Last week I finished my fourth piece for Loud World Quiet Hour.
Video
The video footage for this piece is of clouds slowly crossing the sky over a small lake in Northern Ontario. Last summer, I visited a friend's cottage for a weekend and I brought up my camera. I filmed this footage early in the morning on a dock. With 120-frames-per-second video recording, the clouds move almost imperceptibly. The camera also bobbed and shifted slowly along with the movements of the dock on the lake. I felt this gives a surreal visual as the entire shot warbles while the clouds progressing across the sky.
Sound
The music for this piece was created in Ableton Live. I haven't used Ableton for this project yet, despite having purchased version 12 around the time that I started Loud World Quiet Hour. I wanted to investigate some of the new Ableton Devices that come with this latest release and see how they might be used to create some semi-random music.
I tried two new devices — first, a MIDI sequencer ("Melodic Steps") that was simple and effective, as well as something a bit more abstract called "Tree tone", which sort of simulates a growing of a tree, the movements of which sends rippling, ringing sounds along each branch. This description Ableton's website of Tree Tone:
Tree Tone makes a departure from particles, instead taking its inspiration from the fractal patterns of plants. Grow trees, where each branch represents a resonator with different frequency, decay, and amplitude values. The longer and thicker the branch, the lower, louder and more sustained the sound. Use the device’s internal noise generator to excite the resonators and create resonant ambiences or ethereal plucked tones. You can also use Tree Tone as a filterbank for your own audio, or run the output back into the device to create resonant feedback.
Process
Making these tracks takes a few hours. Running the recording is an obvious hour-long task with live tweaking and morphing sounds, although I might try to build some machines that allow me to record semi-autonomous drones that will later have curated melodies overlaid. VCV rack might be a candidate for that, or I will return to Drambo on the iPad for laying drone beds. [1]
The act of filming and editing is pleasant. My favourite part is being forced to sit through the accumulation of 12 minutes of filming to make up an hour of footage. It is a forcing function to be present [2].
Footnotes
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Something feels a bit inauthentic about setting up a machine to make music and then coming back to it after an hour has passed, exporting the recording and saying I made that. I hope to investigate that feeling, and others, through making more of these tracks. ↩
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At least to make sure the camera doesn't overheat. ↩
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