Using a short recording of your voice, create an entire piece of music using Reason's samplers.
In this project you will begin by recording your own voice speaking your name.
Using this short audio snippet, you will identify specific vocal sounds and separate them. These will then be loaded into Reason's NN-XT Sampler and used to create a short musical composition. For example, in the name "Barack Obama," there are six distinct musical sounds:
Ba, ra, ck, O, ba, ma
Note, also while there are two versions of the sound "ba," the first is an unstressed syllable, where the second version is an accented one. This leads to interesting possibilities, for example, they could be placed on the same keys and switched based on velocity. The hard "K" has interesting percussive qualities to explore, while the "ra," "O," and "ma" may be useful as sustaining vowel sounds if looped. Depending on how it was performed, it might be possible to find other sounds, such as "KO."
You may want to sing a version of your name so that the vowel sounds have a steady pitch. This will be helpful in creating pitch instrument sounds, such as bass, melody and harmony parts. Also, feel free to record multiple takes to try different ways of saying your name.
After recording the voice, load the snippets into Pro Tools to create sample segments (WAV format) that you can load into the NN-XT. You may want to play at half speed (Shift-spacebar) to get an idea how things might sound when pitched down. You may want to use the Reverse, Pitch Shift or Time Compression/Expansion algorithms in the AudioSuite Menu to create new derivative sounds. Feel free to use any of the tools within Pro Tools to harvest interesting sounds from your samples.
Create separate WAV files for each sound. Once loaded into the Reason's samplers, you will find an additional set of tools that can be freely used to manipulate or mangle your sound, including using the sampler to significantly transpose the pitch of the sound, as well as Time, Dynamic and Timbral effects, including distortion.
The music you create can be anything from an ambient soundscape to a percussion ensemble to a more conventional pop music style. There are only three requirements:
In addition, while it is expected that you will use the NN-XT for many of the musical parts, you may also use any of Reason's other samplers to manipulate your vocal samples: The NN-19, Dr:Rex and ReDrum. You may also use any other Reason device (including other synthesizers) for processing and or control sources. (For example, you may want to use the filters from the Malstršm, or the step sequencer from the Thor.)
When you are satisfied with your piece, convert it to a 24-bit, 44.1 kHz WAV file. Submit both the audio file and your Reason file by uploading them to your portfolio workspace.
While overall musical quality and presentation always enhance a project, I will be grading this project primarily on the diversity and usefulness of the sounds you create from such limited materials.
Due Date: April 13, 2009