Saturday 19 September 2009

two more Beat Frequency videos



Images by my good friend and photographer Mark Highton Ridley.

The LFOesque effect was done by passing the audio through a pitch shifter with two outs - one of which was detuned 25 cents sharp (an eighth note.) When the two slightly differing signals are combined it gives beats related to pitch - low notes get slow beats and high notes get fast beats. I combined them with a two input ring-mod to emphasise the effect. This added to the timbre, which I further modified by passing through a low pass filter and then mixing in some of the original signal, before going through an echo box. Post-production consisted of a bit of extra low pass, faux stereo and some reverb.

Sidebar: One of Theremin's other instruments - the rhythmicon - related pitch to rhythm, so this is, in a sense, a new take on an old idea.





The "bleep" sounds were made on my Kees Enkelaar theremin. (My etherwave power supply being on loan to one of Lydia Kavina's students while he was in the UK taking tuition from her.)

The "booster" sounds are from an iPod Touch app - Android FX.