8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions

Tag: making music

  • Musical Motif

    One of the ideas I have about my most recent writing project is that the end goal is not (merely) a novel.

    I want to make an audio story.

    Back as far a my university days I had it in my mind to try to make an audio drama in the style of H2G2 or Ruby.  

    I went about it completely backwards, of course, trying to improv a script while learning all the audio tools. I would get five minutes of groovy sound effects wrapped around a nothing script and then quit because I had never done any planning. I was using borrowed sounds and music in free software I had very little knowledge of how to use and making up a science fiction story on the fly. It was a recipe to accomplish nothing—except maybe learn from my mistakes.

    So I’ve been working on a story first.

    But also…

    In the last couple years I have built on the knowledge I had around music theory and audio software and have started to learn the basics of music production. I have been acquiring the tools—mics, synths, mixers, recorders, and recently an effects pedal—to produce my own soundscapes. 

    And? This week I actually wrote a song. Well… actually the technical term is called a leitmotif. It is the basic building block of a recurring musical theme tied to a character, place, group, or whatever. And… I wrote one.

  • Wet Sounds

    Recent forays into musical experimentation with various electronic devices has taught me a new concept: wet and dry sounds.

    As I understand it, and simply, dry sounds are raw, clean and unprocessed audio coming directly from an instrument while wet sounds are sounds that have been enhanced with reverbs, echos, delays and other effects. The latter is usually achieved by the use of pedals or pass-through devices that are controlled by a musician for deliberately altering, distorting and otherwise enhancing the source audio.

    I bought a little low-budget synthesizer about a year ago and have had some enormous creative fun learning to first play it and more recently how to make music with the device.  But dipping into a world of music that I had little previous experience—at least as a creator—meant that I often found I was edging up against creative barriers that I didn’t know how to understand or articulate.

    Case in point: wet versus dry sounds.

    My synth is dry. And I have since ordered a pass-through device, a pedal, that allows me to add some of those wet features that I have been missing.

    My point: sometimes creating with what we know and what we have until such time as we reach a point when we notice the gaps is the best way to discover new concepts.