Ok, so maybe I did find a little time last night to noodle. I have had trouble getting to sleep the past few nights, so I made this very simple, repetitive piece to help solve this. It matched the sound and the rhythm of the rain falling on the slate tiles outside my bedroom window. It sent me off pretty well. Reaktor 5, in Live 8.1 with some FabFilter effects.

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Il Pleut.mp3
Il Pleut 96kbps.mp3

Things in my life are bit hectic right now and chances to play with sound are not happening as often as I’d like. This piece reflects that in some ways as I am once again starting with a piece of sound from someone else.

It’s a sample of the Portsmouth Sinfonia (a link popped up on Twitter from a few people I follow). It’s their rendition of the opening music to 2001 A Space Odyssey, ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’. In brief they were an orchestra made up of non-musicians and/or musicians playing an instrument totally new to them. The resulting sound they make is perfect for stretching and manipulating.

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Psinfonia.mp3
Psinfonia 96kbps.mp3

More experimentation with the Conet number station samples, led me to try and reshape one of them so that it became something totally new and almost unrecognisable. It’s meant to represent the sound of the Earth lamenting her demise. Not cheery stuff, I know, but I love its melancholic feel.

All of the sound in this piece came from this Conet sample.

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I used Paulstretch to pull it apart, but everything else was done using Ableton Live.

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Umweltverschmutzung.mp3
Umweltverschmutzung 96kbps.mp3

Here is the seventeenth zip file containing the latest ten tracks posted.

There are two zip files, one for lower bitrate MP3s and the other for the rather better 320kbps files.

All of the tracks here are free for you to download and distribute.

Thank you for listening.

161 to 170 – 96kbps – zip file (24Mb)
161 to 170 – 320kbps – zip file (82Mb)

I watched the sun come up this morning. As the light took hold of the sky I thought about how it might sound. This piece was made using a piano sample in Simpler inside Live. About a dozen different effects were added and this is the result of my early morning fun.

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Rise.mp3
Rise 96kbps.mp3

Here is the sixteenth zip file containing the latest ten tracks posted.

There are two zip files, one for lower bitrate MP3s and the other for the rather better 320kbps files. Please note however that piece 153 – Pteran, is only available as a 320kbps file, so it’s not included in the 96kbps zip file.

All of the tracks here are free for you to download and distribute.

Thank you for listening.

151 to 160 – 96kbps – zip file (37Mb)

151 to 160 – 320kbps – zip file (264Mb)

I decided to take a full lunch hour to truly go all experimental.

A few milliseconds of Imogen Heap is looped and manipulated in real-time inside Ableton Live using a ton of effects. Using only the mouse, no controller. This was a one-pass recording. I really don’t imagine that it will be a popular or note-worthy piece, but I love the strange sonic moments that pop up. You’ll just be able to make out the original fractional loop at the end. I hope Ms.Heap won’t be annoyed?

Getting the levels right was not easy, as it starts off quietly, so mind your ears/speakers further on in.

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Merkwürdig.mp3
Merkwürdig 96kbps.mp3

You know how slow everything becomes when you are waiting for someone, somewhere or something you’ve been missing. This simple dark piece represents how I feel right now.

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Waiting.mp3
Waiting 96kbps.mp3

Something tonight led me down this path again. I can’t be sure what. If you didn’t have a short wave radio in the seventies (when I was a little lad) listening in to either the ‘number stations’ or the musical interludes of closed radio stations, this piece won’t make any sense. Personally, I could loop this for hours and drift off.

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Stations.mp3
Stations 96kbps.mp3

The past few days have been a little stressful. Day job problems, the tail-end of a really bad cold and being apart from my girlfriend too long, not really conducive to creating stuff.

Last night/early this morning I finally felt the urge to make something. My cold has heightened my tinnitus so I decided to create a drone-like piece to accompany it. For those of you with good ears, I have included a representation of how it all comes together for me.

At 25 minutes long, it might take a while to download.

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Acouasm.mp3
Acouasm 96kbps.mp3