Disquiet Junto 0262 Ice Code

This is the fifth time I've undertaken this annual Disquiet Junto project to "record the sound of an ice cube rattling in a glass, and make something of it."

Last year it was a challenge to improve on 2015's track, when I found that adding an instrument didn't work as well as hoped.

This year I took the opportunity to record a new collection of glasses while I was visiting my out-laws over Christmas. They had a lot of wine glasses and some sounded like very good crystal.

These were recorded using a Rode NT4 stereo microphone into a Zoom H4n, then added to the video from a Nikon D5100 before being manipulated in Ableton Live.

In the end there were 13 tracks within the project but, as Live struggles to export shorter loops, I had to settle for representing 10 in the video. One is a section of the original recording.

It was a few years ago that I found the sound of an ice cube hitting the floor could be pitched to create percussion parts, so I've used that technique again.

The kick sound has been pitched down and compressed and EQ'd. Some other parts have been repitched but for most parts I tried to keep them as they were recorded.

I've added reverb to the percussion part and another reverb to the melodic parts, which was "composed" using Live's follow "any" function from a selection of ringing glass sounds.

After recording a rough structure in Live, I edited to give the track more shape. Then adjusted the length of loops to add more variation, so you may hear some double and halve in length at points.