Mechanical Samples

I hesitate to use the word 'Industrial' in reference to samples of machines because what most people call Industrial is not literally industrial sounds. Most of the samples I use are literally industrial machine sounds, and finding them has been a challenge. Most sites offer a couple sounds here and there, or pre-fabricated loops rather than raw samples.

Two of the best resources I've found are FreeSound for free, or the jackpot Industrial Toolkit by Sample Arena which you have to purchase.

CD Review: Cyanotic "Transhuman"

I purchased Transhuman with the EP Mutual Bonding Through Violation without any expectation or knowledge of what I was in for. As it turned out Transhuman is one of the hardest, loudest industrial rock disks I own that I actually listen to all the way through. Its a well balanced mix of guitar and synth and actually has a new direction to offer in the Industrial Rock genre.

Although Transhuman 2.0 is now out, I'm reviewing Transhuman because 2.0 is more or less Transhuman +. I can't say its a remix album because the songs are really much more than remixes, but the double album (Transhuman 2.0) is not filled with all new material.

Cyanotic "Transhuman" is definately a worthy find.

The Boss GT-Pro processor: A 'Cut' above the rest

There are a ton of guitar effects processors out there. If you are looking for a distinctive and professional processor Roland/Boss GT-Pro has something you won't find anywhere else... an effect called the Slicer.

The Slicer is an effect you've probably heard before only as a synth effect. Leave it to a Synth manufacturer to realize that heavy, electronic, industrial guitarists could really use that effect! If you don't know the sound, its like slivers of the sound being sliced away from the output giving it a pulsating, electronic quality. Very wicked.

Zombie Voice

There is a type of singing in which sounds are controlled by creating tension in your mouth, throat and diaphragm. It's known as throat singing. I didn't know about it until one day I used what I call The Zombie Voice in public and someone asked if I knew how to do that kind of singing. Well, only enough to add natural voice effects to vocals, I wouldn't want to sing an entire song that way.

If you're having trouble imagining how you would use this, imagine a lead in vocal effect in which the vocals come from a distance increasing in volume until actually breaking into a melody. The sound produced resembles many distorted voices (We Are Legion!)

The way I accomplish this is to tighten my diaphragm and close my throat. Fill the lungs and push a good amount of air as you slowly open your throat. It takes practice especially at first but your goal is to get a continuous sound consisting of multiple tones. Once you have achieved that you'll know how to work with it until you can actually sing phrases.

A glance at the net provides expert information on different styles and offers lessons. The sounds I heard on that site aren't really the Zombie Voice but its all about style.

Waterphone

You've probably heard, in horror or suspence movies, a strange and exotic yet organic sound used as a wash under other suspence building sounds. You may not have noticed how often you hear it but the sound of a Water Phone is distinct once you know what it is.

A waterphone is basically a couple of pans attached in a certain way with water inside. The sound it produces is difficult to describe, but you might imagine that it is fairly soft and flowing. Its a creepy sound which can sometimes resemble whale song or an alien metallic sound, and makes an excellent backdrop for an ambient soundscape.

To read more about them, and hear samples, visit the waterphone home page.

Wicked Sequencing Alchemy for Vocal Samples

I use this simple, but extremely effective technique with a vocal part, but it can be used for any sample. From here on out I will describe the technique in reference to vocals. If your sequencer allows cutting and pasting of a sample on your track, then read on. If not, I recommend getting one that does. I prefer hardware (the MV-8800) but any contemporary sequencing software will do. Its hard to describe the effect that this produces because it depends on the sample you begin with, so bear with me as I try to explain the process and try to imagine the results.

Place the part you wish to manipulate on one track, copy it to another track directly below and then create a track below that to use as your canvas for the part. Mute the first and second tracks and unmute the third. The first track will only be used for fast access to the original in case you want to start over.

Now begin slicing small fragments from the original track and placing them in random space in the track below. Take some larger portions and do the same. You may want to repeat some slices rather than using all of the original. Continue doing this until the second part fills the same time in bars as the original.

Listen to your new part. It may take several passes to get something that really sounds impressive. If the first pass is bad, try rearranging the sonic slices. Starting from scratch might be discouraging but once you get something that really shines you will feel that the work was worth it.

The goal is to produce something melodic and rythmic that fits with the song using the human voice. You could break it into words, but my approach is to consider it a very weird instrument rather than a manipulation of vocals. Most of the time I don't sing any real words because they can be distracting. I prefer to use short bursts of screams, glottal sounds and other noises that you won't want anyone actually hearing you make. This seems to produce the best results, and as ridiculous as the original recording might have sounded I get people picking that part out of the song and telling me how cool they think it is.

A similar idea is to only remove (not moving the slices to another track) very very tiny slices from the original which sounds similar to a slicer effect. This is a more effective approach if you actually want the sample to more or less be recognizeable with respect to the original. I don't personally use this method with vocals but have with other sounds or spoken parts culled from other sources.

Good luck

A Traditional Sequencing Technique Applied To A Mechanical Loop Rythm

I talked to a strict guitars 'n' drums guy once about Industrial Rock and electronically produced genres to see why he didn't like them. His response was that its boring. Admittedly you will either embrace electronics in music or you won't, but he seemed to have some strange purity ideal. My rebuttle is, then why use all those effects? Why not play accoustic. Its all electronic. The point is to produce music that talks to people, and if you approach it right you can accomplish that with anything.

But to address his statement that industrial rock sounds repetitive and boring (He cited Ministry) let me offer a technique I use for machine loops that electronic guys have been doing with their drum beats for years.

Let me digress a bit on what causes electronic rythms to become stale. A novice might write a drum part that maintains its precise rythm until it changes at the 16th bar for the next part. Of course the first thing he could do to improve his sequence is to make it more organic by giving a more random spacing and velocity to the hits. But more importantly he should actually vary the hits being used.

The concept is simple. By taking the first bar, changing it a little and creating the second bar, then taking those two, changing the second bar a little and creating the 3rd and 4th bars and repeating this technique until he has his 16 bars, you get something that doesn't sound so mechanical and pristine. You could infact use a recorded kit and fool people into thinking there was a drummer present. The fills, of course, are the most fun and, though you don't apply this technique to them usually, they add a convicer factor to the sequence.

I'll be honest, I don't really like sequenced drums. I'd rather have a drummer. But if I want a part to sound a certain way, I'll sequence the drums and ask the drummer to use that as a model for his rythm. What I do most though is create a blend of mechanical sounds in place of drums. This is not new, but almost everywhere ive heard it the rythm repeats for most if not all of the song. My purist friend would point to that and say "Repetitive, Boring". But working with mechanical sounds does not have to be that way, some musicians are just lazy, like the hypothetical novice I spoke of earlier.

Creating an organic machine loop takes a bit of extra work up front. Say you have a sample of a machine stamping something. It has a hydraulic woosh sound as the arm prepares to stamp then a hard crack as it comes down and hits. Its two beats. Some people might think of them as inseperable... but you should seperate them. One sound as the original and the two beats available to change it up. When you break sounds appart this way your rythm can become very inricate. Additional verisions of the atomic parts can be manipulated with effects, reversing etcetera and pretty soon you have a good group of sounds from just a two beat sample. Of course now your other sounds can also be exploded in this way to create a massive kit for just the one song. Using the technique described above, you could create progressive industrial rock with no drums (machine sounds only) that is just as dynamic and fresh sounding from measure to measure and part to part as a traditional drummer, and probably more so.

This is a technique I use a lot, but like everything else I try to change it up. I do like real drummers and try to consider their space among the electronic sounds. But I have created entire songs this way and this could actually replace a drummer in an industrial band.

Recording a Tube Amp Sound without a Tube Amp!

I use an MV-8800 sequencer for recording, which has a few built in MFX distortion effects. I don't like them because they have a crisp cut to them that reaks of digital effects and I prefer the warmer, fatter live sound of analogue. I can also get by with distortion pedals, or mic-ing an amp-- but recently I discovered something much better: The Demonizer.

The Demonizer by Damage Control is a distortion pedal with built in tubes that give a rich, warm, tube amp sound. The Demonizer is one of several interesting effects by Damage Control, and I particularly like the Demonizer for its very thick, harsh distortions. You could, of course, tame the Demon(izer) and use a more generic rock distortion setting, but why would you want to? Go ahead, don't be afraid! Stomp the Atomic button... I know you want to.

A Noise Guitar Tool

I found a pretty cool way to squeeze some strange sounds out of a guitar. One sort of humorous example sounds just like a fly buzzing around your head. You can get some interesting, machine sounds going using this technique especially in combination with a good pedal or two. And you have a lot of freedom to shape the sound!

Take the head off one of those razors that vibrates. Turn it on and hold it a centimeter above your strings. Now move it closer, then further away. Move it across the strings barely touching. Interesting right?

The FX-33 Buzz Box by DOD

This pedal has gained a lot of popularity in the past few years. While It's great as a noise guitar pedal, the greatest utility I have for it is creating samples or noise rythms/textures. The unit is no longer produced, and often goes for high prices but if you are lucky you might score one at a reasonable price here on Ebay.

If you are looking for snarling guitar sounds, machine like rythms, synth like, lo-fi, demonic sounds or just pure noise this is one of the best pedals you can get. FX-33 is very noisy, and actually generates its own sound on top of altering the input.
It will take some experimentation to get the sound right but once you do it really kicks ass.

If you combine it with other pedals like a loop pedal or the Audible Disease "Rupture" Pedal you really get some useful samples/textures.

CD Review: Mannikin - (Self Titled)

Mannikin is a solo project by one Daniel Bepristis. What he terms "Machine Rock" is a blistering example of creativity in the Industrial Rock genre. As a fan of many styles of music I really love this disk. Basically, it is a mixture of his unique brand of industrial arrangements and gritty hard rock.

You can hear some of his stuff here: Mannikin MySpace Profile and occasionally you can find Mannikin on Amazon and if you do I highly recommend picking it up.

Contact Mic: A sample seeker's secret

If you already know about the contact mic, you are probably aware how powerful it is as a tool for finding interestingly textured samples. If you don't know what a contact mic is, read on.

A contact mic is simply a very small microphone you place or tape to something that produces inaudible or nearly inaudible sounds and records them. Any time you tap something, it produces a vibration and a contact mic can pic it up and amplify it for your use.

The great thing about contact mics, aside from being cheap and readily available, is that the textures you get with them can sound very exotic or alien. If you are looking for mechanical sounds you can often get them without having to find heavy machinery to mic. Another advantage is that you won't have as much white noise as you would by mic-ing something in someone's workshop.

Some Ideas for contact mic-ing:

• Modem
  
• Refridgerator & other household appliances
  
• Water dripping into a bowl
  
• Anything while flipping switches or pressing buttons.
  
• Creaky chair or door
  

Bottom line is experiment with everything. Sometimes you will find a wicked texture or one shot sound from a source you couldn't even hear. Using these sounds gives your work a much more unique flavor than buying a bunch of samples.

Had any interesting results? Leave a comment about it!

What I think makes a rock band suck

To me, these ideas seem painfully apparent and perhaps not worth voicing. I expect that the reader will probably nod, roll her eyes and skip the site. But for as obvious as these ideas seem, it is surprising how few bands seem to get it.

• DON'T rely on any one element whether part, presence or player, to make your act.
  
• DO add something other than music to your show that is interesting.
  
• DON'T write songs where the verse is the time we have to wait before you get to the chorus hook.
  
• DON'T be fooled into believing you have a good act because you can entertain a bunch of drunks.
  
• DO set a song aside after writing it and come back to critique it with the utmost criticism.
  
• DO record and evaluate your performances, especially the audience's waxing and waning interest. Focus on their peaks.
  
• DON'T misjudge your audience’s reaction.
  
• DO study the use of silence and climax and change the way you use them from song to song.
  
• DO make sure your music is interesting even without vocals.
  
• DON'T sound like a copy of your "influences".
  

Too many bands follow a trend, trying to sound like what they hear on the radio. Admittedly it can work, but for how long? If a band has nothing new to contribute it has little chance of any real success. I'm so tired of hearing band X that sounds like band Y or sounds so cliché I feel like I’ve heard it before a thousand times and can't count how many amateur bands sound just like it.

My two bits.

Finally: Record Controlled Guitar Feedback!

If you're like me, you love experimenting with feedback. You may have also, like me, found it difficult to capture in a recording without some hassle. With the Sustainiac Stealth Plus you can now generate feedback which can be recorded by plugging your guitar directly into your recorder, and you'll have more control than ever in controlling the sounds you create!

Circuit Bent Devices

Circuit Bending, if you haven't heard of it, is taking something electronic that makes noise and transforming the sounds it creates into something more exotic by creating short circuits. It has become very popular in recent years with circuit bent devices, especially Speak & Spells, going for hefty sums of money. I'll show you how to make a circuit bent Speak & Spell for less than $30!

You can read about one of the foremost pioneers, see examples of his work and hear them in action at Reed Ghazala's website: Anti-Theory.Com Or check out his book Circuit Bending: Build Your Own Alien Instrumentwhich I highly recommend. if you are really into getting some cool, strange sounds from all kinds of sources another great resource is Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking

Reed's prices are pretty high at over $1000 for a bent Speak unit. On Ebay a circuit bent Speak & Spell will go for $100-$150 with the top end at about $300. But if all you want to do is to record the weird sounds to your computer rather than actually playing the thing as an instrument, all you need is a little device I may have originated. I have never seen or heard of anyone else doing this, that's not to say they haven't. This is my independant discovery and as such revealing it should not ruffle any feathers.

A Cheaper Circuit Bent Speak & Spell

You need 2 things: A Sound Module and a Circuit Writing Pen.

The Module can be any Speak & Spell(red) module except Noun Endings. I think Ive bent all types by now, and Noun Endings is the only one that causes a certain glitch which crashes the unit.

You can find the Circuit Writer at any Radio Shack.

Are you ready for what took me about 60 hours to learn? All you have to do is draw a connection between 2 pins (5 and 7). That's it.

A little more detail.

Carefully open the module.
Hold the circuit so that the IC(black chip) is face down. The PC-A marking should be on the right. Look at the lower row of pins. The 1st pin is on the far left and the 14th pin is on the far right. Draw a neat, thick connection between the 5th and 7th pins. Put the unit back together, plug it into a Speak & Spell and fire away!

Welcome

Welcome to my little corner of the web. My vision for SoundBog is to provide information and resources for musicians working in some capacity with technology in the composition and/or performance of music. Much of what I will cover here will be what I've learned in my quest to create strange new sounds in my recordings, or resources that have proved very useful tools to me.

I hope you find this information as useful as I have.