Ambient/soundscapey/sonic art sounds

[simonlb]

Hey,

At risk of being one of these "how do I sound like xx??" n00bs I'd just like to get a bit of input on this and figured this forum was probably diverse enough to help me out.

I've been taken by a lot of more ambient, electroacousticy stuff lately. Artists like Alva Noto in particular, Thomas Koner, Fennesz even some of the more subdued stuff by the likes of Autechre, and was just wondering, what sort of techniques and kit and so on are these guys using?

I'm fairly au-fait with, say, techno and house - I know the sorts of musical and technological techniques that tend to be used, but when it comes to this stuff I don't really have a clue, but I'd like to incorporate these sorts of sounds, either to start making some of it or even to incorporate bits into my dance music.

Long feedback loops? Granular synthesis? Weird spectral stuff? Max/PD/Reaktor? Conventional synths used in an unusual way? I did touch on this subject when I was at uni, learned a bit about the pioneers and did some stuff on Pro Tools (apparently the preferred tool for arty computer music) but it wasn't much. A bit of a discussion would be nice

[The Northern Contingent]

You sound just like me! I've also recently become interested in this type of music and have been trying to develop some techniques...

1. Everything you've already suggested above will work wonders.

2. Use Ableton 8's new warp engine to mangle samples into entirely new sounds. So for example take a droney sample and double up its tempo in the Ableton clip window as far as you can go. This alone will create weird and wonderful new sounds.

2. Double-click samples to put in warp markers and stretch out transients in the clip window as far as they will go. Resample and repeat till you have either a glitchy new sequence or a bizarre new sound to drop into Sampler.

3. Use Sampler with any of the above then destroy it with Sampler's built in effects.

4. If you've got Live Suite then drop the pre-built Audio Effects racks onto just about anything to hear the results. Resample and repeat.

Hope these help to get you started. Any more suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

[esky]

Hi Simon, you are a Max 4 Live owner, then check out Granulator by Robert Henke. No M4L, check out this nice instrument, its called Granite.
http://www.newsonicarts.com/

[antarktika]

I assume you've heard of paulstretch? good to just throw a short sample in there and get a massive 12 minute background texture, chop out what you like, and use that.
http://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch/

[chris vine]

All good suggestions - paulstretch and granite are great, but not so realtime.

I have been doing a lot of this ambient improv recently and I have a Live Set that uses 4 aux sends with evolving FX racks - spectral delays etc plus two loopers, a bunch of software instruments, mic and gtr inputs. I have it set up so that any input or midi instrument can be processed on the aux channels or sent to loopers - then the returns of the FX/loopers also have racks on them with filters and god knows what else - it does get tweaked from time to time.

Fennesz does not use Live AFAIK. he uses something else that has 4 channels of looping, and he does use clips sometimes. Christopher Willets has some nice video tutorials related to Ableton, you can pick a few pointers from those - espcially his use of Dummy and Midi clips. I personally try not to link the BPM to Live's BPM on ALL the FX, just to have some randomness in there, because for me, that's where the magic often is. I also try not to use pre-recorded clips in these sets as they tend to dictate things....

Live's reverb has a freeze button, which is awesome for grabbing something and providing an instant drone texture. Stick a phaser or a filter after that if it is too static.

Haven't used M4L (-$$$) but I would imagine there's some good stuff there.

But just jump in really,follow your ears, that is the most important thing.
/2 cents.

[doghouse]

Don't forget that reverb and delay are major parts of most of the sounds you're after. Even very simple sounds like a flute can become pretty otherworldly with the right FX applied.

[JuanSOLO]

Check out the Twisted Tools ensembles for Reaktor, i.e. Scapes, Vortex, Buffeater.

There are lots of cool ensembles in the Reaktor UL too.

[GaijinPunch]

There's an official Ableton video w/ Robert Henke (but not officially released) on Youtube and it's basically him dicking around in Sampler. Pretty cool stuff. Been meaning to get Granulator as my ambient music collection might even be bigger than my house. Just gotta get around to that type of stuff.

[oblique strategies]

I assume you've heard of paulstretch? good to just throw a short sample in there and get a massive 12 minute background texture, chop out what you like, and use that.
http://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch/

paulstretch for Mac OS X:
http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Audio/PaulStretch.shtml

[simonlb]

Check out the Twisted Tools ensembles for Reaktor, i.e. Scapes, Vortex, Buffeater.

There are lots of cool ensembles in the Reaktor UL too.

Will do, I've got Reaktor and it's well underused by me because I don't have the time to either get to grips with the hundreds of ensembles included or to get good at building my own, I'll look into these though

I've not got M4L unfortunately, no money for it just now, I could save for it if it'll really help but I figure I'm fine with Reaktor for the moment. Not got Live Suite/Sampler either, only bought Operator, Sampler may be another wise investment at some point.

Thanks for the tips so far guys, appreciate it - last night I had a play about with some frozen reverbs and big FX racks. Got some nice sounding stuff going, definitely going to explore it more... I'm more a real-time sort of guy since getting my Machinedrum and Virus, I'm sure I could have plenty fun freezing a reverb or two, setting up lots of MIDI CCs for levels and parameters on Live and just jamming out for a while... ah so much to try, so little time keep the tips coming!

[henke]

Looper in Live can be a secret weapon here:
Place the Looper in a track and you afterwards create a new audio track.
If you look at the I/O section and you choose the track with the looper in the upper of the two choosers, you'll get "Instert Looper" as option of the second chooser. Set it up like this, and set monitor to "In" and every device in this track will be inserted in the Looper. Try chorus here or grain delay and you'll get a lot of sexy stuff going on

Robert

[Hermanus]

nice one Robert, thank you

[fcarroll]

Looper in Live can be a secret weapon here:
Place the Looper in a track and you afterwards create a new audio track.
If you look at the I/O section and you choose the track with the looper in the upper of the two choosers, you'll get "Instert Looper" as option of the second chooser. Set it up like this, and set monitor to "In" and every device in this track will be inserted in the Looper. Try chorus here or grain delay and you'll get a lot of sexy stuff going on

Robert

Wow thanks, thats a great tip. Didn't know that, I also didn't know that you can drop samples or loops straight onto the looper!

Thanks again, this is why I love this forum.