Welcome to the NEW Poetmistry newsletter

I’m revamping this newsletter to make it a monthly hub for sound design resources. I’m going to be writing process notes & short tutorials, linking to free sample packs & weird sound libraries, highlighting my favorite production tutorials, and sharing music that I’m listening to!

Creative Prompt: Don’t Sleep on Vocoders!

I used a ton of vocoders on my new song “man holding a box!” Usually when people think of vocoders, they think of the daft punk robot voice, but there’s so much more you can do with them (turns out they’ve been around for almost 100 years and were originally invented to reduce bandwidth on telephone lines).

Typically, vocoders work by recreating the input or modulator signal (e.g. a voice) with a carrier signal (e.g. synth sound). But instead of voice/synth, what if we used drums (modulator) and a recording of water (carrier). Yes! We would get some watery drums. And you can go even further by putting completely different elements as both the modulator and the carrier. Let me give you a brief rundown on how we might do this with the Ableton stock vocoder.

You can see that I’m starting with the two bits of audio that I want to combine placed directly on top of each other in the timeline. Generally speaking you want to put the vocoder on the more rhythmic element (in this case, “ 3 Drum Break”). You’ll notice that the “4 Birds and Water” track is actually muted, because we don’t want to hear that playing over the top of what’s produced by the vocoder (we’re just using track 4 as an input for the vocoder).

Now here’s how I’ve set up the vocoder that’s on the “3 Drum Break” track. You can see that on the left hand side, I’ve changed the drop down menu under “Carrier” to “External” and then below that I’ve changed the “Audio From” to pull from “4-Birds and Water.” That’s pretty much all there is to it! I really encourage you to try this out with totally different sound sources as modulator and carrier. You can get some really crazy stuff!

Here are some of the parameters you’re going to want to mess around with to tweak the sound (most of these are on the right side except for “Bands”):

1. Depth: will control the balance between the two tracks i.e. will it sound more like drums or more like water

2. Formant: will make the sound seem higher or lower, but preserves fundamental pitch of the sample

3. Release: changes how long will the drum hits ring out with their wateriness (sorry if that makes no sense)

4. Bands (dropdown menu on the bottom left): will make the sound seem lower or higher definition. More bands equals more clarity meaning things will seem more liquid/smooth while fewer bands will make things crunchier.

And some final notes:

1. I always like to turn on the “enhance” button on the top left. I’m not entirely sure what it does but I do think it “enhances” the signal.

2. The main black square with little yellow lines in the center of the vocoder basically acts as an EQ (each of the little yellow lines represents the volume of each of the bands). I wanted to mention this since its such a prominent part of the UI of the effect, but tbh I don’t really find myself using it that much unless I’m wanting to reduce a really bass heavy signal.

3. Turn “BW” (on the bottom middle) down and see what happens!

Sound Resources: Poetmistry Sample Pack

Typically, I’m going to use this section to share some sort of free sound design resource whether that’s a sample pack, a plug-in, or cool website/recording/library.

Today, I have a sample pack that I made using all the sound design sessions from my track “man holding a box.” There’s a bunch of squirmy, wormy, earthy sounds and zappy, wobbly, electric-y sounds that didn’t even make it into the final track! Check it out here.

I’ve also made the stems for “man holding a box” available as well. If you have Ableton 12.1.1+, you can even open up the original project file! Here’s the link.

Fun Tutorials: Ableton Stock Strings

I love this short video by Peaks of Valleys about synthesizing string sounds using Ableton Tension for a couple reasons. One, I think Ableton Tension is highly underrated and I want to use it more myself. Two, this video made me realize Ableton already has two strings presets (“Strings Quartet” and “Ensemble Strings”) which sound pretty good. Three, I think it’s a great entry point into some of the awesome content Peaks of Valleys is putting out!

What I’m listening to: Ear the band

I’ve been trawling through a bunch of end-of-year album write-ups, and as much as there was some great music released this year, I wasn’t connecting with a lot of it. It made me realize how connected my music listening is to my practice of music making. I’ll be honest, I’m not a great listener of music. I wish I listened super widely and eclectically and deeply, but I don’t. I’m drawn to music that helps me understand the type of music that I’m trying to create. A lot of the time, I stop the album halfway through because I want to go sit down and open up Ableton.

That being said, a new album that I’ve been enjoying is “The Most Dear and The Future” by ear. I’m thinking about doing a little more with vocals myself so their meandering mix of electronic and acoustic has felt right up my alley. The songs sound quite simple and almost “underproduced,” but I’ve been surprised by the depth of what’s going on when I return to them with nice headphones. If you’re already familiar with ear, then I’d recommend checking out these albums as well:

1. Lali Puna - Scary World Theory

2. Vektormusik - Interfoliere

3. Clay - Matthew Herbert & Momoko Gill

4. Sweet Trip - Velocity : Design : Comfort

Thanks for reading and feel free to reach out to me if you have any comments or suggestions!