Is this piece too weird? It came out of some free form experimenting with a free VST plugin called Delay Lama. It’s one of the most unusual synths I’ve seen. It simulates the sound of a human voice reminiscent of Tuvan throat or overtone singing. You have control over the pitch, the size of the vocal tract and the vowel being sung.
Of course I had to automate it in completely inhuman ways to make it clearly still a machine (am I threatened?)
What makes the plugin so unusual is that it also visually represents the singer. As you manipulate the synth’s output an animated monk’s face follows right along. It’s fun to play with and watch during playback.
It works on both windows and mac and should work in any VST host although I hosted it in Sonar. I used propellerhead’s Reason, in rewire mode, to do the percussion. I think the percussion options in Reason exceed that of Sonar by a good deal.
So I ended up with with a short, world-music inspired bit of electronic music.
Happy Listening: newage-sewage.mp3
Suzie | 01-Aug-07 at 7:47 am | Permalink
LOVE IT!!!
A friend of mine also uses this plug-in and it is TONS of fun to play with.
I like the depth, range and richness of the Delay Lama. It is most definitely one of the best plug-ins period.
The way you put this together is very nice. Just like “Elephant Family” it seems almost chaotic on top but there is a structure there holding the piece together - almost imperceptibly.
The layers seem to melt into each other like the strands in a tapestry. They can be heard separately, but fit together to form the whole.
Very nice job, Dave!! Can’t wait for the next one.
dave | 01-Aug-07 at 2:01 pm | Permalink
Chaos is fun, no?
I think the chaos results mostly from the fact that I (1) played it, line by line, on a keyboard, which I suck at and (2) I messed with the pitch pend and modulation wheels while I was playing which makes it more awkward.
But then, to tame the freeform nature I added drums. You can add drums to a roomful of crying babies and suddenly it’s gone from awful noise to awful music.
Finally, the song is a simple AABA form and I took the drums out around the transition between each section. I think this makes it piece teeter on chaos because it sounds like the drummer was improvising to a robot choir and kept getting all “wtf?” at the changes and had to listen to the new part to figure out what he should be drumming.
Of course there was no actual drummer and it was just sequenced that way so it’s totally fake, but I like it just the same.
Robyn | 11-Oct-07 at 11:06 am | Permalink
This reminded me of a band called Yat-Kha — a Tuvan throat singing punk (sorta) band. Yup. I would love to see them live! Actually, they’re covers are the best — I’ve heard them on their website. Tuvan throat singing cover songs like “Black Magic Woman” and “Love Will Tear Us Apart” among others.
Anyway… Dave, I thought this was great. Keep it up!
dave | 15-Oct-07 at 5:48 pm | Permalink
Thanks for checking my stuff out. And thanks for the pointer to Yat-Kha. I’ll have to check them out. From your description it sounds like something I might really dig.