Inspiration

[polyslax]

Hey, nice to get away from the platform wars for a moment isn't it?

I recently got back to digitizing some crappy old cassette tapes I made in the 70s and 80s, when I found that either my brother or myself had recorded some Saturday morning cartoons, probably circa mid-late 70s. Now, this is not audiophile recording. I'm talking cheap little hand held cassette, holding the mic up to the tv kinda stuff.

However, as I'm easily entertained, I found a lot of fun samples to play with. Have a quick example for you at:

No

Anyone else found a sound or sample that's triggered something for you lately?

[hoffman2k]

Those type of sounds always come in handy. I got a whole library of them. Most of them recorded in the same way. And old radio adds, movie quote's,....
All nice stuff to mess with. Try woody woodpecker and a grain delay.

[module]

i also found some tapes of when a friend and i around say.. 7 years old , made make belive radio stations, and use to play queen, and pink floyd and play with my friends guitar effects processor, (a really old one) to make our voices sound like chimpminks, that brings back memory's how would of guessed, 15 years later, i would be doing that as a real paid job (making ad's for radio/production)... thats pretty inspiring...

the dreams of youth somtimes can be more than dreams...

[conny]

Yes, I've got a whole box in the cellar with old tapes. Some contains my missions with a mike out into reality - the wipers of my old car, the wind over a frozen lake. And loops made of water dripping on beer cans...
I use some parts of them at times (trying to hide the bad audio behind some other stuff).
Problem begins to be the filing of it all - how to find them. I'm thinking of building an XML based linking system to grab them. But in a real situation there is this going looking for something and finding something else and that may be OK.
I have done simple text listings of filenames, so I can search it.
// C

[ncw]

I made a track out of a sample from an interview with Burzum's Count Grishnak, Norwegian blackmetal geezer, church burner etc, where he laughs about how he killed Euronymous, and how he doesn't regret it.

[conny]

I think inspiration comes as something unexpected, like a joke, a sudden turn of things. But you have to start working in order to be a target for that to happen and you have to take the risk of doing things today in other ways than yesterday.
It's unpredictable. Sorting out a collection of samples may suddenly trigger something more reliable than trying hard to really do a composition.

I went for some food just now, it's snowing and blowing; I hear the sound from above of someone drawing up the french curtains (?) and think I might try to emulate that sound.
That's how things often get started for me.
No warning but prepared, in a working state.
(Well, to be honest, I did not do anything about it, but...)

// C

[j]

great topic...poetic and inspiring posts.

[ethios4]

There's a good article in Computer Music magazine (i think) right now about brainstorming. What i found most interesting was that the idea of a brainstorming sesssion if to suspend left-brain activity, ie- analysis, logic, etc.
In other words, don't evaluate ideas while you're brainstorming. Just focus on having fun, letting the ideas flow, and recording them in some way. Later you can go back and pick the best stuff and further develop ideas. This allows the creative side to do its thing without putting a filter on it.
It brought up the point, also, that most DAW's can kill the creative spark by requiring so much forethought and logic, but i think this is where Live really shines. The interface is so intuitive and simple that i hardly have to worry about setup or routing during the creative process.
On a side note : I recently watched "Some Kind of Monster"... the documentary about Metallica's latest album and the band's experience with that. It's very interesting to watch their interactions and creative process... a band thats spent 20 years creating based on aggression and negativity, now in their 40's, dealing with the fact that such a process is not conducive to long-term goals and the realities of life, among other things. It helped me realize I'm glad to be spending time really thinking about what i'm doing and what i want to achieve and the best way to go about that. And that having fun with it is perhaps the most important part!!

[conny]

Live is great for creativity and testing things out most of the time.

Some things get in the way, though. As for yesterday, I was editing details in a composition and found that I needed to create a muted track called "Deleted" to store things temporary that I wasn't sure I wanted back or not. That would not be needed if there was a simple way to browse through tracks etc of previously saved sets - then a copy of the current set would serve as backup and I might just drag things back that's deleted (undo is not quite the same thing).
That goes for plugins etc also.

I would also have great use for a editable notice function using the info areas - to-do-list, info of a clip that I want to remember to alter in some way etc.

And I often find my self fiddling with dragging the arrangement loop bar to specific parts over and over again. What a pleasure if the positions could be stored, named and recalled like "Arr intro", "Middle", "Noise here - investigate!".

And (phwou...) the possibility to prelisten clips in session without having to solo the track AND trigger the arrangement. Very annoying when I loop a clip and suddenly the arrangement reaches the part where I have put a freeze on the reverb in the master track!

Besides that there really should be possible to drop files directly from a file browser.
Besides that... Live is a great tool for keeping the flow going.

// C

[ethios4]

hehe...yeah, great but not perfect. Note-taking would be very handy... i've been working on the fine details of mixing and mastering this track for a couple of months now, and one of the great obstacles for me is just keeping track of all the little changes across several versions of the same arrangement.
On the subject of inspiration again... what i find most strange is the way seemingly random or "wrong" events can play into moments of brilliance. One day something was telling me to sample from this piece by Milton Babbitt . So i found some cool stuff and forgot about it. A week later i'm working on this track and somehow that sample pops up in the browser, so i try it out... wow! its already in key and tempo without any alteration at all, and fits perfectly.... in fact, it becomes the centerpiece of the track!
Seems hard to take credit for creative work. Who can say where their ideas come from? The best stuff seems to pop out of nowhere. On the other hand, being in the position to be open to creativity and to be able to do something with it is the result of a series of oftentimes difficult choices... to sacrifice and work hard to hone those technical skills through which the inspiration speaks. So for me, i take credit on the basis of having spent 200 hours on a track, rather than taking credit for an amazing idea that was, to me, a gift given freely.
ramble on...

[supster]

So for me, i take credit on the basis of having spent 200 hours on a track, rather than taking credit for an amazing idea that was, to me, a gift given freely.

sometimes in the process of routing and tweaking and recording and warping Live almost takes on a life of its own.

everything "locks in" the groove, and harmonically, and melodically, and dynamics and you go "ahhh!" because its doing something that you never expected

The credit is not taken for the inspiration, which is a gift. The credit should come for consistantly recognizing the 'good' inspiration from the merely ok, or even crap

... yeah, and the hundreds of hours wading through the details until you find it

[jtenney]

A really good thread, people!

I've had a similar experience in working with synthesized voices in my own music (not done with Live, not yet anyway, but with Reason). The commercial synthesis demos often give really weird inflections, pronunciations etc. to "dialogue" I've written, which often causes me to change it, but also sometimes LEADS me. In other words, the weirdness helps write the "story" (my pieces are often like little radio dramas/comedies, with music/loops, background ambience and sfx besides the voices).

I've also had "triggers from the past" a lot. One piece of mine, from my childhood in the 1950s, is

http://www.soundclick.us/fastk6/07/01/f ... ey1955.mp3

later,
John

[jtenney]

On another subject, specifically answering Conny. Are you familiar with AudioFinder? I've heard a lot about it, have not gotten into it yet (it's not freeware) but have plans to. It's www.icedaudio.com.

Also, I too really like the idea of a "note pad" area in the Live window(s). Have you posted anything about it in the "features we'd like to see" section?

later,
John

[conny]

That's in my taste - great work. (Reminds me of some things Gregory Whitehead has dome.)
What SpeachSynthesis do you use? I only have Text2SpeachMP3, which you can hear in action in the middle part of Doors, opening and closing here:

http://bluemoose.greatnow.com

I also have the Mbrola speach engine but a data base only for german

(So inspiration thread turns into tech talk...)

BTW AudioFinder is Mac I guess - i'm on PC.

// C

[jtenney]

Conny, AudioFinder is indeed Mac; sorry; I thought they had a Windows version.

Glad you like my stuff. There's others at www.soundclick.com/johntenney (I have about 25 posted there), plus others I can't post because I used loops in them and the site is very tough about that (I could get kicked off).

Here's a few voice synth sites:

http://www.nuance.com/prodserv/demo_vocalizer.html
http://www.research.att.com/projects/tts/demo.html
http://www.elantts.com/demos/interactive.html

With all of them, you can get downloadable wav output. Note that legally you are not supposed to use the sites for your own purposes.

Who is Gregory Whitehead?

later,
John