Shaping Sound
Music knows no boundaries. Musicians and music producers are continually finding new and exciting ways to shape the sound in an unorthodox manner. Back in the 70′, great psychedelic rock bands explored the possibilities of an electric guitar coupled with various effects. The result was the creation of a unique and distinctive sound. This manipulation of the sound progressed over time with new devices that allowed to push the boundaries even further. When the first samples started to be commercially available in the ’80s, the ability to control sound in a new way marked the start of a new era in electronic music.
Today, a new plugin came to light, and it is indeed unique because of the way it manipulates the audio signal. Its name is “I Wish“ by Infected Mushroom (the famous psychedelic trance band) in partnership with Polyverse music. In the next two tutorials, I will try to explain its functions and demonstrate how it works.
Sound Manipulation with ”I Wish”
In its core, I Wish is a granular note freezer. This means that the plugin firstly samples incoming audio and when you hit the note on your MIDI keyboard it plays a part of it back as a loop. The loop is so short and plays so fast that it creates an audible pitch. The pitch is determined by the note played on your MIDI keyboard. Lower notes will produce longer loops while higher notes will produce shorter loops. You can use the plugin to capture individual pitch cycles and repeat them essentially freezing time.
The I Wish plugin is a MIDI effect, and it requires audio input to work. So, let’s see how we can make it work in the SoundBridge: DAW. Firstly I will add a new audio track and drag and drop some simple synth chord sequence from the sample pool on it. Here is how it sounds unprocessed.
~Synth chord sequence – unprocessed
On the same audio channel, I will drag and drop I Wish plugin which looks like this:
MIDI trigger
Next, I will make a new MIDI channel which will be used as a trigger for I Wish. By switching to the mixer view in the SoundBridge: DAW, we can see two previously created channels. In the upper section of the channels, there are options for routing. The only thing needed for connecting I Wish is located within the MIDI Out tab.
By clicking on the MIDI out tab the routing section appears. On the next picture, you can see how to choose the right signal path for I Wish to be triggered by MIDI track.
Back on the sequencer section, I have already made some simple note sequence on the MIDI channel. Here is how it sounds.
~Synth chord sequence triggered by I Wish from the MIDI track
By automating the pitch and format as well as other parameters from the IWish we can get some crazy sound manipulation, but getting deeper into its full potential will require another tutorial which will follow soon.
Download project here.
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