Disquiet Junto 0254 Fog and Steam

For the 254th weekly project, we’re going to revisit the second project, from back in early January 2012.

Step 1: Download these two samples:

Fog Horn: http://www.freesound.org/people/schaarsen/sounds/69663/

Train Whistle: http://www.freesound.org/people/ecodios/sounds/119963/

Step 2: Create an original piece of music utilizing just those samples from Step 1. You can only use those two samples, and you can do whatever you want with them.

I don't remember the original project but the freesound.org website was familiar, particularly the frustration of not getting a response when resetting the password. I remember giving up on a Junto project as a result of this but managed to establish a new account and get the samples this week.

Last night I experimented with a few loops from the samples, finding a percussive part at the end of the train recording. This was gated, then duplicated with one loop pitched deeper to sound more like a kick part.

The ferry horn had a nice bass resonance and I experimented with a loop, which was an idea I'd come back to later. You can see in the screenshot the two percussive loops at the top, then the clunky rumbling part.

 This morning I put the ferry recording into Iris 2 and started with a bass part but then found it sounded better using higher frequencies. I kept the MIDI at minus one octave though.

You can see in the video that I recorded a chord progression using the guitar to MIDI converter. The Iris 2 part is accompanied by a Bass Station an octave lower, that also has a MIDI arpeggiator.