Week 7 - CC1

The exercise for this week was to experience “Sampling”; particularly using the software “Reason” and some audio editors.
To generate a vocal track, I used the software “Sh** Talker”. The phonetic structure was the quote “We become what we behold. We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us” from Marshall McLuhan. This statement generated by the mentioned software could be found here.
Using Peak LG, I split the basic wave file into 5 different pieces. My aim was to assign each piece to an octave in the sampler and have them all used.
To insert the sample into NN19, I simply opened my wave files in the sampler and adjusted their key zones and root notes as shown in the picture.
1st sample was the part “We become what we behold” which is presented below. I assigned this sample to the octaves -1 to 0. In other words, the starting key of this sample is C-1 and the finishing one was C0. The actual tone is set to C0 therefore all the notes from C-1 to B-1 have lower frequencies compared to the original sample.
The picture of the NN19 Reason sampler is as shown. As obvious in the picture, I set no loop for this particular sample. Here is SAMPLE 1
this sample also has its loop set as off.

The 2nd sample was the part “We shape our tools”. Set to the octave starting from C#0 to C1, Again the root note is set to the highest note of the key zone, in this case C1. Here is SAMPLE 2.


3rd sample says “And thereafter”. Its key zone is C#1 to C2 and its loop is set to FW (forward loop). Root note is C2. Here is SAMPLE 3

4th sample is: “Our tools shape”. It is set from C#2 to C3 and its root note is C3. Here is SAMPLE 4.








5th sample is the word “Us”. The key zone is C#3 to C4, its root note is C4 and its loop is set to FW-BW (forward-backward loop) Here is SAMPLE 5

The process of recording was just to play notes and utilise the different effects, the pitch shift and modulation controllers and so forth.
At the end, the Reason device (NN19) and the sequencing track assigned to it looked like the picture above:
Just to make a bit of background, I applied the effect of delay to the entire NN19 track of the project.
The final result is HERE


Briefly about a similar work:
Jean Michel Jarre, the French electronic musician, released the album Zoolook in 1984 using the same principal that we experimented this week. He gathered different vocal quotes from several parts of the world and sampled them. The result is amazing. More information can be found in All Music Website, in my opinion one of the best up-to-date sources of music.

References:
- Bush, John: ‘Zoolook > Overview’, All Music Guide (Accessed [29.04.2007]), (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:gjftxqy0ld6e)
- Christian Haines 'Creative Computing I' Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 26/04/2007.
- McLean, Steve: ‘Berklee Shares, an overview of mixing; propellerhead Reason and cakewalk sonar’, Berklee Shares (Accessed [29.04.2007]), (http://www.berkleeshares.com/production__technology/mixing_reason_sonar)