CITY OF GLASS

It's been sometime...
[Please listen with headphones for a better sonic ride :) Thanks!]

An ambient sound art piece made up by sampling kitchen wares, faulty cables,
synths, guitar drones and piano.



CITY OF GLASS

I closed my eyes
And got carried away by darkness
When I opened them again
I was standing in a city made of glass
The only people I saw
Were my own distorted reflections...

Some Updates: s o n i c b r a t

Phase II had ended. So while we try to find a new direction for Phase III, we are on a hiatus. Taking a break from it for awhile. As you can see we will be updating on our own little ventures in synths, gears, softwares... music and sounds. So while being away, we will continue to load snippets of stuffs here.

I have been meddling a bit with my Doepfer A100 Modular system. Hooking up my "modularly modded" Roland SH101 to it. I am still quite new to this but I am definitely having fun, the old way :). I have yet to record stuffs down due to work commitments. But here's some pictures for tease. Will upload a demo track once I've done so.

WEEK 4: LDT [Adding Things]

This final track has proven to be a real challenge to complete. On Thursday evening I added some additional elements using my new Line 6 Otto Filter in conjunction with the Boss WP-20G and Cloud 9 Distortion. For echo I used the Digitech Digideay. I drove the WP-20G with my GK2 fitted Traveler Guitar and used both a flat pick and Ebo on the tracks I recorded.

This weekend was the beginning of Buddhist Lent so I traveled to the area around Korat to stay with my Girlfriend Sandy's family. Her parents home is a traditional old style Thai wooden house on stilts and the area around is rural. There is not much in the way of a cellular signal and no internet at all. I brought my Zoom MRS8 and Novation XioSynth along with me as I had hoped that I would find some time to finish off the recording.

After being there for a day what I had recorded previously sounded completely different to me. I was suddenly inspired to record additional tracks with the XioSynth and at around midnight on Sunday night I snuck outside and recorded ten minutes of the strange night noised made by the bugs and other creatures. I took these sounds and made several loops from them at various speeds including the orignal. The slowed loops sound truly spooky.

As for Eric and Darren's samples I believe the only one that will be truly recognizable will be Darren's drum loop. The other samples which I used, including one of Eric's guitar bits, have been put through sound forge in such a way that they fit in with the dreamy jungle journey.

WEEK 4: LDT [contributor]

Week 4 Contribution



This week I have decided to provide Eric and Darren samples that were created using three of my Korg units. The first four tones I recorded were from my Korg MicroKorg. I spend much of Friday evening tweaking some sounds specifically for this week. These are the sounds I've decided to share. The others may appear in my final contribution along side Darren and Eirc's samples.



The second group of samples are beats created on my Korg ER1. I varied the BPM halving it from the prescribed 120 BPM to 60 BPM to make it a little more interresting. I also recorded two loops with distortions from inboard effects on my Zoom MRS8 recorder. I didn't use the Sherman.



The last group of sounds was created using my old Korg Sigma. I ran it through my Cloud 9 Flanger and Digitech Digiday since it has no inboard effects of its own. The Sigma has great oscillators. The problem I'm having with it now is none of them seem to want to stay in tune for more than three seconds and some of the dials are suffering from their age as well.

Hopefully there are enough things here to be of use.

WEEK 4: s o n i c b r a t [contributor]

Tempo: 120 bpm
Key: E

These are my samples created using only KORG Triton ST88. Everything was played and recorded (sequenced) on the Triton... nothing done outside of it and all sounds were designed on the Triton itself. This project has led me to exploring this workhorse in a way I wouldn't usually (due to the nature of my work). Effects and filters (on board) were employed as a design to play with the sound and timbre. Have fun guys.

WEEK 3: s o n i c b r a t [contributor]

Tempo: 115 Bpm
Key: E

So here's my samples. Created solely using my old trusty KORG TRITON ST88. All parts are played and sequenced, including filtering on the Triton itself. The drum beats were played and recorded, not using arpeggiators. The vocal samples are old recording samples of mine, warped on Max/Msp. All samples are kept dry and uneffected unless filtering intended. Anyway, for the fun of it, I've placed the dry samples all together to hear how it sounds. So here's the mix track of all my samples (minus vocals):

KORGATRONICS

Do listen with a pair of headphones for better listening experience :)

Have fun Eric!

WEEK 3: LDT [contributor]

For this weeks contribution I decided to work with my now rarely used Roland MC-303 Groove Box. This is not the original one I bought back ten years ago. That one is packed safely in a water proof storage container in Oakville. I picked this used one up here a few years ago at Pantip Plaza.

The MC-303 was a little work horse for me back in the day. It provided drums, sequences and backing pads for the band I had with Chris Chiasson (Stick) and Richard Forsley (Guitar). It later provided the same for Snowmelter. By 1999 I was very good at programming it and its only limitation seemed to be the lack of memory available for the user. There was no way to delete the hundreds of stupid preset "grooves" (which how sound hilariously dated) and the user was only allowed a measly 50 slots.

The MC-303 sound engine is basically the Roland Sound Canvas which features PCM sample based wave forms as the tonal building blocks. They can be filtered and messed with extensively and the drum sets contain the TR-808 and TR-909 kits. The other tone sets include lots of synth, piano, bell, and other sounds. There are some rather useless sound effects but if they are pitched down enough they can be used to create some wonderfully strange and spooky sounds.

For today's experiment I worked up several sound sets for Eric. For processing I ran the MC-303 through the Electro Harmonix LPB 2ube tube preamp and into the Zoom MRS8 recorder. The MC-303 was slaved to the Zoom's MIDI clock for tempo. I used the Zoom's internal effects to process the signal further. I recorded a few variations of a string pad to start. Afterwards I recorded several drum loops through some heavy distortion and some odd EQing and compression.

I used my Novation Bass Station for a MIDI control and the remaining bits were recorded with the MC-303's tone back slaved to the Bass Station. Once I'd recorded 12 short tracks I imported the tracks to Lappy and normalized all the tracks in Sound Forge before sending them off.

DAY 26: LDT

"The Divine Island"


Tempo: 70 bpm
Colour: all

LDT: Novation XioSynth, Electro Harmonix LPB 2ube, Zoom MRS8, assembled in Sound Forge and Acid Pro.

Feel free to comment

DAY 13: LDT

"Walking the Valley"

Temop: NA
Color: Dark

LDT: Novation XioSynth, Sherman Filterbank, DOD Dimension 12, Digitech Digi Delay, Zoom MRS8, assemble in Sound Forge and Acid Pro.

Feel free to comment.

DAY 12: LDT

"The Defeat of Apollyon"

Tempo: 70 bpm
Color : none

LDT: Novation XioSynth, Sherman Filterbank, DOD Dimension 12, Digitech Digi Delay, Zoom MRS8, assemble in Sound Forge and Acid Pro.

Feel free to comment.

DAY 7: LDT

"Finding The River"

Tempo: 128 BPM
Colour: Water on Rock

LDT: Novation XioSynth, Electro Harmonix LPB 2ube, Digitech Digi Delay, Zoom MRS8, assembled in Sound Forge and Acid Pro.

Feel free to comment.

DAY 3: s o n i c b r a t

"Tenir des Mains"




























Tempo: 85 bpm
Colour: Blue

An instrumental piece, nothing experimental about it. Just exploiting the Casio SA-5. A bit slightly over ambitious to want to do it in one night. But this one comes from the bottom of my heart.

Casio SA-5 being the main player for most of the sounds you hear in it, sampled through KORG Kaoss Pad III. It's a battery powered toy keyboard so bear with the high level of noise and bad quality... I backed the bass up, also did the high ringing ambient with modulation (somewhere in the middle) and a guitar track with KORG Radias (but minimal)... the rest are all Casio SA-5 and a lot a lot of touching up and plug-ins used.

Picture taken at my favourite tree at TFP Cairn Hill Rise.

DAY 2: s o n i c b r a t

"Journal Intime De Pluie"




























Tempo: 100 bpm
Colour: Green

Continuing my explorations using toy instruments...

Toy piano, contact microphone, Casio SA-5 toy keyboard, sampled through KORG Kaoss Pad III; no other synths used. Percussion done by hitting the lid of the toy piano, the clicky noise from the start is done by tapping the toy piano's lid with the fingernails and grained through KP3. Added a little sound design as well to add on to the mood.

Feel free to comment.

DAY 2: LDT

"The Long Sleep"



















Tempo: TBA
Colour: Sepia

LDT: Novation XioSynth, DOD Dimension 12, Digitech DigiDelay, Zoom MRS8, assembled in Sound Forge and Acid Pro

Feel free to comment.

DAY 1: LDT

"Crossing The Water"

Tempo: TBA
Colour: Sepia

Novation XioSynth, Electro Harmonix LPB2ube, Digitech DigiDelay, Zoom MRS8, assembled with Sound Forge and Acid Pro.