brettworks

If you compose with MIDI (as almost all producers do), it can be beneficial to bounce MIDI tracks to audio sooner rather than later to open production possibilities. Since audio is captured sound rather than MIDI instructions for triggering it, working directly with audio waveforms is the closest the composer gets to touching sound as it unfolds over time. As producer Aphex Twin realized after having noticed the similarities between the waveforms of bird song and sine wave samples, ”all sounds break down into really simple things.” Working directly with waveforms is production’s breaking down technique that allows us to explore sound as malleable-morphable material that can be shaped in infinite ways. In sum, play with audio tracks as simple things: re-pitch them into distant registers, granulize and stretch them out into drones, find their perfect loops, chop them into percussive bits, or use them as input for processing chains whose strange outputs will be input for even stranger audio. Working directly with waveforms is a tactile way for the composer to maintain a sense of touch in production so that the music’s elements are crafted, shaped, and adjusted thoughtfully and just so.