Sound mining – an alternative approach

Here we postpone programming software instruments until we’ve mined some promising audio first

01 We open Reaktor 6 and choose Metaphysical Function Sound Generator from Reaktor’s core library. We print three promising sounds as audio files. Each is too random to work completely but contains some promising content. We add each audio file to the project audio window so it can quickly be added to the project. Finally, we set up three audio tracks and drag each file to its own track.

02 We take the most rhythmically defined audio file and chop a section which suggests a rhythm we can work with. The resulting section is five bars long, which could work well; a 5-bar loop playing against a groove whose other elements are four or eight bars long will interrupt or postpone repetition. We use this chopped section to work out a tempo – 103.4bpm. Hear it here with a metronome.

03 The section of the loop we’re interested in is the ticky rhythm so we isolate it using FabFilter plugins. We use the Pro-Q2 to filter out low frequency content below 472Hz, using a 48dB per octave filter; the Pro-G to gate the sound, using the ticks as our guide Threshold point; and the Pro-C2 to gently compress the loop.

04 We set up a ‘pitch guide’ instrument (we use a piano) to get a sense of the implied note pitches present. Now that it’s gated, the dominant pitch in our groove is C#, which we bear in mind as we assess our other two ‘mined’ audio files. The first – Vloot sequence – is made up of a long, too harmonically diverse sequence.

05 We add a pitchshifter to bring it in line with the C#, offsetting +1 semitone. We chop the first four chords and position these to change every half-note, with a one-beat gap at the end of chord 4. We filter it to be more of a murky pad, add crossfades between the audio files to avoid ticks, and add some auxiliary delay.

06 In the final audio file we find a slice which bends nicely from one chord down to another. We position this so it fills in the hole created by the pad and automate a high-pass filter’s cutoff point so each time the sound’s tone is different. You can hear these three elements for the first half of the track before some programmed beats and a bassline, inspired by the mined sounds, are added.