Name: CANS by seymo
Duration: 3 min 20 s
Description: I sampled a watering can & assigned the sample to a few tracks as audio and instrument racks in Live. I used follow actions to create different rhythms, some effects, a CAN DO ATTITUDE and soloed/muted/triggered different tracks to make this.

I sampled a watering can & assigned the sample to a few tracks as audio and instrument racks in Live. I used follow actions to create different rhythms, some effects, a CAN DO ATTITUDE and soloed/muted/triggered different tracks to make this.

CANS

melancholic

Title:
Pixel Patrol

Dates:
14-Jan-2024 (inception), 17-Jan-2024 (finalised), 18-Jan-2024 (released)

Artists:
Music composed, performed, produced by Norman Freund
Artwork by Norman Freund

BandCamp Purchase:
https://normanfreund.bandcamp.com/track/pixel-patrol

Description:
Music challenge for the weekend, make music from the sampled sound of my cat's meow! Actually this one has been on my list for a while and have tried it in the past and found it very difficult due to an ever changing pitch, characteristic of most cat calls. I was determined to make it work, plus some more experience with Robert Henke's Granulator II did help. It also helped getting the recording just before morning feeding time. All tracks appearing in this composition were based upon sampled sound of my cat, Pixel.

The recording strategy was one of opportunity and seizing the moment, Pixel was only too keen to get my attention and my iPhone was handy to capture the recording. A small amount of noise reduction was required and this was done in Audacity. Pixel likes to keep an eye on the borders of our property for any fury intruders, the music title and mood reflects this "Patrol" feeling.

I fired up Ableton Live and used the Granulator II device (Granular synthesis) to quickly try out various portions of Pixel's call. I soon settled on a theme clip that set the mood for tracks to follow. All tracks were performed on the Ableton Push2 midi controller. 

The Ableton Live Wavetable device has some interesting wave modifying feature, warping and folding, plus the ability to drag and drop in your own sample. This was used for two other tracks. The Wavetable device also has a built-in filter, here I used a low was filter, modulating both the centre frequency and resonance, which were mapped to an Instrument Rack. This automatically made those parameters visible on the Push2 rotary encoders, which were varied rhythmically with one hand, leaving the other hand free to improvise on the note pads. 

During the second movement, at a more relaxed pace, parameters were adjusted on the Granulator II to give a wavering pitch for the backing harmony section. So instead of dealing with Pixel's wavering pitch, I was under the control of a slowly varying pitch modulation. The melodic section, pitch shifted Pixel's call several octaves higher, with a Tonnetz Triangle layout (perfect fifths in the horizontal direction and an augmented fifth in the vertical direction on the 8x8 playing grid) on the Push2. This custom tuning was achieved using my "NOF_Midi_NotePitchLookup" Max for Live device, which is a means of applying custom midi mappings. I wanted to be able to improvised melodic content with large note intervals, the Tonnetz Triangle layout was perfect for this.

I could not resist to include Pixel's call as a long sample instead of the short granular synthesised versions, this comes in after the second movement to finish off the composition. The only effects used for this outro, was a touch of reverb and a faded in Spectral Blur.

Buy Pixel Patrol

Pixel Patrol

RULES
From May 21-27, promote your track. The top 10 most favorited tracks, chosen by the listeners, will move onto the second round of judging. The 10 Finalists will be announced on May 28th.

PRIZE
One winner will be selected and have their track featured on an official Warner Bros. Records UK release, accompanied by a proper servicing campaign.
The winning track will also be published on EARMILK's website.

CANS

seymo

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