So yesterday I arived at EMS. The place is nice, very quiet, good for getting work done. Friendly people.
I started out roaming through Bladerunner, taking samples. Not an easy task, since I don't want voices and music from the film. So what's left is a little one-dimensional: a lot of droning, crowds, atmospheres. Not much details or fast changing sounds. I guess that's what I have to add then.... Still I'd like to stick to the plan of using only sounds from the film. After getting 20some soundfiles, ranging from 3 seconds to 2 minutes, I tried some processes. Adobe Audition, my favorite audio editor (yes, Windows on my MacBook!) is a good tool for filtering. Also the dynamics processing, with extreme parameter values is promising, as is using noise reduction with random other pieces of sound as 'noise' (this is like 'subtracting' one sound from another).
The plan for today is to organize the samples, figure out a way to administer them in the family tree, and adjust lengths, so they are a bit more practical. Then I should test and decide on LiSa processes to use. This is hard, as I want to choose only 3 or 4 processes, and they should be narrowed down: the processing I do with LiSa usually is very broad, meaning that with one process I can do a wide variety of things. But I think the processes to build the family tree should be a bit more contained.
As a general direction to go I'd like to explore a soundfield with low frequency drones, high filtered sounds, and not much mid frequencies (maybe some sweeps through those mid frequencies). This seems the best take on the soundmaterial I have right now. It is actually a good thing that I have this kind of rigid plan, as I'm constantly tempted to consider other sounds to use: there's a Buchla analog synthesizer in the studio, and a lot of room noises in both the studio and the room in my family hostel. It also is a little scary though: will I be able to generate enough interesting material from those sourcefiles to create a composition that is any good?
To work.