Alva Noto sound design?

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
agargara
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Post by agargara » Tue Jul 08, 2008 3:27 pm

kaffein wrote:From wikipedia:
Nicolai plays with the rules of physicality. Sound is changed and evolved into time and space and transformed by looping oscillators and tone generators. Through these processes the essence of pure electricity is made audible. He works without sequencers, but mathematically edits his work to give his compositions precise rhythmic structures. Clicks and glitches are not used as ornamental additions to the compositions but make up the essential elements of the work and these sound sources are applied to the rhythmic groove of Hip-Hop and R&B. The sounds of electronic information transmission such as fax tones, modem sounds and telephone pops and clicks are sampled and organised into loops to which Nicolai adds longer electronic tones in the background and foreground as the piece progresses.
Insen and Vrioon are two of my favorite albums, but that is still one of the most hilariously pretentious pieces of bs I have ever read. It's enjoyable music with beeps and clicks, not the "essence of pure electricity." Get over yourself.

On topic, though...I too have been wondering the best ways to get good beeps and clicks, although lately I prefer the glitchy clicks that mum gets in songs like "smell memory" to Alva Noto. Exper's suggestion of using the gate tool has worked fairly well. Unfortunately I'm too poor right now to upgrade to Live 7 so I can't try out slice to midi.

Idonotlikebroccoli
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Post by Idonotlikebroccoli » Tue Jul 08, 2008 4:34 pm

SimonPHC wrote:He is known to use things like SoundHack and Max/MSP. In Soundhack you can read any file as a .wav or .aiff. Some of his albums are made out of found data read as sound, like the Trans series and his last Unitxt. Some have been made with found sound that is then treated as if it where pictures, most notably on the album Xerrox vol. 1
Is there anything similar to soundhack for windows xp?

telekom
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Post by telekom » Tue Jul 08, 2008 10:53 pm

I love Revep, the Insen DVD is pretty good altho the audience are a bit too intrusive when they keep standing up.

Saw CN live a couple of times, both times amazing and pretty loud. Those clicks go right through you and the bass hits make your kidneys shake. :)

I too have found Gate to be useful for glitchy sounds. But usually I take very short samples and isolate them, boost them, EQ them and sequence them. I like experimenting with that sort of stuff. Give it a go...
MacBook Pro Retina, Live 9.5, Reason, UC33, KRK RP5s, Teenage Engineering OP1, Korg ESX2, Korg Prophecy, Clavia Nord Lead, Bass, Guitars.
http://soundcloud.com/motorradkinophone

Lux Libra
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Post by Lux Libra » Tue Jul 08, 2008 11:49 pm

Yep, Raster Noton and Nicolai, Bretschneider, Bender & co. are awesome artists.
I also really love the Alva Noto stuff with Sakamoto - wonderful. Sadly i've never
had the chance to see them Live.

Anyone dig the "Signal" album from the Raster founders mentioned above ?
Never thought that they would rock so banging minimalistic techno again. Yeah !

As for the production techniques. Open all kind of files (excel, pdf, jpg, txt, etc...)
with an audio editor which allows to import them in RAW mode (Soundforge does it as Audacity and some others).
You get awesome Bleeps, Noises, Zirrps, an other wonderful material for micro music. Clean, harsh, ..... Raster Noton style.
Nicola does it too, as the others...

Lux Libra
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Post by Lux Libra » Sun Aug 03, 2008 2:23 pm

i'm watching the INSEN LIVE DVD at the moment (finally) and it's superb.
Haven't known that sakamoto is doing some freestyle piano manipulation / drumming on there.

big respect for these guys!

sans soleil
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Post by sans soleil » Sun Aug 03, 2008 3:33 pm

i played with the raster guys last year here in toronto...from what i remember, they were using live, along with quartz composer for the visuals.

kaffein
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Post by kaffein » Sun Aug 03, 2008 3:39 pm


Lux Libra
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Post by Lux Libra » Sun Aug 03, 2008 3:46 pm

sans soleil wrote:i played with the raster guys last year here in toronto...from what i remember, they were using live, along with quartz composer for the visuals.
interesting. is there a similar visual programming application for PC - besides Jitter ?

will check your tunes :-)

sans soleil
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Post by sans soleil » Sun Aug 03, 2008 5:29 pm

m:o wrote:
interesting. is there a similar visual programming application for PC - besides Jitter ?
quartz is a mac-only thing, but i think you can use processing, which is somewhat similar:
http://www.processing.org/

fatrabbit
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Post by fatrabbit » Sun Aug 03, 2008 7:15 pm

sans soleil wrote:
m:o wrote:
interesting. is there a similar visual programming application for PC - besides Jitter ?
quartz is a mac-only thing, but i think you can use processing, which is somewhat similar:
http://www.processing.org/
I believe Quartz is a modular program... a bit like Max, Reaktor or Plogue Bidule where you connect things with wires. Processing is all code. It's really great once you start getting the hang of it though!

Lux Libra
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Post by Lux Libra » Sun Aug 03, 2008 8:33 pm

ok, i've been thru a decision....

since a few weeks i think about building a hackintosh on my second pc. just for fun - until now...

having a second machine running Quartz Composer for visual stuff together with Live and the
Hardware on the other, makes me horny like a young dog....;-)

i'll start and see if i can land the ship.

i know, some of you might have experienced problems and instabilities with hackintoshs, but i want the challenge.

let's see...

atom heart
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Re:

Post by atom heart » Fri Sep 25, 2009 6:58 pm

kaffein wrote:Interview for the curious:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdUIqx60 ... re=related
I know stupid question ...but anybody knows hw to recreate these "electricity sounds" e.g like when pluging in a false-problematic input jack.I know you could simply record these sound but I m trying to recreate them from scratch!

swishniak
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Re: Alva Noto sound design?

Post by swishniak » Sat Sep 26, 2009 1:49 pm

search forum for "glitch"

one of my favorite techniques is to add some distortion or bit reduction to any signal, than put a really fast gate on it, which only gets triggered by a couple peaks.

Nick the Zombie
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Re: Alva Noto sound design?

Post by Nick the Zombie » Sat Sep 26, 2009 4:53 pm

swishniak wrote:search forum for "glitch"

one of my favorite techniques is to add some distortion or bit reduction to any signal, than put a really fast gate on it, which only gets triggered by a couple peaks.
+1 here, most of the glitchy sound elements I create are some variation of this, generally using field recordings as the source signal.

atom heart
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Re: Alva Noto sound design?

Post by atom heart » Sat Sep 26, 2009 4:58 pm

field recordings???

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