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.