Today in office hours I helped one of our students conform some of their free playing onto a tempo grid. But because there were some found sounds, the conversation soon turned to how do you discover the sounds secretly hidden inside of a sample. The air compressor pictured has some prominent frequencies.
They are ours to highlight and discover. Transferred into an instrument that we can play and loop, we looked at how a filter resonance could both highlight these frequencies, but also modulate them, changing them. Modulating them with an LFO set to sample and hold.
The cutoff frequency implies its own melodies. And in this very rough demo you can see how something as benign as an air conditioner can turn into a compelling pad. Office hours is almost a sacred activity at Beat Kitchen.
It’s where we help each other out, discover new things, and if somebody who belongs in one, share this post.
