Another session based around practical application of plugins within the octo ring speaker setup, demonstrating how you can create effect through dispersing sound between the speakers frugly, leaving space to fill over time as a means of Diffusion based composition, and exploring how sound can travel between speakers using Ableton surround panning. A lot of this session though was a lot of dead air with files exporting and whatnot, so I started to expand on what I had laid down last week by adding a string part to the loop.
First, I don’t think MIDI synth sounds would suit the kind of piece I want to create as they will either occupt a space thats too grandiose or too corny/thin (I’m sure there might be some plugins somewhere that might do what I am after but right now I am unaware), and I have recently moved a majority of my music gear back to Liverpool (including the guitar and violin that I would usually use for something like this) for a gig so I couldn’t record any material myself. After trying a Serum patch and finding it horribly unsuitable I decided to take a small clip from Henry Flynt’s album Ascent to the Sun, which I had been intending to do for a while because it is all violin, no backing unlike it’s sister album You Are My Everlovin, so it’s great for taking a small snippet of and putting into the built in Fruity Granulizer.
The mood kind of completely changed after this addition, which I think is a positive thing. I’m not so knowledgable about music theory related things but the key that is playing now with the Piano and Violin samples is a very strange, difficult to work with key it seems, but ultimately rewarding because of its melancholic yet pastoral bliss. The Granulizer also spreads the grains throughout the stereo space, so I can maybe isolate this drone to two speakers, maybe the front left and right with the Piano playing from the middle/behind? I started adding to the chord so that there is more a sense of progression to the piece as a frame work, the high notes get added over time, as well as adding a variation to the piano loop later on in the track. I’m thinking about adding a spoken word sample maybe to be isolated to one speaker, at the front maybe, I think that would be an interesting sensation if the Kath Bloom sample is playing from a speaker behind and something spoken is coming from the front, or vice versa, I’m not sure.
Things have been too hectic at the moment to book out the Zoom recorder so do multichannel field recordings, so I’ve decided to just do without entirely and just stick to the Laptop sounds, which I guess is a shame but at the same time art is nothing without compromise I guess.