gallion's reach

a minimal and sombre thing. sounds made by software and double bass.

i made this a couple of years back for a film that a friend was making, but in the end we used something more minimal that sat better with a voiceover. i'm not sure the structure's entirely there, but it was made with the idea that we'd lift sections of it when we stuck it with the images, rather than being a 'piece' . even so i always quite liked it for some reason. it was made in cooledit pro = the chiming chords were made by generating sine tones in cooledit, stacking them up to make chords and processing them. can't remember how i got the weird glitchy noises. the rest is all bowed double bass put through various processes, all in cooledit - no hardware was abused. delay, reverb, some pichshifting whch came out sounding ok for once...i can't remember what mic i used for the bass = i think a usb condenser type thing. the inspiration came very much from the film, which was a kind of post apocalyptic landscape film - a bit like la jetee. hence the non cheeriness.

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posted by peterkins (2 comments total)

You know, I listened to this before reading your "more inside" bit and I thought "this sounds like a soundtrack". It made me think of those time-lapse nature films. Some interesting textures in this, although personally I'd have dumped the little "clicks" - your "weird glitchy noises" - because they sound like non-musical/non-deliberate electronic malfunctioning to me and they're not in any kind of time so they kind of throw me a bit. Just a personal observation pk, not criticism. I'd like to hear more of your bass mate - acoustic bass is one of my favourite sounds. Actually, I use a synth version of a double bass quite often on my stuff and...well.....it sounds very much like a synth version of a double bass. If you fancy a collaboration drop me a note sometime.
posted by MajorDundee at 12:44 PM on April 17, 2010

ta. i know what you mean about the glitchy bits - there's a lot of people out there doing that kind of thing in a similar way but pulling it off a lot better (damn them). i'll dig out some stuff with proper bass playing on it and would definitely be up for collaboration...
posted by peterkins at 4:23 PM on April 17, 2010