Field recording becomes the only sound source and inspiration.

This project aims to limit our creative process by only using what we capture outside with our mics. Through our machines we find multiple ways to manipulate the raw material intro grains and cycles of musical narrative.

.FTF04 ‘Under the Sand / ‘Resonating Fence’ by Ameeva, Javi

artwork by Kat

What makes this field recording different from what I’m used to is the use of my Aquarian Hydrophone. I watched a video feauturing Chris Watson buring his hydrophone on the sand to listen to the sea waves filtering through the sand.

I thought it was an excellent idea worth to try, and this is what I got:

  • Bass

The original recording immediately told me that this was a track that I wanted to keep simple. Staying close to the original timbre rather than processing it to something far away.

I wanted a solid but endlessly moving body. A cracking, spaced out “bassline” that will give me enough sub frequency content to have a circular/euclidean movement. My first tool: OTT. This preset for Ableton’s multiband compressor is like adding tomato and olive oil to your toast. Especially with field recordings. It brings plenty of details, textures and new shapes on your spectrogram. On my case, the sub content from the recording came up almost like synthesized. With a simple filter afterwards, my bass was there.

  • Main Element

Now was the time to bring the recording to shine. Pitching down samples is probably what I do the most to find a room (key) to work with. In this case, -10ct was a spot my ears got satisfied. And not so far from the original timbre.

Granular techniques are also my go to for immersitivity. Grain Mill (for free!) is a very cool real-time granular effect for adding that layer of fractal depth. It’s a very playful device. I can only recommend to mess up with the parameters and adjust the dry/wet to your taste. (It’s amazing on vocals)


Besides that, a bit of OTT again, and sidechain compression using the bass track as trigger, to keep dynamics on the track while letting the seawaves expand through echos and reverbs if the bass kicks in.

  • Pad

Now the bonus element, the “synth” pad. I wanted to try add a touch of harmony to the track. I decided to go with a send/return track on Ableton, and well. I’m not gonna explain the whole chain because you’ll unsubcribe from our newsletter.

Basically, I’m sending my bass track through it and the action happens because of Valhalla Supermassive (also for free!). It creates a contiuum of echos and feedback that I pitched up, processed with some distortion, reverbs and a hell of eq’s, firing up very specific harmonics until having something pleasant to my ear.

This field recording was captured spontaneously and quickly, using the mobile phone recorder, which is the most accessible tool at hand. These are the kind of moments where if you prepare too much, you lose everything. This recording is one of the many taken either with the mobile phone or with the Zoom H5 during my trip to Colombia six months ago. From the ambient sounds of ‘La plaza’ and the guitar playing, there was something to be extracted, and this is what I managed to raw capture.   Main idea: create something blurry atmospheric w/ some ray of light sneaking through the nebula How to: Chase Bliss Mood + Borderlands The MOOD is a micro-looper/granular delay designed to be ultra-playful and immediate. It could be said that for me, it’s the starting point of almost any project. You can turn any sound into something unique and personal, and that’s what I tried to do. For anyone unfamiliar with it, I’d recommend checking out Chase Bliss Audio’s products here. After listening again to the raw field recording, the guitar was the first thing I tackled. To better understand, I’ll provide a sketch of the pedal and the functions I used.
  • BORDERLANDS
Once I had recorded countless audio files, it was time to move on to the second phase of the track: re-processing what had come out of the MOOD through my beloved BORDERLANDS iOS app. -More granulation just in case there wasn’t enough haha Exploring, touching, and transforming the sound was the main thing to create a vast array of cranky textures and lushing atmospheres. The way of using it involves overlaying small fragments of sound (dots I called it myself), or grains in order to create complex, evolving timbres and textures as I mentioned. Borderlands is a fun music app that emphasizes gestural interaction over knobs and sliders like pedals. Recording movement to the parameters such as volume, ring modulation, length of the grains was key to give all the sensation of coming and going movement.

.FTF03 ‘Resonating Fence’ / ‘A close look of the frog’ by Javi, Ameeva

artwork by Kat

.FTF02 ‘storm, thunders, rumble’ by ameeva

artwork by Kat

I was curious if I could do a compostion with one field recording but also on one machine only.  I picked the digitakt, and I decided to experiment by taking bits of the recording and finding small looping points that will provoque me something.

Some of them are long enough to give me random “bars” and having a grooving loop (loops are not synced to any bpm, just their individual duration) which is the case of the low end, coming from stretching out a thunder to extend the dynamics and filtering it to have a bassline / rumble that goes on cycle through the entire track.

Some other loops are so small like a pseudo-granular approach. By blasting the resonance of the filter I managed to bring up some harmonic / tonal element from the field. LFOs help to modulate the resonance, creating the illusion of a very subtle melodic motive.

With the intention to keep it simple and minimalistic, the rest of the elements are acting as textures, coming in and out very occasionally, to let them be spread by some Delay and Reverb.

 

    .FTF01 | ‘Paseo Garbí’ by Javi

artwork by Kat

apart javi galindo field recording

The starting point was GAUSS. A looper where I loaded the audio file and lowered the pitch, creating melodies and slower, deeper voices respectively.

BORDERLANDS came next, a granulator that I used mainly to create continuously moving textures. In the midst of all this, I created a mix bus loaded with effects.

FLUSS recorder, where from the initial melody (the piano that can be heard in the raw recording), I extracted a pad thanks to three pitch triggers based on the sound loaded into the app.

DIALS to add more thickness and a few EQs to continue shaping the sound.

RYMDIGARE to create ambient textures and a shimmer effect that would be crucial for the next stage of creation. Once I had something ‘semi-decent’ on the iPad, the AUDIO OUT of the iPad went to the AUDIO IN of the pedals.

MOOD MKII for granulating, looping, delaying, and all the absolute load. The goal was to find sweet spots and discover moments that conveyed something by turning knobs from left to right and vice versa.

GEN LOSS MKII to create a duplicator or even a cassette/tape recorder effect. Clicks and drops everywhere.

OTO BOUM for that subtle or aggressive compression plus distortion.

After recording everything for an hour, it was time to put something together in Ableton. Long-audio-file-jam to later chop some chunks and rearrange them in one go.  Different scenarios with same file recording.

apart javi from the field