TwilightOdyssey
Darkness on the edge of Tone
With the successful completion of my last songwriting demo, Concerto For A Dying Sun and a brief break, it's time to dig back into songwriting mode again. Like Concerto, this song will be completely DAWless/tablet-less using the Soundtrack Machine and any live instruments I can bring to bear.
It's still early days and I'm very much still in experimentation mode but I've always wanted to write a song that's based off of the Harmonic Overtone series. Every pitch has both overtones and undertones to a greater or lesser extent, largely dependent on the timbre of the sound itself. With synths, which are very harmonically rich, you filter out those harmonics to create timbre. But I got to thinking: could it be possible to write piece of music that takes a single note and its overtones as its basis and make it sound melodic?
ANSWER -- I DON'T KNOW!!
1. So I start with a single pitch. I selected G as the base pitch because it's relative to a standard tuned guitar.
2. The next step was to find out the harmonic series based on that note:
3. I then converted each of those harmonic pitches into notes:
4. The last step was to map them out into a series of notes, like this --
G3
G4
G5
B5
D6
E6 or F6
G6
A6
B6
C7
D7
E7
F7
G7
B7
G8
5. As you can see, there are a lot of options just with a single note! Now we get to the theoretical bit -- if I were to arrange those notes to play with a very slow release, say 30 seconds, and a very long digital delay, say 2 minutes, I can create evolving 4-note chord arrabesques. These pads will create part of the backing for the orchestral and rock bits to be layered on top.
++++++++++
Last night I was able to make a 4-voice paraphonic supersaw pad using a function generator, which is an analog computer used in synthesis:
Set to self-oscillation, the function generator creates a very slow-moving envelope. When applied to a VCA (voltage controlled amplifier), it acts like a very gradual AD (attack-decay) gate for the volume of a note. What makes a Function Generator super useful is the EOR and EOC outputs, which stand for End of Rise/End of Cycle. With these patched, you get a pulse at the top and the end of each envelope. When connected to the clock or sync input of a step sequencer, it will advance to the next note when it receives the pulse. This gives you an automated sequence of notes.
I tested it last night and it actually works, but it still needs a lot of work in terms of the note sequences for the chord progression. As it will take about 2 minutes for each chord, the entire song will (probably) only have a 7 or 8 long chord progression in total.
It's still early days and I'm very much still in experimentation mode but I've always wanted to write a song that's based off of the Harmonic Overtone series. Every pitch has both overtones and undertones to a greater or lesser extent, largely dependent on the timbre of the sound itself. With synths, which are very harmonically rich, you filter out those harmonics to create timbre. But I got to thinking: could it be possible to write piece of music that takes a single note and its overtones as its basis and make it sound melodic?
ANSWER -- I DON'T KNOW!!
1. So I start with a single pitch. I selected G as the base pitch because it's relative to a standard tuned guitar.
2. The next step was to find out the harmonic series based on that note:
3. I then converted each of those harmonic pitches into notes:
4. The last step was to map them out into a series of notes, like this --
G3
G4
G5
B5
D6
E6 or F6
G6
A6
B6
C7
D7
E7
F7
G7
B7
G8
5. As you can see, there are a lot of options just with a single note! Now we get to the theoretical bit -- if I were to arrange those notes to play with a very slow release, say 30 seconds, and a very long digital delay, say 2 minutes, I can create evolving 4-note chord arrabesques. These pads will create part of the backing for the orchestral and rock bits to be layered on top.
++++++++++
Last night I was able to make a 4-voice paraphonic supersaw pad using a function generator, which is an analog computer used in synthesis:
Set to self-oscillation, the function generator creates a very slow-moving envelope. When applied to a VCA (voltage controlled amplifier), it acts like a very gradual AD (attack-decay) gate for the volume of a note. What makes a Function Generator super useful is the EOR and EOC outputs, which stand for End of Rise/End of Cycle. With these patched, you get a pulse at the top and the end of each envelope. When connected to the clock or sync input of a step sequencer, it will advance to the next note when it receives the pulse. This gives you an automated sequence of notes.
I tested it last night and it actually works, but it still needs a lot of work in terms of the note sequences for the chord progression. As it will take about 2 minutes for each chord, the entire song will (probably) only have a 7 or 8 long chord progression in total.
