My Waveform Experimentation

My aims for this project

To explore the possibilities of Waveform, I wanted to create an arrangement of sounds that produces unexpected results. For example, I turned a drum loop into an ambient track. The goal is not for the piece to be harmonious. I simply wanted to explore the different sounds and strategies available before focusing on tonality.

Features

• Spooky ambient noise
• Foley sound effects recorded with Samsung Galaxy S10
• Vocals recorded with iPad Pro 2020

Recording Environments

I recorded clips in two different environments with different acoustic settings.

1) An isolated room in the Bass Library with 3 brick and 1 glass wall

This is a rectangular room with many surfaces for sound to bounce off of, so naturally there is a lot of echo. I recorded one clip before the melody comes in. The audio is noticeably reverberant.

2) My (quiet at the time of recording) bedroom

This room had much less echo than the first room I recorded in. Perhaps it was with the help of Stiles’s lack of right angles. I recorded the outro vocals here.

Samples

I used samples from the SSLIB library and some loops from the addons included in the Tracktion Download Manager. Some of the drum loops turned out to be MIDI clips which required me to assign a plugin in order to produce its sound. I chose the Hypnotize plugin. This is how I created the ambient noise in the beginning of the track. It was originally a drum loop from the Riccardo Lombardo collection, but it required a plugin to output audio. For some of the samples, I used the looping feature and for some I copy-pasted portions of the clip to remain in rhythm.

Plugins

My most used plugins were:

• Delay
  • I feel delay creates a nice effect on songs. I used to play with delay pedals on guitar and I wanted to experiment with this plugin and it did what I wanted to. You can set the length and delay to your liking.

• Pitch Shift
  • Used this to modify the rising pitches of the vocals. Even with pitch shift, my voice still doesn’t sound good!
• Reverb
  • I used this on the metal sound effect that I recorded to give it a more directional and atmospheric feel. It felt flat with the original recording and adding reverb made it feel more present.
• Chorus
  • This plugin gives a fuller sound to the recordings. I had to make sure I didn’t overdo it because it sounded very artificial when the chorus is set too high.
• Low Pass Filter
  • I used this plugin to cut out the airy highs of my recordings from my mic. I did not have a dedicated microphone at my disposal so my recording quality was quite subpar. By the way, the Bass Media Equipment Checkout has reopened and you can borrow microphones for a weekend! I’m going to be trying out an XLR mic and an audio interface for the first time on Friday. Here’s a link to the reservation page

Automation

To be honest, seeing this word intimidated me, although it wasn’t at all complicated in reality. I thought it would involve scripting but it’s just adjusting a few settings to your liking. It’s much like drawing when and where you want the sound to do what.  After several minutes of tinkering with using this function, I found there’s different ways you can apply automation.

1. Pressing the A button and applying from there
2. Dragging the A button to a plugin or the volume
3. Creating a new subtrack by pressing the + button below the A, then applying the automation there using options 1/2

I found #3 very useful. By creating a new subtrack, you can more easily view which automations you have applied without cluttering the track space. This creates a smaller track under the original track and then allows you to apply the automation in separate rows, greatly helping manage tracks with many automations and plugins.

For my automations, I chose to use volume changing and panning.

When the melody changes its pattern, I applied an automation to the bass to lower its volume until the melody reverted to its first pattern.

In the outro vocals, I used audio panning to oscillate between the left and right channel.

The Product