I perverted Beatly Pro! - a short story for Halloween

Svetlovska

From an encouragement by @stown

Well, you could call it a rap, I suppose…

Apologies to @AntoninCharvat, but I’m afraid I took his lovely app into a very dark place on a quest to make something a (bit) different from me…

Not an instrumental, but a little (very little) short story I wrote. Vocal (courtesy of Talker https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/talker-text-to-speech/id956310491 ) with an instrumental backing. Built on a frame of midi from Beatly Pro, fed to Atom 2 and Aphelian in AUM, alongside the wav export, which I slowed and chopped with Gatelab, synth squiggles from DRC, doom drum and bass drone from Drum Computer.

As usual any feedback appreciated like a reprieve for one condemned…

stown

Oh wow! That's awesome.... I love all the textures... from the crumbling gritty underpinnings to the cosmic synth tones escaping upwards, to the claustrophobic bass and pads swirling around, and to all of the other accents jumping out or clawing there way to the top. Really there is so much to grab onto... I've listened 4 or 5 times now and each time I notice different things... like the descending bass around 1:25! It makes me a little queasy and fills me with dread! And I have yet to try and seriously focus on the story! It's not that I can't, but more that I am like a kid in the candy shop... excited to check out each new sound, so my attention wanders. :P But yeah whenever I come up for breath and hear the story it sounds very interesting and I look forward to really digging in on it. And Talker sounds amazing! I had not heard it before. wow. Altogether, it's really great... a giant creeping, seething malevolent beast. My only criticism/feedback is that I feel like we are thrown in the deep end of the pool instantly and more or less stay there for the whole piece. I think the piece would be even cooler if it had a brief intro of one of those elements (maybe the bass drone or synth pads?), and then after the story starts maybe bring in the other elements (staggered possibly?). And then at the end strip stuff away.... maybe drop everything but the dull crumbling thuds and bass drone at the end to exit the piece. Anyway.... really really fantastic and perfect for the season

Svetlovska

@stown - thanks for the deep consideration of the piece. You make some excellent points.

I can’t claim anything other than laziness.

I used to multitrack all my recordings, transfer into Ableton, and then spend hours tweaking, arranging, and mixing the final version. To be absolutely honest, the sheer amount of effort involved in all this was a real buzz killer, and led to a lot of stuff often being left as unmixed stems.

Lately I’ve been doing very quick and dirty live mixes of AUM sessions, often just screen captured as video, then stripping the audio out of that. In fact, I kind of needed to do that with the vocal on this, so I could trigger the little Talker phrases ‘live’ over the running AUM session, and get the pauses and timings more or less in sync with the backing.

But you’re definitely right, a build up/tear down could have been more effective. (In fact I left some different clips in a different ‘devil’ voice, kind of arguing with our protagonist, ‘on the cutting room floor’, as they seemed superfluous. )

I suppose I was trying to ‘cut to the chase’ as they advise in all the film schools, starting things in media res. I wanted all the meat of the story , the who/what/where/when/why to just emerge from this crazy guy’s confession. In my mind, he is strapped to a cot in a padded cell, his audience, the psych sent to examine him, and I hope that just emerges from his words, without explicitly having to say so.

…But, yes, I totally take your point about the musical underpinnings for all that. More structure could have made for a more rounded piece. Something to bear in mind for next time.

I really like the text to speech thing, would like to do more of my stories that way, but I’m wary of it being a one trick pony. You have little control over intonation, so it might grate over a longer haul. If there was a more ‘natural speech’ soft out there somewhere, one where you could edit intonation, rising and falling pitches, emphasis etc, I’d buy it.

I do have a vocoder app with a ‘whisper mode’ setting, so perhaps my next text to speech thing could be some kind of weird asmr nightmare…

Thanks again for the very useful feedback. Lots of food for thought.

stown

Hi @Svetlovska. Yeah... I think for your intents and purposes capturing the magic and the experiment is the important part. I don't think it's lazy. I would much rather capture awesome creative outpourings then be bogged down by the kind of micro-tweaking/finessing/nit-pickery I was suggesting. Sadly I spend like 90% of my time on what should probably be the last 5% of a project/piece.

royor

@Svetlovska Good thing I listened to this in the daytime.. 🤣 Otherwise, I think I’d be due for a nightmare.. it could still happen.. 👻 🤡 👺
That was a treat! 🎃 Fantastic collection of sounds.. Talker was quite eerie.. vocoder material could be fun too..
I agree with @stown.. there’s so much to grab onto.. the more you listen to it.. the more you discover.. it’s work for my ears + brain to keep up with.. love it..
Yes, you could have more of a build up intro BUT this caught my attention immediately because I thought I somehow missed something.. cut to the chase definitely works here..
Thoroughly enjoyed that.. Excellent story + accompaniment.. 👍

Poppadocrock

Reminds me of “fitter happier” cool.

Simon

Nice one! I can't wait to hear your Christmas album

vlaad3

@Svetlovska This is really good, I like it very much! Vocals make everything sound better. But my only objection would be due to using an app instead of recorded human voice. I honestly think your voice would make the track much warmer and more interesting. Maybe you want it to sound harsh and cold but just saying...
Anyhow, great track and keep them coming

Svetlovska

@royor : thank you! @Poppadocrock : yup, I can see that. Bit less danceable though @Simon : Ha! Made me laugh out loud. Have a gold star @vlaad3 : you really wouldn’t want to hear my voice, trust me Might try a voice changer app or something though, just to see what they might bring.

AntoninCharvat

This is a real gem
I really really really need to see the process of creating such an atmospheric piece based on the Beatly Pro output... Is there any chance of you creating a short video of your setup/tutorial, maybe next time you'll composing?

Svetlovska

@AntoninCharvat : Ha! Thank you for the compliment (and the amazing app! )

Making a video sounds like I know what I’m doing, and go about things in a structured, orderly way. Spoiler alert: I don’t

Honestly, I don’t know how fascinating you’d actually find a vid of me:

1) writing a few lines of a short story while I’m in bed listening to the early morning news.
2) mooching about in my PJs from breakfast till lunchtime, randomly stabbing at my iPad occasionally as I type the story, one phrase at a time, into Talker
3) recording a backing loop in AUM from the hook in Beatly Pro ported to Atom, a synth app picked at random, and a supporting/counterpoint backing from Cykle or Snakebud
4) listening to the loop for a bit on my Alexa Echo
5) opening it as a File Player in the next channel,
6) try speeding it up, slowing it down, chucking it through a reverb or three, chopping it up with Gatelab or Perforator, chucking it through a few more fx apps,
7) maybe drive a synth or two off it using A2M and Atom
8) uploading the result.

I don’t really have a method, as such. More a series of nervous tics tenuously linked together by a taste for doomy sounds.

If you really are jonesing for a video equivalent of all this mess, mind, I have made one or two quick try out vids of new apps, viewable here:

https://youtube.com/user/svetlovska