge which I think is completely in alignment with what Impossible Acoustic is all about.  Each month he announces a sound or list of sounds for people to create within the last 10 days of the month.  With each new challenge, comes a set of restrictions one must abide by when making the sounds.  It’s very interesting reading the comments on his site.  Some people really dislike working with restrictions, but if you’ve read many of my posts, you know that I love the creative breakthroughs that come about when forced to work without one’s normal go-to solutions.

This month I’m offering up two brand new instruments as well as a pack of some older instruments to the winner of the sound design challenge.  The main instrument is one I made specifically for this prize.  Imagine having an array of bottles in front of you of all different pitches.  Now you blow across the top of them while making different percussive sounds with your mouth so that you get a melody and a beat at the same time.  It’s a little hard to describe so I’ve made a demo track featuring this instrument and the other instruments in the giveaway pack.  If you would like a copy, you’re going to have to earn it.  It’s not too late to head over to Dynamic Interface and join the competition.

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I’ve written a new blog post for VIR2 and Big Fish Audio.  I talk about some of the thought processes and techniques that went into creating Violence as well as new demos and audio examples.  You can check it out here and here.