Freesound Forums

@ ericksommers

I am very happy that you found the dare so useful and enjoyable.

It is also important to keep things in perspective and not be too hard on yourself.
You obviously have done stuff at commercial or semi-commercial level. I would certainly expect you to put more effort into that than into a just-for-fun competition with no prizes. I would!

There are alwyas things we could do better.
I also thought about using formants to change the "eh" sound into maybe an "ah" or an "oh" for variety. But I did not do it either - I did not feel lazy because of that. My piece just went in a different direction and that sort of manipulation did not fit in / was not needed.

As for listenning to other pieces from you. Yeah, sure. Send me a PM and I will send you my email.

AlienXXX wrote:
@ Kyster

Most important: do you use a PC or Mac?

I would recommend Reaper - especially as you are new to things.
The demo of Reaper is fully functional and does not expire. If you then decide to buy a license it will cost you €30 or so.
I have used it for the Dares and certainly it is more than up to the job.
Works on PC, I can't remember for sure, but believe ther eis a Mac version too.

I use Linux

Right now i use Ardour (DAW) to mix the different audio clips together, plus adding effects. I use Audacity to edit any audio that needs doing so. The whole Jack thing is another story, but i've been looking for a way to make arpeggio's and stuff like that.

For drums i'm using hydrogen v. o.9.5, a rather powerfull tool.

I've also come across http://www.audiotool.com to make at least a little more than what my current software can offer me.

Kyster wrote:
I use Linux

Respect!

I had a quick look at the audiotool website. Looks interesting. Something I hope to spend a little more time exploring at some point.

Unfortunately I cannot offer any specific guidance where it relates to Linux software.
I may have some old notes somewhere about interesting software I stumbled accross. If I find them I will pass on to you.
You can have a look at http://www.kvraudio.com/ and run a Linux specific search...

AlienXXX wrote:

Kyster wrote:
I use Linux

Respect!

I had a quick look at the audiotool website. Looks interesting. Something I hope to spend a little more time exploring at some point.

Unfortunately I cannot offer any specific guidance where it relates to Linux software.
I may have some old notes somewhere about interesting software I stumbled accross. If I find them I will pass on to you.
You can have a look at http://www.kvraudio.com/ and run a Linux specific search...

Thank you for the link AlienXXX. I think i've been there before, as far as i can see in my bookmarks. If i remember it right, it was to find some ladspa effects for something.

But the request i made in the voting thread wasn't so much about me, although i know i am a newcomer. I just thought if someone got interested in the dares, but didn't quite know what software to use, it'd be nice if there were a hint and a finger in the right direction. And then i thought that a skilled bunch of people like so many of you, could help a little out, by just writing down what software you've used. Just as everyone noted what they did with the sounds available, poeple could just as easy note what they've used for it.

Kyster wrote:
i've been looking for a way to make arpeggio's and stuff like that.

If you have time, take a look at Ardour 3 (currently beta) as it's improving on MIDI support.

@ Kyster

A quick search at the KVR database, filtering by "Operating system = Linux" and "Plugin/Host/App type = Host" shows 17 software programs with many of these being free.

I would highlight "MusE", which I have heard about before, Ardour (which copyc4t mentioned) and possibly "Open Sound World" which is a modular envirnment (so could be great for sound design, and may even do arpegios, if it has midi effects built in or you can find a third party plugin).

Also, there is LMMS, which is a name I came accross before but never tried.
It exists for Windows as well as Linux. So if there is interest I would consider installing it so I could exchange project files with yourself or other Linux users.

In relation to arpegios and arpegiators...
Arpegios are pretty simple repetitive patterns. So you don't need a dedicated 'arpegiator' (plugin or built-in). All you need is a midi sequencer and you can generate these sequences yourself. So it is a pretty safe bet that any of the above programs would do the job.
An arpegiator gives you the convenience of creating the sequences for you from a chord you press on your keyboard, but does nothing that cannot be done by hand.

Thank you for the dare and the reviews! And everyone for the time listening.

I have been using mainly Ableton Live, first to have an overview of what is the material, a little bit of cutting, looping, stretching, arranging.
Then I used Kyma to process most of the samples, to disorder, spectral-whatever. And improvised melodies, sounds and progressions.
Again Ableton Live with cutting, looping, arranging and a few effects like EQ, Compressor, Reverb, then a little bit of mastering with a few Waves Plugins.

I actually did not use any other software, Ableton Live is the most flexible and comfortable and intuitive software. With Kyma a little bit more effort is to be expected, but also the more freedom you will achieve to mangle audio in any kind of direction. In this case I had more a specific technic in mind than a theme or direction to go.

Very busy today... only time for one more review, but this was a specially long one

jgeralyn_Looking For A Way Out
This is a particularly difficult piece. Mostly because I think it is difficult to understand what is going on or what the aim was. Most other participants seem to also have been confused.
Here is my best shot at interpretation of this piece...

Obviously a minimalist work, where effects were used as little as possible.
Most of the confusion this piece generated in me is that it is inconsistent (is this deliberate?). There are imense dynamics (volume) swings so the piece is at times very quiet and subtle and at others imensely loud. It also varies betwen quite pleasant and relaxing sounds to unpleasant and enerving.
But... there is some order and some beauty too!
Note that a "pump" sound is always followed by a "snap" sound.
Note that in the first part of the piece the "ksss" sound and the "flute" sound always appear together (like they were glued into one single sound) - although in one instance they seem to be played backwards (just before 30s)
These are perhaps the most obvious, but there are other examples of sound sequences that appear several times in the piece. (can you find them?)
Note they do not exactly repeat in the same way as they may appear pitched or processed differently.

On the technical side, I have the following comments.
I liked the pitchdown of the cascade sound - simple but effective. Turned the sound into something very different (sounds like a boiling kettle).
But then the sound is used like this pretty much throughout the piece, which gets a bit boring. I would have liked to see some variation by use of different effects on this sound such as a heavy wash of reverb or some creative high pass / low pass filtering in places. But I respect the composer's position that intense processing may not have been what she intended to do here.
I particularly like the portion between around 1m20s and 2m10s. Really! If you have listenned to this piece and did not like it, I strongly encourage you to listen to this portion in isolation. I think it will give you a completely different perspective.

Towards the end of this section the waterfall and water sounds are processed through a comb filter. This gives these sounds a completely different space and feel and this has the potential to be a really great effect.
However, comb filters are actually a very short delay with feedback, so there is the potential for some frequencies to reinforce to considerable levels. This can become un-musical or even unpleasant.
In jgeralyn's piece from around 2m20s onwards some frequencies build up and it sounds like the samples are really noisy - like there is an engine room noise in there. This could be easily fixed by using a pre-filter or EQ on the sounds before the comb filters. I suspect that if the low freqs are removed or reduced, this problem disapears, resulting in a much cleaner and pleasant sound.

Integrating my comments with the minimalist perspective and suggestions for improvement.
I think filtering or EQing the sounds to clean them up a bit should be allowed - as I mentioned, this would result in a much cleaner effect when the comb filters are used.
If you do not want to use creative filtering on the cascade sample, consider using fades (gentle or abrupt) so that the constant cascade sound does not run for very long periods, therefore becoming tiring. Even better, what about slicing up the sound in places? Pitching some of the slices up and down and perhaps adding delay/echo - I bet some intersting sequences could easily be created. This sound could alternate between being a "drone" or a 'rhythmic' component, while still remaining minimalist in terms of processing.

klankbeeld wrote:
For anyone who bothered to listen to all samples: Thanks for the constructive criticism of my sample. Thank you.

This sample rules. I am using it as a cornerstone in a new atmospheric piece, along with denalwa's Amazing Barn-Hinge Flute. (Which will undoubtedly see further amp-simulation or even actual amplifiering, tee-hee-hee.)

Let you both know when it's done!

And hey, Mr.AlienX: I wasn't being too hard on myself, really. Thanks for looking out for me but that was just the harsh light of honesty as I reviewed my artistic and emotional responses to your brilliant challenge. Sorry for the overshare if it was too much … it was a bit cathartic for me to write it all down.

copyc4t wrote:

Kyster wrote:
i've been looking for a way to make arpeggio's and stuff like that.

Well, let alone specific softare synths with builtin arpeggiators or short step sequencers, I think you'd get the most flexibility from full MIDI sequencers.
Along my peeking at such software, I've used Qtractor, MusE and LMMS; they all support VSTi's.
It's quite a minefield, some will work, some won't, but you're still left with a huge selection of synths.
So for my last experiment I recorded the MIDI parts in LMMS, exported the separate tracks in lossless format, and imported them all in Ardour.
One thing you might like about LMMS is that, besides classical track editor, it lets you work with patterns like Hydrogen; so, besides drum and bass as suggested in LMMS, that editor is well versed at repetitive arpeggios.

If you have time, take a look at Ardour 3 (currently beta) as it's improving on MIDI support.

Thank you for some great advice copyc4t

I think i'll have a closer look at Qtractor, Muse and LMMS. The first dare i made an entry for, was dare 7. For this i pretty much used Jokosher, but quickly after that i tried out ardour 2.8.11 and this works rather well. It gave me an opportunity to work with hydrogen, along with jack. For a month ago or so, i installed ardour 3.0 alpha3. I like the way it works, although i know i haven't used anyway near all of its features.

As for arpeggio experimenting, i've installed QMidiArp, but i'm still working on how to make it work properly with yoshimi, through jack.

I'll definitively try out the three above softwares that you've mentioned. I gave them a go some months ago, but didn't know their full potential a all.

Do you have a place you upload any music?

AlienXXX wrote:
@ Kyster

A quick search at the KVR database, filtering by "Operating system = Linux" and "Plugin/Host/App type = Host" shows 17 software programs with many of these being free.

I would highlight "MusE", which I have heard about before, Ardour (which copyc4t mentioned) and possibly "Open Sound World" which is a modular envirnment (so could be great for sound design, and may even do arpegios, if it has midi effects built in or you can find a third party plugin).

Also, there is LMMS, which is a name I came accross before but never tried.
It exists for Windows as well as Linux. So if there is interest I would consider installing it so I could exchange project files with yourself or other Linux users.

In relation to arpegios and arpegiators...
Arpegios are pretty simple repetitive patterns. So you don't need a dedicated 'arpegiator' (plugin or built-in). All you need is a midi sequencer and you can generate these sequences yourself. So it is a pretty safe bet that any of the above programs would do the job.
An arpegiator gives you the convenience of creating the sequences for you from a chord you press on your keyboard, but does nothing that cannot be done by hand.

That would be pretty brilliant, to swap projects across platforms. I know that ardour is also available for mac too.

@ Kyster

Jokosher, very nice and simple, I tried it when i knew absolutely nothing about mixing/mastering, and it quickly brought me from absolutely nothing to not absolutely nothing

Mostly, it wiped my fear of Ardour's complexity away and led me to try it. (By the way, if you still have alphas of Ardour 3, I'd strongly suggest to get the current beta, as it seems there's been a lot of stability improvement meanwhile)

I'm checking QMidiArp's page, it looks good to focus on the separate task of arpeggio, but since it still relies on an external MIDI input (the base note) and arpeggio patterns that you'd have to program anyway, you might as well go full MIDI; what I liked of LMMS was the "total integration feeling", what is often classified as "user experience"; I had control over the tracks, the builtin instruments with nice banks of presets (it incorporates ZynAddSubFX among others), and even the VSTi's support, all handled internally, not forcing you to manually map every connection in Jack and save parameter banks in ZynAddSubFX.

You could even use plugins (and again, also VST's) to take care of mixing and mastering, so it really simplified the workflow compared to my previous attempts, without resorting to external session managers like lash.

Feel free to ask about anything on those programs, eventually via PM; I have very little experience with them myself, but it's first-hand.

The only 3 pieces I ever managed to assemble are on the site in my signature,
http://olografix.org/groucho/mymusic/
Not much, but well, I'm not an artist

THE LAST REVIEWS

Finally I managed to sit down and write the last reviews!
phew"

afleetingspeck_FreeSounds.org Dare 8

The starting sounds are great!
Also like how the radionoise sound was turned into a bird and how this bird then is turned into a rhythmic element - VERY creative.
The noisecollector noise was also very nicely turned to a snappy snare-ish sound.
The application of compression and distortion on to the bassdrum sound also gave this track the best bassdrum (I think mist everyone else, me included, just used the bassdrum sound 'straight out of the box')
Also like the use of the "eh" sound - played at different notes and some chords - simple but beautiful and effective. Afleetingspeck mentions that slightly different processed versions of this sound were used. This is obviously the reason why his mellody sounds so alive and expressive, with what is effectively just the same sample played at different pitches.

This track basically works very well at all levels - starting with the sounds, as I mentioned above, which were all tweaked to produce great quality samples.
These were then used creatively to produce a result that is beautiful and consistent. The piece is also polished to perfection, there are no faults whatsoever that I can perceive.

------------------------------

whatsanickname4u

Right... last but not least whatsanickname4u.
We have been through the fact that this piece does not follow all the dare rules, so I won't go on about it again.
I have posted most of my comments about this piece before, but for completeness I include this piece in the reviews too.
This piece took the dare into a totally different perspective - the creation of a sound scene rather than a music piece. I thank you for that as it is not only a great idea but was also wonderfully executed. I have a few ideas queued up for dares already, but this is certainly a theme I will be using for a future dare.

The whole sound scene was really well constructed. I particularly like the under-water portion.
Well done

I asked others to self-review, so I will post a self-review as well.

Music making is a mix of technique and feeling. Since I had no control over the set of sounds that would be used, I decided to have no pre-concept about the feel of the piece or how it should sound.

I think we were quite lucky with the random 10 sounds that made up this dare. - Straight out of the box, we had a bass-synth sound, a good bassdrum and a few sounds which could be easily processed to create hats and snares.
Although this was great in a way, it also posed a different challenge for me: how to avoid the obvious choices?
Since we are all using the same sounds, and some sounds are obvious choices for certain musical roles... How could I assure my piece would be very different from other entries?

So, my driving force and inspiration was the desire to be different.
Since I had no preconcept of what I was going to create, I drew inspiration from the sounds themselves and looked for techniques which I thought would allow my piece to be different.

I used several techniques to achive this:
1) since there were some obvious choices for percussion sounds in the starting samples, I also opted for creating a few new ones by feeding portions of the cascade and other sounds through a signal chain containing a feedback loop.
This gave me at least a few sounds no one else would have.

2) I know some other participants are quite adept at using stretched sounds, so I avoided that technique.
I did use it on some isolated sounds, but I made sure it was not a main feature on my piece or that any sounds that filled a lot of "space" were not created this way.

3) I did use the basspad, but I tried a few techniques to make it sound different.
I used an amp for distortion and a chorus effect on this sound.
I wanted a break section with short bass notes, but I was not sucesasfull on my attempts with chopping and volume envelopes. So instead I dropped the bass completely on the break and relied on percussion only and other sounds.
This also gave more prominence to the special percussion sounds I created.

4) The sample "18" by CyberiaLainKittyKat was the most challenging to integrate.
I though most other people would chop it up and use portions of it, so I made an effort to integrate the whole unbroken sample, although in the end I made a slight modification to the sequence just in case.

tarrei wrote:
Hey guys,
I also joined the Dare. First thing i do on the forums, i had only used freesound as a kind of database before.

so tell me what you guys think about it. a more detailed description of what i did can be found in the actual Dare Entry thread.

http://soundcloud.com/tarvolyth/freesound-dare-entry

I am trying to hone my skills concerning electronic music and since sampling is a big part of it this was pretty much exactly what i was looking for (I usually play guitar, mostly Rock and Metal, but i love diversity)
so thanks for this great opportunity.

Nice one haha!!