Royal Victoria Cutup

Part of our Dada Sound project (February 2016) - see more at http://www.citiesandmemory.com/dadasounds

By Andy Lyon. "The intention was to focus on a couple of techniques, namely chance and collage. I really like the collage or 'cut up' approach to field recordings. They are a snapshot in time which makes them unique and interesting to work with anyway. However, using this technique offers new insights by making the recording non-linear and stepping outside of time almost. The element of chance is also intriguing, it can provide movement in sound and create patterns you wouldn't otherwise use but there's always the inherent risk of dissonance or sounds that don't go well together.

In this song I've used chance for the drums, bassline and pad sounds. The drums are generated by 'groove physics'. This is a box containing 8 balls which are assigned a drum sample. You set the speed of rotation and duration of sample and each time they collide or hit a wall the sample is triggered. The bassline is constructed from a midi sequencer with random pattern generation and there's a pad sound created using a midi randomator.

A drone was created using a micro loop from the sample with automation on the speed / grain settings to give some movement and variation.

There's a synth playing a chord which has a ring modulator effect automated by physics which gives great movement in sound from the chord itself to a distorted, bitcrushed sound at times.

I've also used collage on the sample with 'groove matrix'. I loaded 4 instances of the sample and set loop points. I've then used a random sequencer to control how they are triggered and altered loop set points, pitch and sequence parameters during the recording to give different perspectives on the sample. There's also a tape stop effect on the drums in certain places.

I created the song in Usine Hollyhock II DAW which facilities this type of sound manipulation making the process really easy. It contains a lot of sound manipulation tools and effects like granulators, delays, ring mods with easy automation of controls. It's a modular system so you can create your own patches and routing with virtually unlimited possibilities. It's primarily aimed at live performance so it copes very well with changing settings with no degradation in the sound, even for maths intensive operations like granulators and delays."