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Compilation #7: Glossolalia
glossolalia: incomprehensible speech in an imaginary language, sometimes occurring in a trance state, an episode of religious ecstasy (or schizophrenia). speaking in tongues.
Rules:
the piece must feature your own voice singing, speaking, shrieking, sputtering ... whatever excites your psychovocal fancy. you can use any/all reaktor devices (effects, desamplers, slicers, etc.) to process the vocal material. the main audio material must be your voice; supplemental audio material (for modulation effects that use two or more audio signals) can be whatever you want ... but i think it would be cool if you used ONLY your own voice for everything. :-) you can use your favorite daw to mix and master* the audio you create in reaktor, but NOT to add any effects. (* i'm not considering mastering eq, compression, panning, reverb to be effects.)
Glossolaliac Outbursts:
bokuchan: Prince of Whales
I mainly used Krypt and Limelite with custom made voice sample maps. Manipulating both ensembles while recording turned out to be a source of outlandish sounds. The middle part reminds me of whales singing in the ocean and the sounds of bursting steel seconds before the submarine implodes :). I did not know my voice is that.
"Some nice subby waves with a bright edge overlapping. Then enters Reaktor madness. Reminds me of Ummagumma by Pink Floyd. I enjoyed it when the glitch slowed down moreso with splashes of nice reverb ambience. The kooky progression near the end is a nice touch. I would've used that more than the glitch vocals later to break up the piece." - r.domain
"Careful with that subwoofer volume! Sounds a bit like Subtonik:Touch with a bit of Pink Floyd. Plumbers, fixing a steampipe, get into an argument and eventually make up." - arachnaut
"The beginning really explores the low register and challenges your sub woofers. About the time you expect to settle in for a lengthy drone piece, there is a sonic explosion of tribal-ish sounds- imagine Subotnick writing a piece about Attica!. If I didn't know these were vocal-based sounds, I'd wonder about the source. About the time that mood begins to settle in, it all slows and begins to sound like the fabric is disintegrating, only to settle in to a new groove, more laid back, but every bit as frenetic . My only complaint is a rather abrupt ending. This piece is nothing if not dramatic. And something new on repeated listenings. Nice job!" - Don Dailey
I started by recording a variety of mouth-generated sounds. I edited the list and cleaned up the sounds and normalized them and made several tracks to process through Reaktor. I ran each audio track through a variety of effects including: Spektre, Tewan, Deliter, Traum Delay, Lilthree, Geek FX, Filtrator, Free Gruuv and Space Master. Next, I cut up the processed tracks into single sounds to build a sound pallette for the piece. I then assembled several tracks from the bank of processed sounds. Finally, I made an automated mix for volume and pan before mastering. My thanks to the creators of all the wonderul Reaktor FX instruments and especially to rachMiel for hosting our composition showcase.
"Very cool voice cutup with effective panning. Some great samples come to the surface. Sometimes eerie but more sci-fi or pychedelic. Even cartoonish at times. Pop! Would've liked to have heard the song develop further. I enjoyed the song more on the second listen." - r.domain
"A compendium of utterances - lots of varied and inventive sonic feasts." - arachnaut
GrainGeheuer for live voice recording, a sampler made with my little fingers for loops work and Lurker, Laserbrew, FX degrade and Trance Gate for effects ...
"The intro reminds me of Ummagumma but with extended upper frequencies giving it an icier feeling. Ducks, birds, insects abound. The bustling farm then turns into a desolate land. My favourite part. Effective." r.domain
"The title says it all. Birds, insects and all manner of beasts. Similar to Pink Floyd: Several species of small animals, gathered in a cave, and grooving to a Pict (or whatever it was called)." - arachnaut
"This piece might have been called Birds and Bees or A Day in the Jungle given its slant toward sounds that might come from nature in some alternative universe. Alien nature sounds abound, but there is a musical unification to them that makes it all work. I could have enjoyed this for another five minutes." - Don Dailey
arachnaut: Tattle Tale
I recorded myself saying: "This is a recording in stereo of a medium room effect" in a normal speaking voice. That was inserted in Travelizer with FlatBlaster performing compression. The entire piece is made from that single sample. A few hours of practice was recorded, chopped and spliced into the song you hear.
"The image of sound through spokes until the extreme modulation hits. Spacey. Some enjoyable vocoder parts although heavily treated. I was hoping the effects were going to subside at some stage like the last couple of seconds. But I'm a bit of a minimalist at times :-)" - r.domain
"Any resemblance to spoken words of any kind is gone from the start. Instead, waves of fluttering sound clusters are mutated and twisted as if in a sonic hall of mirrors. The listener knows there are vocal sounds in there, so the ear struggles to pick out a phrase, but the dreamlike soundscape eludes at every turn." - Don Dailey
Reaktor-mangled snippet from an extreme vocal cover of jazz classic Caravan fed through various heinous Reaktor desamplers and edited down to an ecstatic argument. :-)
"Starts with extreme mangling but appears to have some direction and form. Some cool sounds puncture through. Digital dogs anyone? Hints of a drone appear and then subsides. This sound comes and goes as an aural tease to contrast the madness." - r.domain
"Stuttering stammers - something is trying to come out of a machine - and almost is revealed." - arachnaut
"'Extreme vocal cover' is a bit of an understatement. It would be a true challenge indeed to pick out the original, so altered is the material. I recommend do not reference that at all and simply enjoy the fluttering waves of sound that seem to come from every direction. (Imagine this one done in surround!). I like the way this composer maintains a relatively restricted range of sound colors and textures. Listen more than once and enjoy the subtle variations." - Don Dailey
r.domain: Speaking in Tongues
Reaktor Spacemaster 2 and Fusion Reflection were used on the vocals I recorded. Vocals ranged from various drone voices to whispers to improvised madness :-) These were then looped and lightly mixed in Live. No major Reaktor mangling at this point really as we wanted to hear the voice as a sound source so I just hilighted Reaktor as a great reverb unit!
I then fed this mix into Reaktor's Orange Grains 02 and recorded the output whilst going through a couple of the presets. This result was looped in various forms. One of the resulting loops was treated with Laserbrew and Echomania. These loops were then mixed into the original version. The final 8 minute arrangement was then edited down to under 5 minutes to comply with the compilation criteria. Enjoy!
"Tibetan monks chanting - temple drums - machine noises. Refined and sublime. A monastery near a city." - arachnaut
"Spacemaster 2 and Fusion Reflection are among my personal favorite effects tools. R. Domain makes excellent use of their creative potential. In terms of building some real musical tension, this piece is one of my favorite among those in the compilation. There is a bizarre quality by way of the "improvised madness" that overlays the drone building underneath. Another good example of doing a lot [musically] with a fairly small amount of source material. Repeated listens will pay dividends." - Don Dailey
Sausage Forest : Clownschlepp
The track is sequenced in Cubase with a modified CList Beatlookup playing the vocal and my own resynth yokum playing the song chunks and drums. The bass synth is a 'Reese' type preset on a juno style synth. The interesting thing is that the silly melody emerging from the vocal samples is completely accidental.
"A very cool tune with a tight bassline and beats. A welcome change to the granular madness. I was expecting more beat style tracks but are these created from your voice though?? The voice samples that poke through are effective amongst the rhythm. Almost like sample hits giving it a kooky element." - r.domain
"Funky beat with a Zappa-like irreverance. Short and sweet." - arachnaut
"I have to get past the fact that this piece doesn't adhere to the guideline of using purely vocal sounds. That being said, and in another context, I would find this piece rather interesting. It actually has a rather light-hearted feel. Not a easy task in this genre. And it's much too short." - Don Dailey
zootook: Hiroglyptic
I used an old recording of me reading a poem written by Remco (Emerald Tablet at KvR). Several people at KvR made translation into their native tongue, and then sent in a audio file. Remco then compiled that into a song. It's still up. I put the audio file into a bunch of ensembles (see below), recorded the result in the recorder box, imported all into Tracktion where I put markers at the most interesting parts and the used that in the arranger view where I mixed and matched. Finally I put the result through Space Master, changing the program quite a bit and automating the dry/wet-levels.
Ensembles used: b'Looper, Breakbeat Life, Doda 2, Dueling Ninjas, El Disturbo, faTTener, Fourtechre 5, GRAINISH, GrainyResynthMixer, Granulator, Impv1, It's Gonna Grain 2, Laserbrew, LFOGrainCloud, Mangeler, orange grains, particlesynth, Plasma, rAmpler, ReWind, sequencialgrains, SpaceMaster, Splitter, squareghpusgher, TopiNambur, Travelizer, and Triptonizer.
"Excellent snippets of sound with tasteful reverb. Good use of space which I really enjoyed. The poem parts work well, giving it a somewhat ghostly element. The last vocoder parts take it to a completely other place. I like it :-)" - r.domain
"Phoneme fragments, cryptic speech, some other mangled vocals followed by a pleasant vocoder-like phrase." - arachnaut
"My personal favorite in this compilation. There is evidence of musical savvy and restraint demonstrated in this very dramatic and sensitive composition. I especially appreciate the fact that this one allows snippets of recognizable speech show through. Sadly, there is a disturbingly abrupt ending to an otherwise engaging piece." - Don Dailey
"Overall: I was surprised with the results. I was expecting more beat-glitch driven tracks but most tracks had rather extreme granular style fx/sample mangling as the heart of their piece. And mostly experimental in nature. I was hoping for more of the vocals to shine through amongst the madness as the voice itself has an amazing tonal range. And we all know Reaktor can mangle to great effect so it's good to show off all elements of Reaktor. Subtle or not." - r.domain
"Overall comments: although all the pieces obviously used the voice as the theme requires, I would have like to hear more of the mystic or ecstatic outbursts suggested by the name." - arachnaut