25032038's blog

WEEK 3 – INDUSTRIAL WORKSHOP BEAT

Written by

James Fitzgerald Burke

in

Making a beat/instrumental influenced by Throbbing Gristle and the sound of early industrial, whilst also adding “queer” and aggressive sounds to fit the sound of the genre.

For this task, we got paired with the person next to us, I got paired with Loui MP. We had a brief discussion before diving into making our instrumental, of what we wanted to make and both trying to collectively agree on something we were happy with. Loui came up with the idea of making a “jokey” sounding industrial beat, and I added the idea of adding to his sort of parody idea by having harsh and industrial sounds and fundamentals to create a weird collision of sounds that would confuse our listeners, we both agreed on this idea and went for the confusion aspect off of the mixed and unsure reaction our class showed to listening to Throbbing Gristle’s track “Hamburger Lady”.

We started by sampling an early Justin Bieber track “One more time”, using this idea of something popular snd recognisable to be haunting and using it in a more queer manor, to be unsettling and a juxtaposition to the rest of the instrumental. This was thew first idea brainstormed suggested by Loui, with my input of trying to make Justin Bieber sound horrific and violent. We did this by speeding up the sampled vocal line, which also transposed his vocals to a higher pitch to make it more dissonant like the keys of Throbbing Gristle’s track “Almost a Kiss”. We sampled a lot of the vocal line by using it through a build up section and then our main beat, we messed around by automating the pitch and improvising it going up and down to make it sound trippy and haunting as if Justin was being warped of some kind. In the main section we specifically sampled the line “Your world is my world, and my fight is your fight” which I thought whilst still being melodic, suited the harsh and intense sound of the instrumental and industrial stereotypes lyric wise, as well as the eerie and haunting feel of Genesis P Orridge’s vocals, and felt the most appropriate out of lyrics to sample to fit in with the chilling lyrics of songs in the industrial genre.

We both also sampled more jokey and abstract sounds to make our beat have more emphasis and we made these sounds bleed in our track like an airhorn sound, a big boom effect and a metal pipe falling down stairs, which we all put effects on like reverb for the metal pipe, and distortion for the booms to make them harsh and discomforting to the mix. This was inspired by the distorted effects used by Throbbing Gristle throughout their whole discography, using tape deck machines, to get a similar “avant garde music concrete” sound as described Sound on Sound talking about Throbbing Grislte’s track “Hamburger Lady” with founder Chris Carter saying “The industrial sound that we had was only part of the whole industrial movement that we had going then. It didn’t have to be industrial–sounding as such” which I personally saw when choosing these joke sounds.

“Everything that we did was industrial to us. It was more of a concept rather than a sound” – Chris Carter via Sound on Sound

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/classic-tracks-throbbing-gristle-hamburger-lady

I suggested to use a heavy kick drum after we listened to a variety of different Industrial songs, mainly Skinny Puppy’s track “Blood on the wall” which has a continuous and emphasised heavy kick drum throughout and is so harsh and heavy that it made our beat sound more violent we both liked. We went with the sound “heavy kick” drum preset sound, which I wanted to sound like a “synthetic whip crack” as described by Electricity Club when discussing Throbbing Gristle’s sound on their album “20 Jazz funk greats” I recorded into the DAW, and i tried to create a rhythm of kicks landing on beat one and three but also on some off beats and playing in long and then suddenly short note durations, to give a more irregular rhythmic feel creating syncopation. I suggested to bit crush this to 7bits at +5.0dB so it would mask the instrumental and have a constant loud and piercing sound similar to that of Skinny Puppy’s kick drum.

https://www.electricityclub.co.uk/tag/throbbing-gristle

Loui chose to have a heavy bass sound in the Logic Pro EDM bass preset “Grinding Rhythm”. This was due to our limited sound options that were downloaded on the Mac’s, however we found the sound had a thick sound quality and a very pulsing sound that helped add to a harsh and brutal sound I envisioned for the instrumental. We played long notes to create a more soundscape sound feel the other bands like Nine Inch Nails use for their accompaniment. I figured out the notes were using flattened and sharpened notes in the Justin Bieber vocal melody, so Loui improvised a bass line over this that would completely contrast the sweet and polished sound of Justin’s voice with something that I intended to be disorientating for the listener in sound quality and timbre, yet still work harmonically. We were trying to create a sound inspired by Throbbing Gristle on their track “Almost a kiss” that just had more of a “Grim” sound as they stated about their synths, but playing into the factor of being inspired by “the sounds around them” as mentioned in the Synth Britannia video by 23narchy via YouTube sound so we picked a more EDM style for the 2010 sound of Bieber, but also violent in a throbbing gristle style.

“They all came together into this like weird mish mash of electronic experimental textures” – Chris Carter via Synth Britannia documentary.

I think what worked was our sample choice, aswell as the Synthesizers and sounds we picked to support this, but our mix and other melodic elements cannot be heard much in the final beat, aswell as other eerie elements could have been added to fit more with the artistic intentions sought in Throbbing Gristle’s sound especially the use of “Roland D-50’s and digital synthesizers” described by Chris Carter via The Synthesizer Book. Lastly our limited sound options on the university’s mac set us back in terms of our creative vision.

Below are the links and videos I used to help find my research and quotes from.

  1. The gear of Throbbing Gristle – Reverb
  2. The electronic legacy of 1979 – Electricity Club
  3. Industrial Music for Industrial People: Throbbing Gristle 1978 – Datacide
  4. Classic Tracks: Throbbing Gristle’s “Hamburger Lady”
  5. At home with Carter Tutti in the wire (March 2015) – The synthesizer book
  6. Throbbing Gristle/Chris & Cosey clip from Synth Britannia – 23narchy via YouTube
  7. Throbbing Gristle’s “Hamburger Lady” – SaveMeKaiser via YouTube
  8. Throbbing Gristle’s “Almost a Kiss” – Throbbing Gristle via Youtube
  9. Skinny Puppy’s “Blood On The Wall” – Skinny Puppy via YouTube

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

More posts