Freesound Forums
Dare 9 - a different perspective on Christmas - DISCUSSION
Started January 8th, 2012 · 75 replies · Latest reply by Headphaze 12 years, 9 months ago
I'm not sure if this is the correct place to post my link but here's hoping...
http://soundcloud.com/puniho/ghost-of-christmas-leftovers
Not sure what group to post it in either... I posted on Freesound Dares, but am told there is another one..?
Anyhoo... I've been trying to track down the samples I used which is tricky as I tend to process and tweak them a lot and then resample them in Reason Rex loop player. I also started out by seeing what usefull "musical" sounds I could derive from what was available. I used the bottle being blown 120109_13 beer bottle notes 2.WAV by tuning them to pitch and then putting them in an NNXT sampler to get a realy nice panpipe type sound. I used the guitar string low E Low E Guitar String Vibration Interrupted by Packaging Paper.wav for a bass guitar sound. I also played around with the other guitar strumming samples and used the high E string also. The most unlikely source was using a micro sample from the box scrape to make a suprisingly lush pad sound. For drums and percussion it was easier and I used:
S: Scissors1 Shears_home_Jan2012.aif by jgeralyn
P: packaging by schluppipuppie
P: freesound.org dare dare-9 by afleetingspeck
P: box 35cm x 25cm 7cm ROAR by AlienXXX
S: Packaging Paper Tear Short.wav by afleetingspeck
S: Packaging Paper Tear Long.wav by afleetingspeck
S: Packaging Paper Rub Sliding Between Hands.wav by afleetingspeck
S: empty beer bottle in sink 02.wav by klankbeeld
S: empty beer bottle in sink 01.wav by klankbeeld
S: plant sprayer hand pump deaerate 01.wav by klankbeeld
S: socket spanner 01.wav by klankbeeld
S: 120109_18 c.WAV by toiletrolltube
S: 6_Pint_Milk_Bottle_closed_&_open.wav by AlienXXX
P: Dare 9 by toiletrolltube
S: Tape1 duct_home_Jan2012.aif by jgeralyn
S: Packaging Paper Hollow Tube Percussion Hit.wav by afleetingspeck
S: hand tools on carpet floor drop 01.wav by klankbeeld
S: PoppingBubbleWrap_home_Jan2012.aif by jgeralyn
S: Scissors2 Crimped_home_Jan2012.aif by jgeralyn
I made up a pecussion kit in Reason6 Kong adn played the beats with a Korg Padkontrol. I ended up with screes of stuff which I had to heavily edit to fit the timeframe. In the end I only used a small few. But I plan to extend the piece in the future when I have more time. So its definately a work in progress..!
I also made heavy use of the broken music box sample and used the fragments of melody as the basis for the themes in my piece morhping them into God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and Jingle Bells towards the end of the Cranberry Jam session! ;o)
First of all, I'd like to thank every single dare-submitter out there. You all just make the whole process very exciting to be a part of!
In regards to my piece, I originally had downloaded 50 some samples, and when I edited them initially, cut it down to 36 and finally went with 24. I was going to use a non dare-9 sample, but eventually figured out I did not have enough expertise to make this dare sound the way I wanted it to be. (Originally, it was supposed to be a lion-ess and her son with some hardcore stereo effects and then some chase sequence or something of the sort), but, ah! Oh well.
For this one, just like my previous dare, I virtually relied on using Propellerhead Reason with two exceptions: For cleaning up some sounds (although it seems I made them more dirty than clean them up 
) ), I used Adobe Audition, and for stretching a tube-roll sample, I used paul's stretching thing (thanks, AlienXXX) for the didgeridoo-ish instrument at the end; I think it's really only audible at the end when all the beats stop.
Plenty of effects used within reason, most notably the scream distortion unit. Other than that, I used redrum to program the beats (also that pitch changing melody if you can call it that) was simply automating the pitch setting on a redrum's sampler slot.
I can't really remember all the other things I did, but if you have any questions, let me know and I'll get back to you.
AlienXXX: The only part of the dare that got to me were the 144 or so samples uploaded. 
Hard to sift through them all and select them in the beginning especially when I didn't know what sort of composition I was going to make. Other than that, as always, thank you for the dare!
Psst: And thank you for the leniency on the timezone thing.
Dear participants,
Thank you for your entries and also your comments/criticisms of the dare - these are always welcomed and i always try to make the dare interesting and accessible to all. Your comments help me to improve future dares
Here are some of my own comments.
Knowing which samples you have used is important. Not only to give proper credit and thus comply with Freesound and Creative Commons rules, but also (even more so) if you are using copyrighted material. Imagine you are a commercial musician and you start your work with a number of copyrighted samples. In the end you use some but not others but don't keep track... You forget to obtain the rights for one of the samples you have used and release the music piece. The piece is very sucessfull but the sample you forgot to clear gets recognized and you get sued... - it pays to be organized!
Here is my trick to keep track of samples: always keep the original name (or at least the freesound number) on unnaltered samples. On samples processed or derived, always keep that number too. For example, if i used a sample with freesound number 12345 i could rename it to 12345_clap so it is easy to know what it is. Reprocessed samples could be 12345_filtered and 12345_echo.
This also works if more than one sample is used to make a sound, fir example 12345+15432_pad.
It is then very easy for me to go through my project file and find all samples used. In Reason there is even one place where it lists all samples used in the project.
I too was surprised by the large number of submitted samples we got in the end - especially as there were none being submitted initially!
I plan to do this in the future but will limit sample submissions to, say, 5 per user or so. So we get plenty of material to work with... But not too much.
Even i was surprised at the creativity shown by some of the sound submissions and i am sure you all were too. Amazing works were created by you all from these unlikely sources. Well done
Two more reviews as I listen to all the pieces in preparation for my vote.
Puniho - Ghost of Christmas Leftovers With Cramberry Jam
This track is interesting in the sense that it combines a number of different sections - There are non-musical sort of noise-sequencing sections, there are some clearly musical parts, rhythmic heavy sections, etc
All in all it forms a somewhat disjointed set as there is no clear focus or feeling underlying the whole track - each section has its own 'emotion'. But... having said that, you can't expect a lot of structure and order from Christmas leftovers can you? So the track is well named
The transitions between the various sections are well achieved, and although made of very different parts, the track flows very well and alternates between 'busy' and 'sparse' sections. Some of the arranjments of sounds are nothing short of genious.
Overall the track feels like it could be the seed for 3 or 4 separate tracks. If each of the sections was expanded into a full blown track, they could each be polished to a very well achieved track with a specific emotion/feel. As a single track at the moment the different sections struggle a bit for space.
I hope you don't feel discouraged by this critique, what I mean to say is that it feels like you have squeezed a whole nice album into a single track!
By the way... the track is over time. 4mins was the max duration. But I will be lenient this time.
Kyster - And what have you done
Sometimes I write small stories that the pieces evoque in my mind. I invite you to read those while you listen to the piece... see if you can share the same feeling/emotion I get when listening to that particular piece
I really like this piece. Strong emotions, even if not exactly pleasant ones.
This piece tells the story of a troubled man. A man haunted by remorse.
As I heard it for the first time, I could't tell exactly what... I suspect he blames himself for the death of his family...
Often he can't sleep at night. And when he does he wakes up suddenly struggling and bathed in cold sweat.
It all comes slowly to me... like in some kind of spooky paranormal vision.
One night he had too much to drink and had an accident with his wife and two kids on the car. He was the only survivor.
The pain is always there now. And it is always worse at Christmas.
The man finally falls asleep as the broken music box serves as kind of a lullaby... and the music ends...
I mean... what can I add other than the story I just told you?
Again, this is a piece that paints a picture in my mind. Really, a whole story like a small black and white movie. Very powerfull stuff!
I struggle to try and pick this piece apart technically (in fact, I won't!) because everytime I hear it the feeling of the piece is so strong that I can't focus on the technical details.
Just a suggestion for future voting:
There should be a guideline for voting as to what it is we are exactly looking for apart from the mood and feel while we vote. In this dare and the last one, I often found multiple voters highlighting and voting upon different aspects of submissions (which is absolutely, completely OK); and that - even if minutely - felt like there was no certain criteria that matched among the voters while they decided to vote. An alternative idea is that we could, perhaps, have multiple categories and winners in those categories. Examples could be (I'll use dare-9 as an example):
1) Best submissions (pertaining to part 1)
2) Best composition/mood/feel etc. (pertaining to part 2)
3) Best processing (pertaining to part 2)
This, I think gets too complicated, which is why I am more of a fan of the previous version, that is, there should be guidelines (even if just a couple) for ranking the submissions.
Of course, this does not mean we must change the status quo; just my suggestion.
About the number of samples submitted (well, it's not exactly fair that I mention this as I didn't submit any, but): sometimes I found 4 o 5 short samples of the same -say- event. for instance, different variations of rubber sounds, or paper cuts, or whatever, submitted by the same user. I would prefer those to be together in a single, longer, sample.
Anyway it's just a minor issue.
About the voting system: I was also hesitant as to which criteria I had to use. Maybe giving some guidelines is not a bad idea.
And thanks AlienXXX for taking the time to review and leave extensive comments on our tracks. It's the best feedback one can get, most of the time.
Hi everyone
Again, thanks for the comments.
Voting is indeed difficult. Especially when all entries are really good, as it is normally the case.
I really don't want to tell people how to vote. Or what to look for, criteria for voting, etc.
Your 'voters' are your listeners. Comments, i always say, are more useful than votes.
If i said for example, "rhythm is the most important thing when voting". You would vote strongly on the rhytmic pieces and not on the others. Even if the others aee the ones you like the most (for whatever reason, or even for no reason )
No. I want you to tell me and the composers what you like and vote accordingly.
As fir categories for entries and also possibly for voting, that is something to definetely look at when we have more entrants.
I agree the votong system this time is a bit complicated. May not even be exactly 'fair'. But i wanted it to be different, unnexpected... Even a bit random
I think it is part of the fun. But happy to not do it again if you disagree.
Thank you for your leniency Alienxxx with regards the time thingy. I must admit I kind of forgot about that as I was putting it together in it's final(not) form at 4am in the morning..! You are pretty close with your sumation of my mini-opus being fragmented and with different moods. It was partially intentional = the aim being for it to have the same fragmetory nature as a dream has.
Regarding the number of samples - I liked having the choice, My own contribution could have easily been one or two long samples but I always try to be consise and find the bits that loop well. I've often felt it's a pity that freesound files dont support loop markers.
On the voting issue, I agree with what has been said but I dont think we should take it too seriously! I certianly dont, although I do value peoples thoughts and opinions.
Some of the tracks I really liked for their creativity seemed to be let down by poor quality sound. I would be interested to know what sound systems people are using to both make and listen to the tracks. It makes a huge difference if you are using studio monitors or cheap tinny speakers in your PC..! My own setup is I guess middle of the road: M Audio Delta card through Event Project6 monitors, it's pretty good and it's affordable for me.
For my music making i use my stereo hifi and its speakers, whenever possible. Not ideal, i know, but better than the option which is to listen through headphones, as i often have to in order to insulate myself from others' noise (and them from mine!)
This will probably continue to be the case until i win the lottery and can afford some monitors.
Setting the rules and 'choosing' the samples for a dare can be a tricky business: you want to include and appeal to everyone. Absolute freedom would make the entries so different they would be impossoble to 'judge' and vote for... So the rules bring in a bit of order, but not too much
Puniho wrote:
I would be interested to know what sound systems people are using to both make and listen to the tracks. It makes a huge difference if you are using studio monitors or cheap tinny speakers in your PC..! My own setup is I guess middle of the road: M Audio Delta card through Event Project6 monitors, it's pretty good and it's affordable for me.
When i compose i use a pair of sennheiser HD 201 headphones. They're cumfy and blockes out unwanted noise (i've got wife kids and a dog to deliver just that 
). I use the same headphones when listening. That way i hear everything.
Other than that, i use some 5.1 creative speakers, when i'm alone at home.
As for the soundcard, it's just an ordinary creative live card thrown into my linux box. It works for me and on top of that, it's not as expensive as it could be
Puniho wrote:
I would be interested to know what sound systems people are using to both make and listen to the tracks. It makes a huge difference if you are using studio monitors or cheap tinny speakers in your PC..! My own setup is I guess middle of the road: M Audio Delta card through Event Project6 monitors, it's pretty good and it's affordable for me.
I just use my toshiba L300 laptop with the standard sound-cart and a set of cheep headphone €20,--, Philips SPH 2000. And the are realy good. I use theme for my field-recordings to. Do not spent to much money if not nessesery!! 
When I'm alone and I can turn up the volume a bit, I use a pair of Cambridge Soundworks speakers. They're not top of line but they work well for me.
the headphone that I have currently are cheap and poor quality. it's hard to do any good work with them.
klankbeeld wrote:Puniho wrote:
I would be interested to know what sound systems people are using to both make and listen to the tracks. It makes a huge difference if you are using studio monitors or cheap tinny speakers in your PC..! My own setup is I guess middle of the road: M Audio Delta card through Event Project6 monitors, it's pretty good and it's affordable for me.I just use my toshiba L300 laptop with the standard sound-cart and a set of cheep headphone €20,--, Philips SPH 2000. And the are realy good. I use theme for my field-recordings to. Do not spent to much money if not nessesery!!
Well, all I can say is that when I got myself a good audio card adn bi-amped monitor speakers the difference I noticed was nothing short of staggering! It's like putting on glasses if you are very short-sighted - everything becomes crystal clear. But as well as all the good things you do notice the poor quality sound issues you weren't aware of before. You can pick up good sound cards and monitors pretty cheap now if you shop around.
I have long suspected that a lot of Freesounders dont have good sound setups. This explains why some really bad and ugly sounds are popular and yet quite often high quality beautifuly recorded sounds go unoticed. But I guess it depends on what the end use will be, how important this is.
Puniho wrote:Well, all I can say is that when I got myself a good audio card adn bi-amped monitor speakers the difference I noticed was nothing short of staggering! It's like putting on glasses if you are very short-sighted - everything becomes crystal clear. But as well as all the good things you do notice the poor quality sound issues you weren't aware of before. You can pick up good sound cards and monitors pretty cheap now if you shop around.
I have long suspected that a lot of Freesounders dont have good sound setups. This explains why some really bad and ugly sounds are popular and yet quite often high quality beautifuly recorded sounds go unoticed. But I guess it depends on what the end use will be, how important this is.
You better do not listen to my sounds and recordings than. It will hurt your HQ ears.
Everyone, if this is "tl;dr" for you, I will not blame you for skipping my whole post.
Puniho
Well, all I can say is that when I got myself a good audio card adn bi-amped monitor speakers the difference I noticed was nothing short of staggering! It's like putting on glasses if you are very short-sighted - everything becomes crystal clear. But as well as all the good things you do notice the poor quality sound issues you weren't aware of before...
I have long suspected that a lot of Freesounders dont have good sound setups. This explains why some really bad and ugly sounds are popular and yet quite often high quality beautifuly recorded sounds go unoticed. But I guess it depends on what the end use will be, how important this is.
Which is why I originally had an idea to suggest that either users or the uploader be able to tag/categorize the sounds as low, medium, or high quality recordings (or synths). While what you say is true, that the intended end use might dictate the sounds being chosen based on their quality - consider it my lack of foresigiht - I can see no use-case in which a user might advocate for a poor quality sound in lieu of a medium or high quality sound. A poor quality sound can very rarely be made high quality, but achieving the opposite is much easier. Perhaps, that might deter some users from uploading sounds thinking no one would download them, but the end user is benefitted greatly by such categorization. Just my two cents.
My rig (I am soon going to add this as a feature request, I mean to be able to put on your profile your setup, your gear, equipment etc, so others can see and learn): Logitech speakers (I think Z320; this subwoofer is craaayyzay; these are not studio monitors, though), and I have a Sony headphone (MDR-V150), which - although OK - actually gives me quite a nice freq. range. I initially (for a couple recordings) used my Sony Vaio laptop VPCEB36GM inbuilt mic, I later got a Behringer C-1U condenser mic. I don't think I've done any recording with it yet, but hopefully I'm able to get something good out of it!
About the voting:
Bebops:
sometimes I found 4 o 5 short samples of the same -say- event.
I agree, and I am myself guilty of doing that, although, when I was uploading samples, I thought more about the use of the samples outside of the dare (in which case combining too many samples within one recording would make it difficult to tag, I guess. Maybe that's just a stupid nuance on my part.
)
AlienXXX
If i said for example, "rhythm is the most important thing when voting". You would vote strongly on the rhytmic pieces and not on the others.
Haha, it seems I put my point across too strongly. What I really meant was for you (or the dare moderator) to point out, in general, the things we should consider in addition to the piece as a whole. It is much less about imposing a criteria than to simply point out "hey, don't forget this aspect of the composition, too, please! it seems we overlooked it a bit while voting." In that regard, the whole idea of voting for a piece would at least be made to seem comparable to the rest of the entries. I say this not out of serious concern of voting, but to ensure that all of us get an evaluation from different listeners on the same level, and that, I think can only help us improve on that particular criterion. Of course, getting comments on every track would be nice, but at times, due to the number of entries and other commitments we have, it becomes rather tedious to listen to each piece carefully, dissect it, and then give comments on it. Instead of that, if there are general patterns, say for processing, or for blending, it's very easy to regard the piece as a whole and say, OK, I liked the sounds and how they were changed, I like how they fit into the mix, I like the whole thing. The scoring process would be something like: 1 pt for processing, 1 pt for blending, and 8 pts for the sequence/composition as a whole. Thus, my vote could go something likek 1/0/7 = 9 out of 10.
I do believe that because - realistically speaking - the only votes we get are from the entrants themselves, and because most of us do have (even if the slightest bit) of the technical knowledge of sounds and compositions, assigning some scores based on the suggested scenario above might not be too difficult. If we do not know the technical side of things, then even better. It allows us to learn from how others perceived it from the technical aspect.
My biggest reason in suggesting these is that perhaps I have a different expectations of these dares.
1) It is a challenge to improve myself and my knowledge in terms of sounds,
2) It allows me to compare my own perception of my work with different minds and different perspectives.
To understand those perceptions, we need comments and reviews, like AlienXXX mentions, but since at times they are hard to get or give, a voting system which makes commenting and reviewing easy, to me, seems the best bet.
Of course, it's very possible that I have this whole thing jumbled up. Perhaps the only reason to these dares is having fun! (Which I absolutely do, mind you!)
About equipment and quality:
I agree with Puniho about the equipment. When I got my monitors (though they're some really cheap 'ESi' ones), my ears just opened. Better gear usually means a step forward, just as in anything really. If you have played any instrument in your life, you'll know what I mean. I started with a crappy chinese clarinet, and the day I could try my friend's Buffet (or whatever brand it was) I was like "maaann, this wasn't supposed to be that hard!" hehe.
Luckily, as Puniho says, today you can find good cheap "pro-sumer" stuff. No need to spend tons of money. In my case (and I know I'm not alone here) my problem is time. I rarely have the oportunity to use those monitors because I share the room with my wife (works home) and kids, besides I have a full time job outside, so I can only make music maybe 2-4 hours per week. So I use a couple of Audio Technica ATH-M40fs headphones which I love. Again quite cheap and very flat response compared to my previous headphones. Also a Presonus Firebox soundcard, which is not really that good (noisy preamps and such) but is lasting waaaaay longer than I expected (damn, I cannot justify buying a new one ). When I'm away I use my laptop with it's internal soundcard and some small senheiser headphones (dj stuff, bassy, but I'm getting used to them and they sound good to me).
About the recording quality here in freesound, I also agree sometimes you have to fight to find a good recording, but because of the way I like to work, sometimes I WANT low quality, pops, crackles and noise. Once they are properly mangled, they make a good starting point for textures, backgrounds and percussive sounds...
Hi everyone,
I dont have any quality in my system. Lol
Im using an old pentium with the onboard soundcard.
I need my livingroom hifi to get any sound at all (no speakers in computer), my headphones are chinese crap I got for 2,99 and they are cracking like hell
And all my recordings I do with my phone that from all my equipment was the most expensive.....
Would like to create a nice studio, but then I also need to win the lottery first.
This is all I can afford at the moment, but it doesnt make it less fun......
Anyway, I just started with this so maybe later I will buy some better stuff.
And about the voting....
I think it was oke like this, since I dont have any experiance in making music or modding sounds
I dont know what to do else than just listen and vote for what I like/hear.
Maybe, on the next dare there can be some sort of assigment, so we are all working to the same point and can vote on who got closest.
The pieces for this dare were all so different, and that made it hard to vote for me.
Hey escortmarius!
I do like it when the pieces are very different. For one of the dares we even had only 10 samples which we all had to use. The resulting entries were still very different
I can try to set a 'theme' for the pieces, although i am more likely to impose technical limitations/challenges and let everyone come up with the kind of music they feel like.
If you have any specific ideas fir dares you would like to see, send me a pm.
