Ableton Forum

How can I reproduce the kind of off-key chords that Boards of Canada use a lot.

Theres a kind of eerie tremelo/modulation of the pitch. How can I achieve this using the AL effects/racks?

Thanks

a really slow, gentle LFO on a pitch envelope

I am quite new to Live, where do I find an LFO to add to my track?

longjohns wrote:a really slow, gentle LFO on a pitch envelope

not on "pitch envelope", just on the pitch, really.

In Simpler, turn on the LFO, retrig OFF, and then turn up the "LFO" amount (just to the left of "Glide".)

in other words, it's a part of the synth that's being used, it isn't an "effect" that's added afterwards.

sorry to confuse the matter with incorrect terms

longjohns wrote:sorry to confuse the matter with incorrect terms

and... ahem, sorry for being pedantic.

BOC is heavy on phase music... (pioneered by richard reich)

Make a very simple, monophonic (no chords, just a note progression in the key of your choice) that is rather long (16 bars i guess)

make 2 new midi tracks, but keep the synth on the midi track.

move original clip to one of the new tracks, route midi to trigger synth track

dupe midi clip into second new track, and shorten it by a couple bars (either just shorten the loop brace alone, or highlight all notes, right click, and "stretch", then shorten the brace propotionally.

make sure that track triggers the same synth.

you can make more, shorter clips, but it will start to get muddy.

play the scene, and after a couple bars, they will go out of sync, and start to make chords that are all in key, then drift off key. depending on the length of the original clip, they will all come back in sync after a large number of clip repetitions (64, 128)

www.covops.org has a very informative video about this (in fact, that's where i learned it)

now, for more BOC-ness, make a 4 bar drum loop (just for experimental purposes, use an impulse preset). resample the clip into a new audio track, and reverse the clip. automate the volume envelope to silent after 2 bars (sharp ramp.) now return to original drum clip, and automate the volume envelope to turn ON after 2 bars.

this will produce that BOC -like reverse-into-regular drum loop that sounds so intriguing. ALthough, they do use drum sounds a lot, it is common that the sample is a recording of somethings strange ( it sounds like a billards room). for a good example of this percussion technique, listen to one of the tracks on Music Has the Right to Children...i can't remember the name of the song, but it's that same one that has the "oohhhmagod" and "get offa me!" samples.

Richard? Reich

Steve Reich's brother I assume

how do i go about reversing a clip, i cant figure it out

theres a couple of decent BoC presets in this PG 23p vst:
http://www.plosive.net/vst/

the 'mute_glitch' bank has two BoC style presets. if you have reaktor theres similar style presets in carbon 2 also.

just wondering how i reverse clips?

clavicle06 wrote:just wondering how i reverse clips?

theres a little 'rev.' button in all audio clips that'll do it for you automatically. it's next to the 'edit & 'save' buttons in the audio clips 'sample' section.

reversing midi's a bit trickier but you can do it using the 'stretch' option that you get when you right-click on some selected notes in a midi clip.

Angstrom wrote:Richard? Reich

Steve Reich's brother I assume

maybe that's what I meant...not thinking straight i guess

playing around last night i managed to get this using only sampler. it worked better with simple wave forms (used a sample of a dulcimer here, but a square wave worked ok as well) but the major thing was to use a low speed fixed FM - something like 11Hz. then group it and copy it to a couple other chains. in each chain slightly change the fixed FM speed and transpose by something like +5 or -3 (or whatever sounds good to you...). this way every key strokes a chord and each note changes differently relative to the others making for some nice early BoC type of sounds...