Today I flew back from England and happily got to see Jenny and June. It was nice to see the two ladies in my life again. Today’s creative thing is about sample manipulation. This evening I worked on my song for the MCRP. I’ve been involved in something called MCRP (Monome Community Remix Project) for about four or five months now. The idea is everyone who wants to participate adds an audio sample into the pot. Once the deadline passes, everyone who uploaded receives a sample pack containing all of the samples. Then, we all separately attempt to make songs out of the samples provided over a period of three weeks. You can listen to a version of MCRP right here on this site by clicking here.
My idea this time around was to only use one sample to create my song. Click play on the music player at the bottom of this page to here the sample that I chose. It’s the sound of a washing machine and it was uploaded by a talented monome user called visnin. Once the sample is over you will begin to hear the next track, a short track I threw together tonight of some bits I’ve created using visinin’s sample. This is just a simple and quick improvisation of my clips (it is most likely not what my final song will ultimately sound like).
My process so far was, first, I started by finding just some loop-able sections of the sample and figured out the best tempo for those loops. Then I took a couple of short chunks of the sample and created multiple drum sounds out of it. Finally, I took a tiny chunk of the sample and looped it quickly that I was able to create what sounded like a synth saw wave and sent it through a multi-pass filter. To create the rhythms you hear I used monome apps polygome for the drums and press cafe for the melody/bass line.
On a side note just for you sample heads out there. While I was in London I visited a pretty cool exhibit at the barbican that one of the monome users, dovemouse recommended to me. Unfortunately they had a sign that said no photography which was a bummer. What they forgot to post was no audio recording so if you’re interested feel free to download my field recording of this exhibit. It’s definitely worth it.
[xspf]_start(‘day20’)[/xspf]
Your sample was great. Amazing what you can pick out from the sounds of a washing machine.
Cool. messin’ around.
Thanks guys!
the original sample was extremely promising but I’m blown away by your mess-around with it…
That second track was incredible. Is there anywhere I can buy/download it?
You got it! Here’s a link: http://www.box.net/shared/jz9fbr939r