Bringing it all together

In my piece I created some rhythms using Impulse, recorded Irene’s and my voice for audio clips, created some sound effects using Simpler and Operator, found some suitable sounds for melodies (mainly using the string machine – see below) and amended the tunes to fit my piece – using the clip view and notes – then I had to thinking about how it would all run together.

 

I have already decided that running all the voice pieces in one ‘verse would be too much for the audience. So I have split them into two verses.

 

So I am going to have an intro section which will basically trigger itself once I launch the first scene. Though I will alter the resonance and frequency on the Operator generated wind sound and use a live mic to speak some lines (I don’t know at this point if that will be running through Ableton - ie on a track with the record button pressed - if so I can then add an effect or processor to alter my voice and that may need a live controller on the keyboard) - I will have a master volume control on my keyboard so I can turn down the music to make my voice clearly heard.

 

I had to overcome the problem that all my scenes did not have all the same elements in - ie there may be drum fills come in later on which would mean a new track triggering - but with no clips playing above them there was nothing to trigger these fills etc - in midi tracks you can just ‘click’ in an empty slot and it will create an empty clip which has all the launch capacity of a normal clip. In audio tracks you have to duplicate one of your audio clips and then turn the volume off using an envelope (and to make it easier to use I tidied it up when I’d finished and made all the empty clips - the ones with no name on - a dark grey so they weren’t so confusing).

 

 

I will then launch in the first verse - which will play beats and sung/spoken lines randomly - I will trigger melody clips with keyboard keys and turn on and off the tracks to allow both mine and Irene’s calls and responses to be heard - I will know when it is appropriate to open the tracks as at the bottom of the track there is an oblong box which fills with the colour of the clip being played as it is playing - so I don’t turn on a track when a clip is halfway through - I will also be able to see which track is due to play next as the clip about to be triggered’s play symbol flashes before it starts.

 

There will be an instrumental chorus over which I will again speak in the live mic (this will be triggered with the first sequence and play automatically - the first scene will stop any remaining audio from the verse. Again I will use the master volume to make myself heard). I will have to tweak Operator’s controls to effect the wind sound.

 

Then I will trigger the second verse - same style as the first.

 

Then I will trigger the first part of the finale, again effecting the wind sound and speaking live lines over the end of the first part (this I have turned down in volume using envelopes). Then finally trigger the second part of the finale, ending with more wind (Operator’s controls effected using knobs on the keyboard).

 

Anyroad for a more interesting look at how it all works see ‘key to the whole performance’ - shows how to use keyboard to play it all live.

 

Instrumentally speaking

 

When you use a midi way of recording (an Ableton instrument for example) you can play in your tune or beats with a midi keyboard, or the computer keyboard (middle row of letters – z and x move the octave up and down).

 

Set up your instruments, and select or create a sound. Then click record at the bottom of the midi track (button below track number/on/off button). You will then be able to hear the sounds played. When you are ready, click the record button on the clip slot and play away –then press stop at the bottom of the track when you are finished.

 

You can edit this in the clip view where you will see the notes running along from a keyboard layout showing which notes they are (or in case of drums they will be opposite a list of the relevant drums). Once you have your recording (especially beats) you may want to ‘quantise’ them (Ctrl+U) which puts the notes/beats to the nearest beat in the bar. This works well but you have to check – sometimes it does get it wrong.

 

You can also click in more notes, stretch out the notes that are there and move them (singly or as a group if you drag a box over them). You can apply envelopes etc using all the clip controls as normal.

 

I’ve already described how I created beats with Impulse, Ableton’s drum machine. Here I’m going to tell you about Operator - a complicated sythesizer in which you can create your own sounds from scratch, and Simpler - a ’simpler’ sampler where you can change sounds you already have.

 

I used these to make my Wind, and Weird Bells (these are supposed to sound like eerie wedding bells - though I’m told that it also sounds like an eerie fairground organ - either would give the effect I wanted ie something that’s supposed to evoke happy thoughts with an eerie overtone suggesting all is not as it seems ooohhhahhahaha - just a little manic laughter to add to the ambience there - that’s the sort of feeling I was looking for anyway). I’m going to attempt to add in some before and after audio clips below to demonstrate so you can judge for yourself - I’ll take a straw poll - wedding bells, fairground organ, something entirely different!

 

(Oh and if you’ve read the earlier blogs you might notice a change of plan here - in the end I swapped over and used Operator to make my wind and Simpler to do the bells)

 

In our tutorials, I was given Operator to look at and present to the class with fellow student Alan Gaunt (check out his blog on here too - I believe it’s alangaunt.wordpress.com - try a range of capital intial letters etc if you can’t find him).

 

Here’s the summary we came up with:

 

OPERATOR

This is an advanced and flexible synthesizer. It combines frequency modulation (FM) with classic subtractive synthesis. There are four multi-waveform oscillators – these can modulate each other’s frequencies or be used individually. There is a filter section, an LFO and global controls as well as individual envelopes for the oscillators, filter, LFO and pitch. (The full version does not come with Ableton but you can buy this separately).

EASIEST WAY TO GET STARTED

Load up the presets and then alter them to suit your needs. You do this by clicking on a preset selection and dragging it to the title bar of the midi track that your Operator is running on (otherwise you are starting with a blank canvas and you begin by putting levels up on the oscillators playing the sounds in from the keyboard – something to look at when you’ve got the hang of it!).

KNOBS, SWITCHES AND PARTS

The display is surrounded by the shell. The shell is divided into eight sections. On the left are four oscillator sections. On the right from top to bottom are the LFO, filter section, pitch control and global parameters. The display in the centre will show the changes you make to these. The oscillators can ouput their own signal directly or be used to modulate the others.

There are 11 preset formats for the way in which they affect each other (click on the structure icons in the global display – these appear in the bottom left of the global section of the shell and once selected a variety of layouts will appear in the display screen. The best to start with is the line of blocks laid out horizontally – when laid out like this they all operate individually/in parallel and don’t affect the sound the others make). You could try the one with all the blocks vertically – in this case that means you start with a sound in A and then B C and D all affect it – but you can turn their levels down or up as desired (take a look at the other layouts to find something that suits your needs).

THE MAIN CONTROLS

To the left of the display you will see A B C D – these are the separate oscillators. Next to each of those are coarse, fine and level dials – thesecan be adjusted to affect the sound and then with the levelyou adjust how load or how much the oscillator will affectthe others. These affect the individual oscillators. You can also go directly into the display to affect the sound of each oscillator. Click and drag the squares along the sound wave:– at the beginning to affect how the sound comes in/attack– the second square to affect attack and peak– the third to affect the decay and sustain– and the final square for release.(or affect the individual settings on the display under the headings attack, decay, release – also the wave form etc)

Here in the display you can also decide how many voices/notes will play at once (for example if you wanted to play chords). To get to this control click on the icon showing the layout of the oscillators (as before) and once the variations are on the display screen you will see the voices option in the bottom left. Too many voices will give your computer a lot of work to do and slow it down.

This is where you will select what sort of curve and original sound the oscillator will work on or make eg Sine or if you want Noise, Square etc. If you check the fixed box on one or more of the oscillators that fixes the pitch of the sound and so it will only play that sound (ie it will not be possible to play it up and down the keyboard – this would be good for drum sounds). To the right of the display you can add LFO or filter – and adjust the rate and modulation (for LFO), frequency and resolution (for filter) with the dials there. You can also affect the sounds with the ‘global’ tools – that’s the set of dials to the bottom right of the display. When you alter these they affect all four (or however many you are using) of the oscillators.

OPERATOR IN MY PROJECT:

- For my Operator sound I picked a preset sea sound and ammended it to sound more like wind particularly altering the resonance and frequency (but also the coarse/fine controls to make it sound more hissy than grainy to make it sound more like wind) - I also plan to assign the frequency and resonance controls to knobs on the midi keyboard for my final performance in order to be able to make the wind hiss, howl and swirl as I present my set.

Once I’d got the right sound I played it in on the computer keyboard and messed with the notes in the clip view to give this nice continuous sound which could be altered well with the resonance and frequency controls.

 

Listen to the wind here:http://sharebee.com/ff823567

GETTING SIMPLER:

Then I moved on to Simpler (and I have to confess stumbled on a sound rather by accident … and seized the opportunity!) We were working on a test piece in our tutorial and when I heard the sound coming out of this instrument I knew I could tweak it into what I wanted - my Weird Bells!

In Simpler you load in a clip and put a start and end around the piece you want and ammend it from there using a wide range of controls. There’s options to alter the frequency and resonance, the attack, sustain, decay, releaase - on volume, filter and pitch. You can also use LFO to bring in a random ‘moving’ element to your sound - you can see below I had mine panning a little. You can change the way the sounds move from one to another, the wave type used, transposition and voices etc.

You can make a nice cross fading loop (see the black sloping lines in the highlighted yellow section that I’m using) so that the sound runs on and on rather that sounding like it starts and ends (though you don’t have to).

Anyway using a clip we were given to work on in class I started to hear something I thought I could turn into the bells. Once I’d got it right I played the sound in on the key board (here’s the clipview of the clip I used):

 

 

So it went from this:

http://sharebee.com/f5e0be7d

 

To this:
http://sharebee.com/dd157bbc

(follow these links to hear the audio - unfortunately audio clips cannot be put straight on to this site)

SPECIAL EFFECTS

At the end of the project I decided that I needed a sound effect to give a bit of oomph to the start of the last part of the finale … and since we’re talking about weird sounds I’ll give you a listen here. I took a straight whip crack that I found in Ableton and then looped it … but then I wanted it to come in at a certain point - so I unlinked the clip (unlink button) and turned down the volume with an envelope until the last beat and a sixteenth so that the whip just cracked three times at the end of the bar. This was used in the intro of the finale end piece, and again a few bars on - but there I kept it to launching at the beginning of the bar.

This is the normal looped whip sound:

This is the unlinked section to make it play at the right point in the bar:

I had the first in a follow action so it naturally stopped and the second (original whip sound) I stopped using the launch settings too.

Have a listen here to both whip sounds in place: http://sharebee.com/334a1102

With bells on …

Next job - sound effects - I’m going to use Operator (another of Ableton’s instruments, like Impulse, the drum machine. This is a complicated beast of a synthesizer). I’m going make some bell sounds I’ve found, sound like Weird Wedding Bells-ish … that’s the theory. Then I want some wind sounds and I think I’m going to use Simpler, probably  (one of the other two instruments - and as its name suggest a simpler sampler) to shape what I need.