Category Archives: Shorts

A series of short pieces, all around 1 minute long. Rather than fight my short attention span, I am embracing it.

Shorts: #14 Exodus

[play] Shorts: #14 Exodus (2007)

Commissioned and titled by Sean Johnson.

This was created with a MOTM modular synthesizer. The tones were created with three pulse wave oscillators, all of which were pulse wave modulating each other. Their output was fed through a low pass filter and bandpass filter. the output of those filters plus the unfiltered pulse waves were send through a notch filter. My short pieces tend to not have gaps in them nor much dynamic range, so I tried to put both those things into the final mix.

This piece was commissioned via eBay.

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Shorts: #13 Contact

[play] Shorts: #13 Contact (2007)

Commissioned and titled by Sean Johnson.

It was created in the BEA 5 lab in Sonology at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. That lab is a room full of a giant voltage controlled synthesizer. The basis for all the sounds in this piece came from a comparitor. Two triangle waves, one frequency modulated, were fed into a comparitor. This comparitor generated a pulse whenever the traingle waves crossed each other. These pulses form part of the piece, as does some clicking generated by a VOSIM module which was controlled also by the comparitor and the triangle waves themselves. I also mixed in a bit of mixer-generated noise.

This piece was commissioned via eBay.

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Columbo

[play] Shorts: #12 Columbo (2007)

Titled and commissioned by Jascha Narveson.

I did this with my synthesizer, running pulsewaves through a logic gate and then through a low pass filter. I’ve only really used the logic gate in a piece once before, since I’m not quite sure what it’s useful for, but it does make very square attacks, which can be interesting.

This piece has just one more question, it almost forgot . . .

Jascha notes:

If the piece has any more questions for me, i’ll have to insist on a warrant – i’m a very busy man and my wife and i are *very* distraught over the sudden and inexplicable death of her overbearing, tyrannical, but extremely wealthy father…

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I Agree With T

[play] Shorts: #11 I Agree With T (2007)

Titled and commissioned by Timanna Bennett.

The sounds here were made on my synthesizer. I used a bunch of square waves which have pulse width modulation. This can give a voice-like timbre sometimes. I pass these throught a low pass filter and then a high pass filter, which can theoretically increase the vocal-likeness of the sounds. They didn’t come out very vocal-like, but I think they’re still interesting.

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Shorts #10 Meditation Bustle

[play] Shorts #10 Meditation Bustle (2007)

Titled and commissioned by Jen Savage.

As I was making this, I recalled that I had a file on my computer which was Jen Savage talking. I’d asked years ago if I could make it into a piece, but hadn’t had a clear idea of what to do with it. Then I read something about subliminal messages, which inspired me to experiment with convolution. I convolved Jen’s voice with intermittent pulses and used the resulting timbre at the beginning and the end of the piece.

The other sounds come from my synthesizer. I made high pitch ticks by taking a couple really slow modulated pulsewaves and ran them through a high pass filter. The more ringing sounds have the same process again, but this time going through a low pass filter after the high pass, with the frequencies of both tuned very near to each other and the Q turned up so high it’s on the verge of a terrible high whine.

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Shorts: #9 The Wonder That Is Daniel

[play] Shorts: #9 The Wonder That Is Daniel (2007)

Titled and commissioned by Polly Moller for Daniel Magazin’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Daniel!

I made this piece on a MOTM by sending a sawtooth wave through a sub octave mutltiplexer and then through my Sherman Filter Bank. I got the high parts by plugging something into the FM jack of the filter and then yanking out the cord and waiting for the filtered sound to return to normal. There’s also some sawtooth waves that have been modulated by the random output of a Sample and Hold. I recorded that in stereo and then nudged the right channel over, to delay it in comparison with the left. This trick can create some illusion of distance, since sounds that come from far away often have phase differences by the time they reach your ears.

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Shorts: #8 svp

[play] Shorts: #8 svp (2007)

Titled and commissioned by Gino Robair

This was made in the BEA 5 lab of Sonology at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, the Netherlands. It’s made with VOSIM controlled by a sequencer and being run through a third octave filter, which is some crazy custom, antique european thing. Man, that filter sounds good. They’re on ebay once in a great while. I want one, but I’m too lazy to do the custom modding myself. It’s Danish, made by Brüel & Kjaer in Copenhagen, Band Pass Filter Set Type 1612. The interface is really modded at school.

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Shorts: #5 Yes, But I Don’t Know When

[play] Shorts: #5 Yes, But I Don’t Know When (2007)

Titled and commissioned by Nicole Wilkins.

This uses 4 Oscillators, an LFO, a Sub-Octave Multiplexer and a SAH from my MOTM. It’s kind of a nifty patch where the main, sound producing osc is soft-synched to a very FMed osc. For most of the tracks, the pitch is additionally controlled by using the SAH in the 1/V octave input of the main osc. The clock for the SAH is from the pulse output of the third osc, which is FM controlled by the main osc. The random output of the SAH is setting the pulse width of the third osc. This makes the clock very skittery at times, which is nice. The sound from the main osc is going to the SOM to pick some extra bass and from there is going to a Sherman Filter Bank.

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