Drifting Souls
Engineer, Sound Designer - Ryan Yuan
Developed by Max8
An Individual Project
Apr 2021 - May 2021
Project Run-through
Intention
Drifting Souls is an individual New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) project. The project explores the combination of electronic components and digital technology to create self-made musical instruments. The project is made to be mysterious and creepy, I can imagine that there is a certain ceremonial or sacrificial ritual happening in front of me when I am listening to it. I am really into dark, metal, and industrial music, these kinds of music can express intense feelings that often impress me to think that how incredible music can deliver such fantasies to me. Combining electronic music with them, the special effects created by computers can intensify those feelings.
Inspirtaion
I would like to write a piece that can express sacredness and mysteriousness. The main inspirations are the original soundtrack of the game called Bloodborne and the pieces composed by a creator called Sakuzyo(削除), these works express the feeling of darkness and mysteriousness. Compared to traditional black metal and dark fantasy music, they do not feel a sense of heaviness, but lightness. The combination and implementation of different kinds of instruments, especially Strings and Piano, with vocals do form an impressive atmosphere to give space for imagination and immersion.
For controlling interface, to fit the theme of creating a sense of sacredness as if the audiences are witnessing the process of a ritual. I think that the interface should be wearable so that I can perform like a priest performing a ritual during the performance. So the interface might be a magical orb, a stick, or anything that can be related to rituals.
Perspective & Context
I am quite impressed by the idea of minimalism and am fascinated with the works done by Steve Reich. His work ‘Music for 18 Musicians’, with limited instruments playing repeating paragraphs, and gradually changing the sequences of the timings as well as the compositions creates an impressive piece. It is impressive that such a piece with repetitive paragraphs can result in not making me feel boring at all, this inspires me to use the same idea in my final performance to use minimal sound sources to create my work, and change their compositions.
‘Music for Pieces of Wood’ is another inspiring piece done by Steve Reich. He only uses four pairs of wood blocks and wood sticks as instruments to compose the whole piece. Each pair plays one sequence at a certain frequency, these sequences are randomly put together and there are slight changes in these sequences. It inspires me to focus on a certain instrument and explore its sound at different frequencies to make compositions.
Production
Sound Design
String - Violin
I notice the implementation of the violin family and choir, especially soprano in both the Bloodborne OST and the Sakuzyo’s works. The violins are the brilliant choices to create the atmosphere and they can also be the perfect choices for the main rhythm. For my project, I choose to use them for the background sound to create a sense of spaciousness and sacredness. I download a D minor violin synth cut online and send it to the cell, then I use a filter called MMF and choose the bandpass filter to create a rather smooth sound compared to using a lowpass filter or a highpass filter, then I use a low-frequency oscillator to output a control voltage to change the range of the bandpass filter. I use a sequencer to generate the beat of the violin and I also cut its attack and decay to 0 and increase its sustain and release to a high level so that it will sound sharp and last for quite a while to make it sounds spatial, also the gigaverb is used to create this sense of spaciousness. Finally, I use a pan module to pan the signal between the left and right outputs with an LFO so that the audience can feel that there is something drifting in the background.
String - Harp
I also come up with the idea of using harp as one of the background instrument, using the similar method I use to manipulate the violin sample, I download a C major harp tap and send it to the cell. The interesting point here is that I connect an LFO to the control voltage of MMF so that the changing pattern for the bandpass filter is completely random and this results in interesting sounds. Since I use gigaverb to create reverbs, audiences can hear different kinds of sound generated by the MMF at the sametime. With the violin, these two instruments mainly construct the background musical part.
Choir
For the vocal part, I choose an arpeggiated choir sample with pure female vocalists online and send it to the granular module so that I can play with the sample by controlling the distance. The distance is manually controlled by me so that I can adjust the part of the sample during the performance. I also add an LFO to the control voltage so that the output part of the sample will keep fluctuating. And this part helps build up the sense of sacredness as if there is a choir chanting for summoning.
Bass
Bass is also important as it constructs the main rhythm of the piece. I find a bass cut sample online and use a lowpass filter to filter the high-frequency sounds to make it clean enough. Then I change its ADSR to make sure that it hits fast and lasts long.
Melody
For the main melody part, I try to combine a sine wave with a rectangle wave which turns out to be impressive. It sounds like something floating in the void, the crashing sound of crystals, something intangible but peaceful and quiet. This is what I exactly am looking for for the main melody to make people imagine during the performance.
White Noise
I utilize a triangular wave to create white noise in the background as support. I add up two LFOs to randomize the sound in order to make it similar to noise.
Physical Input
I combine two ways of controlling by using Arduino serial communication and WIFI connection.
Smartphone? Gyroscope!
I utilize my phone as a gyroscope to send real-time data into Max8 when the phone and the computer are connected to the same WIFI. These data include the phone's direction in three dimensions, when I am tilting the phone, these data will change according to my movement. During the performance, the phone becomes one of the instruments on my left hand.
Glove
I create a glove to control the patch according to my original idea. The glove has five flex sensors on each of the fingers with three potentiometers. But what is very pitiful is that I solder all the components on the wrong side of the board so that none of the flex sensors really work so that I have to perform that they are functioning, and the three potentiometers on the left are used for controlling amplitude. Considering wearing it, I put all the boards on a cupboard and hot-glue four hook and loop fastners on it so that it can fit all kinds of arms.
