Sound Creation and Manipulation - LO3

UNIT 35 LO3

Space Way

Below, is a screenshot of my final piece in the workshop of Logic Pro 9. The tracks coloured in blue are the tracks that i have sampled using authentic sounds that we had recorded, I had taken the original sound before cutting it down to a necessary sample size and then inputted into 'EXS24' where the sample could be allocated to the MIDI keyboard keys. The first two red tracks with names 'ID8 1' and 'ID8 2' are an example of patch bays in practise after using Reason Record to assist and work as a slave device to Logic Pro 9.
I had arranged the structure of my track specifically to express each sound individually without losing the original melody or rhythm.

I felt like the EXS24 sampler has excellent functions and features to allow us to modify the sample. To create the samples I had to first find the sample sound i wanted to use, before cutting it down and inserting it into the 'edit' page on the EXS24 sampler. After that we was able to use all functions to make our sample sound best as possible when played. This would be done through the use of Pitch, Decay, Attack, Release and more.

The only way we could obtain specific samples to use in the piece was by physically recording them. So as a group we had used the stairwell in our college to record different instruments and miscellaneous sounds that would eventually give us much more variety on sounds as we had worked together to record as much as possible by everyone playing their part. The stairwell added natural reverb and we continuously changed the microphone position between floor levels to attain different levels of reverb and the best quality sound.

Selection and Regions

When creating the sample sounds it was important for us to listen through the recording afterwards and to cut out what was necessary. This meant us using logic to separate the sounds we needed from the sounds that would be useful and after we then bouncing out the region of the sample so that when played from a MIDI keyboard would sound natural.

Editing Parameters

The editing parameters in EXS24 had wide variety and if not for the fact that many of the sampled recordings actually consisted of drum beats i would've experimented much more with the parameters however it was more important for me to keep a natural sound. The EXS24 had started me on 16 voices and I hadn't changed this to preserve original natural panning, I then went over all of my tracks to make sure that Channel EQ, and volume levels were all suitable to support each-other in making a better sound.

Acoustic Theory

All sounds recorded are a fusion of sine waves and carries different wave patterns, ES2 allows us to focus on the parameters of the different waves and actually carries three UFO's so we are able to have full flexibility of the sound wave. It was important for us to cut samples perfectly, use of the EQ to filter out any unwanted noise and discard whatever did not sound right in the track.

Sample Start and End Points

With one of my Synthesised patches in 'ES2' i was able to create a melody that i feel brought my whole track together and i wanted it to repeat throughout the track, in different parts of the track however it would also require breaks in which the dynamic lowers and a slightly different melody is heard. The different melody could be considered as the 'Bridge'. By being able to copy and paste tracks where i had wanted it made it easy for me to have the exact structure that i wanted. 

Loops

I had only looped the snare sound n my piece and that is specifically because i knew that i would require the sound to be playing throughout majority of my piece. This was important to the piece as it would keep the exact rhythm throughout and would even assist me in adding further sounds and melodies. By dragging the top right corner of the recording you are able to automatically loop for almost as long as you would like.

Creating Instruments

When using the samples, I had a specific intrest in using 'Multi-sampling' in which we were able to create a full-key virtual instrument with change in note to key with our recorded samples. This was perfect as we could assign specific keys on our MIDI keyboard to play a certain sound that we had needed which made it much easier to use throughout the track. After making a sampler instrument we were able to save them through logic to the computer so we could load the preset whenever is necessary from the sampler's preset menu.

An example of 'One shot' is when when a sample isn't copied or looped but actually only heard when the MIDI keyboard is pressed. In my piece this was used mainly for my drum instruments (kick, snare, hi-hat). We are even able to modify the velocity of the keyboard when a key is pressed, for example if we had meant for a note to sound much stronger than the others we are able to use this.

My Examples

Below are two examples of the recordings that I had cut down and used within the 'EXS24' sampler to be able to create the layered drums in my track. The first example 'Snare 57' in which I had assigned to my MIDI keyboard. Then 'Miscellaneous' which had sound that I did not use through the MIDI keyboard but found they would fit into the piece.