Mike's compositions

December Keys

Step 1: There is a cool recent short fiction collection of horror stories, all with sound as their subject. The book is titled Lost Signals, and it contains 24 pieces of fiction, one of them, “The Night Wire” by H.F. Arnold, dating as far back as 1926.

Step 2: We’re going to take a short segment of one of the stories and try to represent it in sound. The story is “Transmission” by T.E. Grau. It’s about a mysterious radio station. You can either use the following segment, or read the book and find a different section of roughly similar length:

“Max was pondering the important issue of how petrogylphs differed from hieroglyphs when the radio halted its roll at the very far end of the electronic dial. After a brief silence, the weak signal transmitted indistinct sounds, like whispers, intermingled with an odd chanting that faded in and out like a spectral dirge. Intrigued by this strange combination, and hoping for a broadcast of a lonely Indian powwow, Max turned up the volume, but the higher it went, the softer the voice and chant became, going silent. There was no apparent signal, but the radio scan was still stopped, locked in on something”

Step 3: Render the text in Step 2 (or that you choose yourself from the book Lost Signals). However, do not read the text. Just let the text inform the sounds.

More on this 259th weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Signals Lost: Summon up a horror story in sound” — at:

http://disquiet.com/0259/2

The text that inspired this is from the book Lost Signals, from by Perpetual Publishing out of San Antonio, Texas. More details on the book at:

perpetualpublishing.com/product/lost-signals/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto/1

There Was A Little Toolshed {Disquiet0259-LostSignals}

A rough rendering of Mozart's K201 - Symphony No. 29 in A Major - Allegro Moderato. 

This is not the renotated version of K201 I've been working on with Notion, but using the raw MIDI file from Classical Archives with one correction made at the beginning. I kept the tempo and dynamics of the original MIDI file in this version mostly intact, with a slight adjustment at the beginning of the dynamics again. 

This was mainly a test of Reaper's ability to auto-route a multi-instrument - both MIDI and audio. As a result, I have not spent any time on articulations or expression. The result is *only* using the legato voices from the loaded instruments, which is - of course - incorrect :-) but it's surprisingly good for all that. 

Some processing for EQ, balance, etc. with Waves plugins and some notch removal of bow noise with Reaper's own EQ. Also sent the output via an iConnectMIDI2+ to Pro-MB hosted by Auria Pro on an iPad via ReaInsert. Gave better fine tune control than C4 in the end.

The Miroslav 2 samples are indeed better at rendering this than the Miroslav 1 samples.  I did an M1 rendering and this was better. 

Next goal hopefully is to add proper keyswitched articulation.

K201 - rough rendering with Miroslav 2

A snowy day
 .......the land begrudgingly acquiesces to the cold, white usurper
patience
.......brown and green will soon be restored to their rightful place
waiting for spring

Waiting For Spring

This is a cover of the Cat Stevens song done with Kevin Griffin. Full production details available here:
https://jimhanks.wordpress.com/2017/03/03/production-log-where-do-the-children-play/

Where Do the Children Play

This is an instrumentation and mix of the 1st movement - Presto - of Haydn's String Quartet Op 1 No. 4 in G major. I did this mainly as a test of VSL solo strings being driven directly from Notion.

Using the MIDI file graciously provided to Classical Archives by Steven E. Edwards, I imported that MIDI to Notion, cleaned up the score where needed and used the VSL SE Solo Strings to instrument. 

I then added dynamics, did some further mixing in Notion with Flux's Stereo Tool, Waves Trueverb (for early reflections and early cross-reflections), Melda EQ for EQ on each instrument and the master, a *hint* of saturation on the viola using, ahem :-D , Headcrusher (!) and then added specific hall characteristics from the National Center for Early Music in York in Waves IR-L using the IR file found at the link below. The reverb and room sizes were matched with the Trueverb at 1.3s and the reverb position was # 14. 

A touch of L1-Ultramaximizer was added to bring the final level up slightly.

My thanks to Michael Myers of Tensivity and Gordon Groo Barrie for listening to early mixes and giving feedback. Much appreciated. Thank you sirs! :-) 

The reverb IR files can be found here: http://www.openairlib.net/auralizationdb/content/st-margarets-church-national-centre-early-music

The original MIDI can be found here: http://www.classicalarchives.com/midi/composer/2679.html

Haydn String Quartet in G Major. Op 1 No. 4. Presto.

A deepspace exploration of P.A. Groove/Blurred Vision

Deepspacers

Fishstix - Bill Murray

Fishstix - DRIP

Stippled!

Wotja improvises into a dual looping delay for time lag accumulation.
Using the Soft Piano AU from Spitfire Labs

Dear Diary 11 - 8-20 Piano Loops

Amateur musician using Logic X, Akai keyboards, Akai EWI and tons of iPad apps.

My tastes in music creation are eclectic and run from electronica to classical. I am currently very interested in "performed MIDI" pieces with the Akai EWI wind instrument as well as generative music created with algorithmic tools such as Mixtikl and Noatikl. 

I do most of my work either on the iPad with a myriad of synthesizers and DAWs or on Logic X on my iMac. 

My blog is on: (http://whitherwalter.blogspot.com) where I discuss music making from an amateur's perspective. Enjoy!

December Keys

oldlibmike

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