I've been speaking with Bjorn of The Covert Operators on and off for the last few weeks about his latest Max4Live project, the "Clip Mapper."  He described it to me in broad terms but I must admit that the details a were a bit fuzzy for me.  I'm not a Max/MSP guy by any stretch of the imagination, so very often I need to see these devices in action to truly understand their potential.  And what potential there is!  Here's the description in Bjorn's words:

"Clip Mapper is a M4L Device that allows the user to assign 16 parameters to a clip and recall those parameters when an assigned clip is triggered.

The 8 knobs and 8 buttons on this device can be controlled using MIDI Learn or Automap. The knobs and buttons can be assigned to any device on any track. You could for example have all your bass control parameters assigned to Clip 2 on Track 2 and all your beat control parameters assigned to Clip 1 on Track 1. By triggering either of those clips, the chosen parameters will be available to control with the Clip Mapper Device.

This allows you to free up many knobs and buttons on your physical controllers. And you don't need to memorize how to recall the correct controller presets during a live situation.

The device is free and may be edited, shared, improved, dismantled or destroyed.

You are not allowed to re-sell the device or re-release it under an identical name. Linking must be done to this page and not to the files, as the files and this page will be updated for each new version. Currently it comes as 2 versions. One for MIDI Tracks and one for audio tracks."

So there you have it, a super-practical and ridiculously useful M4L device that will allow you to keep your parameters organized across different clips, giving you the ability to recycle hardware knobs for parameters that you actually need access to.

The Clip Mapper is an excellent example of someone using an advanced tool to fill a pre-existing need and make peoples' music production/performance time more fruitful.  While it's cool that people will inevitably be releasing crazy effects networks and feedback loopers using M4L, it's this practical kind of thing that excites me the most.  The fact that it's released for free is just the icing on the cake!
 

You can download the Clip Mapper and watch a tutorial video here:  http://thecovertoperators.org/Max/MSP-Patches/clip-mapper (please respect the terms of use mentioned above!)

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Matt Pacyga: Since my first rock'n roll band in high school, I have been into music and sound. I still remember the first time I took apart an old boom-box and used a tape adapter plugged into an effects pedal for my first guitar amp. In college I worked on a stage crew learning live mixing and recording. At that same time I played with a professional punk rock band called Ace Troubleshooter. After my college adventure and my leave from Ace I ventured into interactive media by learning Flash.

My first sound design project was for Nike-Bauer creating original music and sound effects for the web. I fell in love. Since then I have worked for multiple agencies in Minneapolis, Minnesota on brands such as Adult Swim, Neopets, Cartoon Network and Cadbury to list a few.

Audio in the pack: I have included a collection of foley sounds used for breaking bones or smashing objects. Use them however you see fit. The technique I used was setting up a dead silent space in my kitchen and used various microphones to capture each detail of the crunch or splat. You can check out my personal site: mattpacyga.com or follow me on twitter: @plague88  

20 Crunches and Splats: Download: http://mattpacyga.com/audio/twsfx/twsfx_mp.zip

Nick Maxwell:  I've been involved with sound design as a serious hobby for 10 years now, focusing on both musical sound creation as well as effects for multimedia projects.  In 2009, I started nickstutorials.com where I provide tutorials for sound design in Ableton Live, with lessons planned for other music software in the near future.  I am interested in contributing to game and film projects (portfolio at nickmaxwell.net), and I also offer one-on-one tutoring for music production.  If you'd like more info, please feel free to contact me at either of my websites, or find me on twitter under the username @AbletonTutor.

Audio in the pack:  I've provided a number of contact microphone recordings in both unprocessed and processed forms.  These samples would work well as individual stinger layers, ambiences, and even sci-fi sounds.

ContactMicEffects Download Link:  http://nickstutorials.com/FreeSamples/ContactMicEffects.zip

Gate Combined with Effects Automation

Although generally used as a corrective device to remove excess noise between sounds like drum hits or guitar strums, the gate has creative applications that aren’t so immediately obvious.  On the basic side of things, many people will use a gate to create an unnatural, but rhythmic, silence after a drum hit.  This works especially well on acoustic drum loops which include natural room ambience.  Using a Gate in that situation will combine the expected “live recording” feel with a pleasing “swing” created by the abrupt silences.  My favorite use for the Gate is to first employ the above method on an acoustic drum loop, but then to add effects automation which is activated every time the gate silences the audio.  For example, I might create a Simple Delay device in Live that is off by default, has medium feedback, 50% dry/wet, and a very short delay time that is measured in milliseconds rather than note divisions.  Just before the Gate silences the audio, I automate the “Device On” parameter of the delay to the “on” position to make the effect audible.  Just before the next note hit, I set “Device On” to “off” and continue in this fashion for each drum hit.  The audible result, if subtle enough, is an effect that sounds almost like a passing tone between the original sounds.  To preserve this effect, it’s important that the delay is not audibly trailing off over other drums hits; this is meant to be a small timbral change rather than a typical effect.

Frequency Shifter

This device that was included in Ableton Live 8, but I think most DAWs will have their own version of this technique so you should be able to employ it in your software of choice.  The idea with the Frequency Shifter is that you can add a down- or up-tuned version of any incoming audio to the original signal.  While this sounds straightforward at first, the Frequency Shifter is an amazingly complex and sometimes unpredictable tool for creating new timbres.  The first bit of hidden complexity involves beating waveforms and phase:  By making very small tuning adjustments (a few cents), the shifted version and original version of the audio will tend to beat against one another which creates all kinds of interesting phase changes and chorusing effects.  In Live, the Frequency Shifter also includes an built-in LFO that can change the tuning variation so you can morph the beating effect over time.  With a fast enough LFO rate, the timbral shift can be quite striking!

Waveform Micro-Editing

My last recommendation is a technique rather than a device.  All too often we forget the power available from just a basic audio editor coupled with some decent raw waveforms as source material.  Zoom in a bit on the audio so you can see things on the level of milliseconds rather than seconds or minutes.  Now just start chopping away at bits of the audio without listening to the effects of your work.  This is one time where trusting your eyes over your ears can render some amazing results.  Don’t just limit yourself to deleting parts of the waveform either; try mini crossfades, stitching pieces of previously unrelated audio together, random detuning, etc.  The results will be anything but predictable at first because many of us aren’t used to editing on this level of detail, and that’s part of what’s so exciting about this technique.

Regardless of whether you’re doing sound design it’s a great idea to zoom in on different waveforms in order to simply observe what’s happening in the audio.  Patterns will emerge, bits of repetition that don’t necessarily correspond with audible instrument changes.  This is the act of seeing rather than hearing timbre.  Such experimentation was a vital lesson for my development as a sound designer when I first tried it years ago, so I’d be remiss not to recommend it to others!

Filter

Perhaps the most obvious tool to mention, and yet it’s so underutilized in my opinion. While many contemporary pieces of electronic music feature a filter sweeping out low or high frequencies to signal a transition, it’s rare that composers take the tool any further than that. My favorite example of someone who goes that extra mile is Amon Tobin. If you pay close attention to some of his tracks, you’ll hear what sounds like entire chains of different filter types all morphing over one another. With the basically infinite computing resources we have access to in modern DAWs, it pays to try this for yourself. I like to use the instrument rack device in Ableton Live for this, chaining 3 or 4 filters together at different starting cutoff and resonance settings. Two of the filters might be band-pass filters while the other two are high-pass and low-pass. I map one macro knob on the instrument rack to the cutoffs of all the filters so that one knob movement creates an insanely complex morphing of the sound. This takes our old friend, the filter sweep, into entirely new territory. Add in the morphing filter capabilities of a tool like Sampler, and I guarantee that you’ll come up with a cool timbre.

LFO

The typical discussion involves using one LFO to, for instance, wobble the pitch or cutoff frequency of a bassline to obtain a Dubstep sound. The possibilities of these powerful modulation devices go light years beyond such basic applications, though.  If you load up an instance of Sampler, you’ll see that the modulation section features three LFOs, one hard-wired to four different destinations while the other two are freely assignable to two simultaneous destinations each. If you look at the destination options for the freely assignable LFOs, you’ll see not only a list of typical things like filter and and pitch but also the settings of the other LFOs. Try setting up a chain of three LFOs, each altering the rate of another until you get to the last one in the chain (which might be assigned to cutoff). The result will be a modulation waveform that is FAR more complex than a simple sine or square wave. You don’t have to stop there: Each of the LFOs can be assigned in varying amounts, too. Try assigning both LFO2 and LFO3 to the rate of LFO1, but use differing amounts on each. The sky’s the limit on modulation complexity, and you can really establish a unique sound by digging just a little deeper.

Crossfade Looping a Sample

This one is a little less obvious, but it’s given me such interesting and varied results that I thought I should share it. In order for this setting to actually affect the perceived timbre of the sound, the sample itself must be very short so that it creates a simple tone while it loops.

Using Sampler as an example again: One of the options in the waveform view allows you to set a very short fade in/fade out on the ends of the looping sample.

Assuming you’ve chosen a short enough segment of audio to loop, altering the loop crossfade will smooth out or roughen the ends of the waveform in a way that drastically effects timbre. Experimentation will pay dividends here.  I’ll leave you with these three options for now, and in the next post we'll take a look at some more!

Rather than starting out with complex patches, I start writing by quickly creating some basic sounds that can be used to map out the composition. As the song begins to develop and I get ideas for transitions and other sections, the little flourishes of each patch naturally occur.

For instance, a bassline might sound too repetitive, but I’d rather not change its notes or timing because they work with the concept of the song. The logical thing to do in this situation is to add some timbral changes to the bass patch in order to change it up a bit while leaving the composition untouched. Perhaps I’ll add a filter sweep or LFO wobble on every other quarter note to make up for the lack of melodic variation.

This principle extends to sound design for film and video games as well. For example, I might be creating an ambient soundbed that will establish the sonic environment in a particular scene. There’s no point in starting with an incredibly dense, canned ambience only to later realize that it clashes with the dialogue track. Instead, I would start with something simple and build on it until I achieved just the right level of background interest while still leaving room for dialogue, foley, and other sound elements.The examples above serve to illustrate just how important it is to start simple. Let your sounds develop nuance in response to what the composition (whether it be a song or sound effects track) is calling for. Just because you have access to a hundred different morphing filter types and multi-step modulation envelopes doesn’t mean you need to use them all of the time. In my opinion, a really classy composition will show restraint so that the complex parts can really shine and exist with a purpose when it’s time to ramp up the intensity.

Instead, many of us started off with the relatively infinite power of multiple plugin instances, trying to stuff as many bleeps, bloops, and huge synth stabs as possible into our compositions.  This ease of loading up many new sounds (which are often presets that contain far too much harmonic content in the first place) can lead to mixes that are choked with lots of frequencies at high volumes.  It’s easy to take all of this power for granted, choosing to load up yet another instrument rather than improve the ones that are already present.  With the addition of each new significant element, the final mix becomes harder to lock down after the composition is completed.  If you’re having to do lots of dramatic cuts and boosts to fit each new sound into the overall mix, there may be too much happening at once.

Sticking with a small, yet expressive set of instruments will allow these few sounds to fill up the frequency space and tell the story through a well thought out composition.  Next time you add a new sound to a piece, question whether it is truly necessary.  Will it add something significant, or is it being thrown into the song simply because it’s easy to do so?  I’ll end this by saying that I wrote this post as much for myself as anyone else who may benefit.  If you have more advice to add to this, please do so in the comments section!

Today’s sequencing software, with its ability to play back predetermined automation, is rife with possibilities for generating great sounds in semi-random ways.  The basic idea is that the user feeds a continuous stream of sound into the sequencer while various bits of automation are triggering different chains of effects processing.  The audible results are then recorded and stored for later organization.  One goal here is that you can set up a sound-generating system that takes care of itself, allowing you to step away and take care of other things.  In other words, you’re able to generate a sizable library of  sounds while you’re out of the studio.

So how should one go about this process?  My preferred method involves the following elements:

• Timbrally diverse source audio, generally in the form of field samples
• A way for that audio to play back continuously in your sequencer of choice
• Effects and other processing that will be used to process the source audio
• Automation which will be used to trigger the various effects processors
• A way to record the processed audio so that it can be analyzed and archived later on

My method for doing this in Ableton Live is as follows:

The first task is to determine what the source audio will be.  I prefer to work with field samples when doing sound design because I love the complex timbres that the real world produces with very little effort required on my part:  I merely have to power on my Edirol R09 and let the world do its thing.  If you prefer synthesized sounds, that’s fine, too.  As long as the chosen source is able to be triggered from your sequencer, you’re set.

The next step is to instantiate your favorite sampler or synthesizer plugin in the sequencer and load it up with the sounds that will represent the source audio.  In my case, I dump a whole variety of environmental field recordings into Sampler’s keyzones.  After that, I just create a sequence of different note hits which trigger the samples.  Alternatively, I might just drag the audio files directly into the sequencer and skip the Sampler if I don’t need to take advantage of that device’s features.

Next on the list is to determine what effects you will automate.  Ableton Live features a really helpful rack interface which can be used to host multiple chains of effects all processing the same audio.  Simply load up an effects rack on your source audio track and start building up different chains.  For instance, Chain 1 might be a huge Reverb patch going into a Compressor and then into a Grain Delay.  Chain 2 might consist solely of Delays, creating a wash of differently-timed bits of sound flying all over the stereo spectrum.  Once you have the chains set up, turn on the “Chain” button and restrict each chain to its own value.

Now is the time to set up a loop containing automation which will trigger the effects chains.  In the arrange view, create an automation lane for your rack’s chain selector.  Anywhere along the timeline where you want a specific set of effects triggered, you can click in an automation point with a value that corresponds to the desired chain.  Now you can make some decisions about how quickly you want your effects to be triggered.  For instance, you could trigger the chains at a rapid-fire pace or allow them to process your source audio in a slower way.  No matter what you do here, you should now have your source audio playing back in the arrange view with the effects rack automation playing over it, creating different and interesting variations that continually evolve as the source audio progresses.  The more diverse the source sounds and effects chains are, the more distinct the timbres you’ll get in the resulting audio.  Therefore, it pays to spend some time creating truly spectacular effects racks, field samples, synth patches, etc.

The last and easiest part is capturing the result.  In Live, simply create an audio track and set its input to “Resampling.”  Hit record on the new audio track and everything will start playing back and being recorded.  At this point you should be able to walk away from the studio and let this process do its thing for a while.  When you come back you’ll have a big chunk of audio that you can easily scan through, chop up, and create a vast library from in just a day or two of work.

I hope this post has given you some ideas on creating new and inspiring source sounds.  These new timbres should give you plenty of inspiration to further shape and process them, generating new drums, melodic sounds, and countless other creations!

Drag a piece of music that you admire into your sequencer and take a look at the waveform, chopping the audio at major transitional points in the track. For instance, you’ll want a chop wherever a chorus or verse begins.  Of course, not all music is composed in such a traditional way but you see what I mean.  Once you’re done with this, go back through the piece and think about why you like it.  Pay attention to not only the structure but the sounds that were chosen to express the melodic and rhythmic ideas.  Are the sounds timbrally simple or complex?  Are there lots of modulation effects on the panning and levels, or is the mix relatively static?  Also consider whether the mix is well-executed to begin with:  There are countless pieces out there that are nothing special in terms of mixdown but absolutely brilliant as music, and this can inspire you to move forward with your writing without needlessly fretting over technical details.  As you ask yourself these questions, try mimicking the elements of the song by writing your own material underneath the original in the sequencer.  The most likely result of this process is that you’ll get inspired, going off in a completely different direction and ideally ending up with an original piece.

Take some time off from composition and focus on sound design. I find that my studio time is spent either composing music or designing sounds.  I’m usually only in the mood to do one or the other, so I just go with it and take the path of least resistance.  I find that I get far more done by simply doing what I feel like doing rather than fighting my writer’s block.  If you try this, you’ll end up with a library full of unique sounds which will further inspire you to write a complete piece of music.

Limit your palette of tools. Nothing kills creativity faster than unlimited options, and we now live in a time where those options are vast, indeed.  While we’re lucky to have so many wonderful tools at our disposal, this utopia of possibilities often leads to creative paralysis.  A question I’ve posed to my mailing list goes something like this:  “Do you really need 8 different delays?”  Your plugin folder can really benefit from a deep cleaning!  Keep only the synths and effects that truly inspire you to create.  I once made the decision to limit myself to only the native effects and instruments inside of Ableton Live for a whole year, and during that period I became proficient enough with those tools that I could achieve basically any sound I wanted.  Forget all the silly forum posts talking about how, for example, Live’s native reverb doesn’t sound “pro” enough and just go write some music.  If a lack of presets is what you’re unhappy about, see point number two above.

Turn your usual approach to composition on its head. For instance, why not try writing the transitions first?  Spend some time creating a drum roll with all kinds of complex ambient sounds building up to a climax underneath.  After you develop the transition into something that sounds good on its own, you may be compelled to write the parts that come before and after it in order to complete the musical idea.  This is similar to how cadences work in music theory, but instead of the V leading back to the I, the drum buildup leads into a particular rhythmic progression which can in turn serve as the backbone of an entire track.  In short, you can use this method to trick yourself into getting inspired to write a whole piece!

Forget useless or stifling expectations that you’ve created for yourself. This one is pretty personal for me, but I’m putting it out there because I believe many other people have experienced the same thing.  For a long time I struggled with an insanely limited idea of my musical identity, thinking that I had to write in a particular genre.  This was the result of an idealized notion that I set up for myself long before, a notion that was sustained by the people I chose to surround myself with at the time.  Rarely did I stop and consider just why I had this expectation of myself, and later I realized that my interest in the genre had faded long before I stopped (halfheartedly) writing it.  Once I figured out how I was sabotaging myself, I started to write what I actually wanted to hear.  My productivity increased tenfold and I even wrote enough material to release an album on a small label.  The lesson to be learned here is simple to acknowledge but often hard to put into practice:  Don’t hesitate to evolve your sound to match what you truly desire, leaving useless ideas about what you’re “supposed” to be doing at the studio door.

This is a topic that’s near and dear to my heart because writer’s block is a big problem for me.   I suspect that at least some of you will find something to relate to in this post, so feel free to write about your own experiences in the comments section.

Have you ever run into overcomplexity while arranging your latest piece of music?

It happens to me all the time. It’s that phase of composition where you’ve got all kinds of automation going on, sweeping a filter here and increasing an effect trail there.

In addition to automation data, you may have a dizzying array of chopped and rearranged clips of audio and MIDI.

While this isn’t much of an issue when you’re fleshing out an idea that’s merely an 8 bar skeleton of a track, the waters get muddier when you start adding more detail. At some point it all becomes a bit overwhelming to look at, perhaps even hindering your progress as you perpetually second-guess your previous decisions. “Just one more tweak here, I swear!” is a familiar refrain in my studio.

Of course, you’ll want to save a copy with all the automation and other tweaks intact in case you absolutely need to come back and change something. This process gives a sense of finality to the choices you previously made, etching them in stone and (hopefully) making it easier move forward.

As an added bonus, all those effects and bits of automation will be printed to audio so your processor will thank you.  Another huge benefit is that clicking around the arrangement interface will become much easier after you get rid of those tiny slices of data that like to get in the way of your cursor!

Using Ableton Live as an example, I achieve these bounces by simply “freezing” and “flattening” them.

Freezing is a temporary function which creates an audio file in the background and plays it in place of the original track.

Once a track is frozen, I then flatten it:  This process destructively replaces the entire track and its contents with an audio track containing a clip.

These operations can be carried out in both the Session and Arrange views, so the program is pretty flexible in that respect.

So what system should one use for developing the skill of critically listening to one’s environment?  In my view, any sound can be helpfully broken up into 3 separate pieces:  pitch, timbre, and envelope.  There are other ways to look at it, but this is how I view sound on a conceptual level when I’m trying to reverse-engineer it for my own experiments.

1) Pitch represents the perceived note at which the sound is playing.  Some sounds are “tonal,” and some are more “atonal.”  Tonal means that there is a strongly identifiable fundamental frequency in the sound, and atonal means that the frequency content of the sound is more scattered and thus its fundamental frequency is harder to identify.  An example of a tonal sound would be the resonant frequency of a car interior while it’s driving down the road. 

Next time you’re driving, try humming the note that your car is generating and then try harmonizing with it.  I’m not much of a singer, so I tend to do this when I’m alone in the car. 

Drums and percussion are the most obvious examples of atonal sounds, although some drums sustain for a long enough time that they become quite tonal over their playback.  In your surrounding environment, good examples of atonality might also include the rustling of leaves or metal scraping on concrete.

2) Timbre is the frequency content of a sound other than its perceived pitch.  In my video tutorials, I often like to use the example of a horn and a piano playing the same note.  If you listened to one playing right after the other with a blindfold on, you could still distinguish the two instruments and this is because of timbre.  Timbre is often identified with descriptive terms such as “metallic,” “dull,” or “wooden,” to name just a few helpful adjectives.

3) Envelope is the last ingredient, referring to the temporal characteristics of the sound.  Does it fade in gradually or come in at full blast right away?  Does it sustain at the same volume as the initial attack, or does it drop off in level?  Does it fade out gradually or come screeching to a halt?  Envelope is vitally important to distinguishing between sounds, and along with timbre helps us to identify the source of the sound.

And there you have it, a basic rundown of a simple and effective system for categorizing sound in your mind.  Although it is by no means comprehensive, it will get you well on the way.  Many sound designers and music enthusiasts will likely already employ this system (or one like it) in their daily listening.  If you’re not one of them, try challenging yourself to truly experience your aural environment in this way.  You’ll find that this habit pays in dividends once it’s time to sit down and make some noises of your own.