Aphex Twin Aphex Twin Stone in Focus Hidden Voice?

i love those weird little video game sounds in girl/boy, right before the strings pick up

  On 11/17/2009 at 9:56 PM, Macca said:

  On 11/17/2009 at 4:03 PM, joshuatxuk said:

  On 11/16/2009 at 5:41 PM, xxx said:

I don't even fucking recognize this song and I've owned SAW II on 2CD since March of 1994. Is this vinyl-only business? FML *shoots self*

 

Yes. The only digital copy is from a compilation. From wikipedia:

 

19 "[stone in focus]" aka "[wall-to-wall carpet]" 10:05 - / E2 (vinyl/cassette only — see Notes)

 

"SAW2 was originally released on compact disc, cassette tape and vinyl. The 19th song only appears on vinyl and cassette copies, as it was not able to fit on CD copies. The vinyl edition came in two pressings: a black vinyl and a limited edition brown vinyl of 10,000 copies; currently, the brown vinyl is easier to find than the black vinyl edition. Track 19 is also omitted from online retailers, as their copies are based on the original CD version. The only hard-copy digital form of track 19 can be found on the Astralwerks compilation Excursions in Ambience: The Third Dimension, on which it has been given the name "#19". [1] In the United States, Sire Records also omitted track 04 from their CD edition."

 

I actually tracked down that album for Stone In Focus, was easier than getting SAW II on vinyl.

me too. it's a good album, though (the compilation).

  On 11/14/2009 at 1:26 PM, Bramsworth said:

All I can say is it most definitely is a sound being played back at a slower rate. A cello in fact, which is more obvious if you play the track at a faster rate.

Thanks for pointing this out! I ended up making a track out of some string samples played far too slowly on purpose and it sounded really beautiful. Do you have any other tips for neat things to try out in ambient music?

^A few common ones-

-slowing things way down

-tons of reverb/delay

-granular synths

-recording the track being played in an unusual environment with bits of background noise (caves, parking garages, that sort of thing)

When it comes to straight-up beatless ambient music, I think for a lot of people it's easy to make, but hard to make interesting (judging by the number of "Vangelis falling asleep on his keyboard" songs floating around the net)

  On 6/3/2010 at 12:32 AM, Cryptowen said:

-slowing things way down

-tons of reverb/delay

-granular synths

-recording the track being played in an unusual environment with bits of background noise (caves, parking garages, that sort of thing)

Thanks, those all sound like good tips.

  On 6/3/2010 at 12:32 AM, Cryptowen said:

When it comes to straight-up beatless ambient music, I think for a lot of people it's easy to make, but hard to make interesting (judging by the number of "Vangelis falling asleep on his keyboard" songs floating around the net)

Ha, I think that's true of pretty much anything -- it's easy to do it badly, and hard to do it well. "90% of everything is crud," as Sturgeon's Law says.

  On 6/3/2010 at 12:32 AM, Cryptowen said:

When it comes to straight-up beatless ambient music, I think for a lot of people it's easy to make, but hard to make interesting (judging by the number of "Vangelis falling asleep on his keyboard" songs floating around the net)

lol

  On 6/3/2010 at 12:32 AM, Cryptowen said:

"Vangelis falling asleep on his keyboard"

Ha ha, you've just described a good 1/3 of my record collection there...

I'd add a +1 on the "leaving in the room (cave/bank vault/traffic) noise" and then putting on quite heavy step delay as it can lead to quite interesting transients.

A long, long time ago, I was recording some etherial sort of musics through a heavy step delay with the decay time turned way way up, and when I listened back to it, there were these amazing floaty noises that got drawn out and turned into odd birdcry type of sounds.

It took me ages to go back and listen to the 4-track tapes work out that when I'd been recording the bass, I'd been really lazy and dragged my fingers on the strings - the delay pedal picked up that noise and amplified it 16x over. Happy accidents like that are your friend.