There’s an overall focus on downtempo ambience, and a chilly analog atmosphere pervades much of the tracklisting. Among the album’s contents, you’ll find two new songs of mine that haven’t been released anywhere else. They’re called Solstice and Knipling Pin, and they’re two of the more upbeat and airy tunes featured on the compilation.

One on Twoism Vol. 5 is a free download. If you’re looking for a headphones listen to involve yourself in, or if you’re just seeking out some new electronic music from a collection of artists you may or may not have heard of before, give it a try!

Anyway, today’s post is the second installment in my series of limitation-based songs. For this song, Valley of Echoes, I restricted myself solely to the feature set from Reason’s 1.0 release dating from way back in 2000.

Valley of Echoes is an upbeat, spacey breakbeat tune that resides in a stylistic territory somewhere between Zwei and Descent from Seventeen More Times. The arrangement is mainly built around improvised keyboard jamming, and I think the end result is really fun. Production-wise, I aimed to make the restrictions I was working under as invisible as possible in the completed song.

The challenge resulting from the “Reason 1.0 features only” limitation was nearly the inverse of the ID8-only song New Faction I posted last time. In creating New Faction, I used some of my favorite effects techniques to turn a limited sound palette into original sounds. With Valley of Echoes, I was able to use synths and samplers I’m well-accustomed to, but I had only a small set of basic (and at times tempramental) effects to shape them with.

There are a lot of small limitations in Reason 1.0′s outdated feature set, but it was fun and rewarding to figure out tricks and workarounds I could use to achieve the results I was after without having to wreck my workflow with anything unwieldy like duplicated sequencer tracks in the absence of Combinator.

My sound design tends to use a lot of parallel processing, in which I’ll split a signal into several paths, process each of them independently, and layer the result. In later versions of Reason I would use a Spider Audio Merger/Splitter for this, or a Stereo Imager to split it into high and low frequencies, but in the absence of either of these devices I was able to find an alternate solution.

Several of Reason’s effects devices, like the DDL-1 delay, are able to take a mono signal and output it as dual mono. By turning the effects to Bypass mode, they can be used as rudimentary signal-splitters. Using these, it was possible to easily do things like doubling a synth pad with a Foldback Distortion-processed version of itself to add more depth and character to the sound without needing another synth and another sequencer track.

The guitar instrument that enters the song a little after the 2:00 mark was a fun sound to create. Built around a single Factory Sound Bank sample loaded into an NN19, it makes extensive use of filter modulation, delays, and other effects to hide its origin, allow for longer notes even in the pitched-up higher octave range, and overall create something quite a bit different than what it started out as.

In general, I restricted myself to the older parts of the Factory Sound Bank for samples, though I don’t consider it a major oversight if I mistakenly used some samples that weren’t included with Reason 1.0 — its samplers have always been able to load external audio files.

Arguably the biggest challenge involved with this song was wrangling the old Comp-01 Compressor. It and I had never gotten along particularly well, and I hadn’t made a serious attempt to use it since before Reason 3.0′s release in 2004. Between a confusing display and an auto makeup gain functionality, it can be difficult to figure out exactly what it’s doing to the sound you’re feeding it, but after some experimentation I found it to be quite good at easily beefing up drum sounds.

Processing the master output, though, was another matter — after many failed attempts, I settled on a rather odd configuration in which an EQ going into the compressor boosts the lows and cuts the highs to affect which frequencies will cause the compression to be invoked, with the compressor’s output then evened out by a second EQ that inverts the cuts and boosts of the first one.

One accommodation I did reluctantly allow myself in the end was to insert an MClass Maximizer onto the full mix output, in order to use its soft-clipping functionality so that I could keep the song’s overall volume more akin to what I normally release, without risking distortion artifacts. Its effect on the audio is negligible, but even though I can’t hear the difference myself, I’d rather stray slightly from my self-imposed limit than release an unnecessarily distorted or overly quiet mix.

While the inherent challenge in working under limitations can be enjoyable in and of itself, I find it particularly rewarding when it leads me to a result I would never have obtained by normal means. The distinct visual style of Shogouki, the glowing cyberpunk city from SpaceDM9, originated from a necessity to work around limitations of the Doom engine and evolved from there — hologram bridges were developed as a workaround to avoid the rendering overhead of large, solid-looking faux-3D platforms, and they ended up working well enough to serve as the thematic basis for the entire level.

It should go without saying that Valley of Echoes doesn’t diverge as much as Shogouki, but I’m happy with the song, and there are a lot of cool things going on behind the scenes. I’ve also uploaded the Reason song file for anyone who wants to look inside and pick it apart.

• Download Valley of Echoes to listen to it (MP3)
• Download Valley of Echoes to dissect its innards (Reason 6.0 song file)

On our next installment I’ll be posting Prima Frost, an ambient song with sounds generated solely using the Thor Polysonic Synthesizer.

Working within a set of limits should be a familiar concept for most people, especially creative folks. Whether it be the limits of the format or medium we’re working in, limits of computing power available to us, or simply the limits of our own abilities, we’ve all struggled with them at one point or another.

A set of limitations, though, can inspire us to grow our skills, take closer notice of details we may have otherwise overlooked, and try techniques we’ve never used before. I’ve come to greatly enjoy the challenge of masking the limits under which a work was created, pushing myself to achieve as much within them as possible.

In the past month or so, I’ve tasked myself with completing three songs each within a constricting technical limitation inside Reason 6.0‘s effectively limitless environment, restricting myself to a small subset of the program’s functionality:

1. New Faction — ID8 Instrument Device for all sound generation (Download)
2. Valley of Echoes — Reason 1.0 devices and functionality only
3. Prima Frost — Thor Polysonic Synthesizer for all sound generation

Yep. That's the whole thing.

The ID8 was never designed to be particularly customizable, and it shows. Intended as an easy tool for musicians to quickly pull up a basic instrument and not have to worry about much else, that’s actually very nearly all that the ID8 allows one to do.

In order to bend its sound in a more unique, polished direction, I needed to make extensive use of effects devices and elaborate Combinator routing. Once I had managed to morph a typical string-orchestra sound into the thick, frothing synth pad that the rest of the song was built around, I knew that my goal would be achievable: a song based solely around the ID8 that sounds nothing like the ID8.

The synth pad/arp combo in particular is split across a grand total of four Combinators, one of which recieves notes and three others routed up with arpeggiators and effects to compensate for the lack of CV input on the ID8. It was tricky to set up, but the resulting sound went above and beyond my initial expectations for the project and the rest of the song was easy to write around it.

The drums were similarly messy to set up. Due to the ID8′s singular stereo output, a grand total of 7 different ID8 devices needed to be used so that the individual sound processing needed for separate drums would be possible. Even then, I still needed to use some high/low pass splitting to slice things up further to avoid needing to add even more ID8 devices. The power of separate drum outputs on Redrum and Kong is not to be underestimated.

One of my favorite sounds in New Faction is the soaring melodic lead that first appears at about a minute into the song. At its core is a synth bass sound from the ID8, processed with pitch and formant shifts, heavy distortion and reverb, and far more EQ than is remotely normal to use in the sound design process. The signal is split into several different chains, each of which are given individual pitch shift and other processing for stereo spread.

The song arrangement itself is a relatively short piece just under 3 minutes, and stylistically it takes some obvious cues from 18 Apostolos.

I’ve also uploaded a comparison clip showing what some of New Faction’s main sounds were like before I processed them to hell and back.

I’ve come to really enjoy solving technical challenges such as this. It’s for exactly that reason that I did two other songs under different rule sets, and I’ve had a lot of fun with all three of them. I’ll be posting the next two songs in the coming weeks, along with a little article on each of their creation.

Download New Faction

Rack Extension art mockup #2 by Michael Mancuso (Click for fullsize)

Obviously, as stated when I posted the first mockup a few days ago, these don’t make any actual sound. While I’d be eager of course to jump on board with any developers wanting to implement Gelatin and Plum controls on their synths, this design itself is just an artistic exercise. Knobs and switches here were arranged primarily based on their appearance, given that they mostly have no actual functions assigned to them.

Though Propellerhead Software has yet to make publicly available the exact official specifications for interface design in Rack Extensions, I’ve given quite a bit of study to their own interfaces and aimed to model the lighting and general appearance of mine to match closely with their own work. I’m aiming to make each of these mockups a greater accomplishment than the one that came before it, so for the mockup I’m currently working on, I’m focusing more directly on usability by creating a Reason-styled interface design based on a popular plug-in that already exists as a VST.

Now, as a Reason user, I have to expound further on what excites me so much about the Rack Extension concept in the first place, because users and developers both will benefit hugely from it: Integration into the Reason rack will actually enable plug-ins to be combined in a way that makes them far greater than the sum of their parts.

Even with the trend towards larger and more complex powerhouse devices in Reason, devices have always been designed with alternate functions in mind for adventurous users to discover or invent. In contrast with the VST plugin system that dominates most of the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) world, in which individual plugins cannot communicate with each other, devices in Reason have ports in addition to the standard audio inputs and outputs.

In Reason, a synthesizer’s LFO can easily be piped into a mixer to modulate panning, or a filter can be routed to modulate its tone based on the pitch or envelope of a sound source (which may or may not be the same sound being filtered). The power created by this functionality can’t be understated: it was actually possible for users to build a warbling tape delay, filtered gate, or beat repeater in Reason before it ever supported any of those features natively.

While that idea might be daunting to developers looking to bring their plugins over to the Reason rack, it can be harnessed in such a way that might easily lead to many Rack Extensions being significantly more powerful and versatile than their VST counterparts, just by virtue of their taking advantage of some basic Reason features.

Sean Costello, developer of the Valhalla line of reverb plugins, explained recently how this could work:

ValhallaShimmer is essentially a diffusor loop reverb, with a pitch shifter in its feedback loop. The routing necessary to make this work in VST would be difficult, and would require a very specific reverb architecture. Meanwhile, there are a bunch of reverbs that could be “shimmerized,” but in order to do so, the pitch shifting has to be placed at that particular point.

A Re reverb (ReVerb – if anyone else takes that name, they are sneaky thieves and I hates them forever) could have special routing jacks at the back, that would act as a send and return for the feedback points of the reverb. You could put a pitch shifter in this send/return, and voila! Instant Shimmer. The pitch shifter could be the granular sort used in ValhallaShimmer, or a phase vocoder pitch shifter, or whatever generates the desired effects. For that matter, you could put anything in that feedback loop, and get some cool sounds. Or, put a noise gate in there, and get instant gated reverbs. You can’t do this in VST.

This sort of feedback-breakout functionality can actually be found in a Reason device that already exists, the versatile delay unit The Echo introduced in Reason 6.0. The ability of Rack Extension developers to take advantage of that and other capabilities unique to Reason will introduce their work to an entirely new audience of tinkerers who will relish in applying their new tools to situations that developers could never have foreseen or imagined.

In a few days I should have the next mockup ready for primetime, and maybe even another little article to go along with it. There is a very interesting future on the horizon for electronic musicians, many of whom haven’t even realized it yet.

For inquiries about commission work, contact me via email at esselfortium@remove this text if you’re not a spammer.gmail.com

In case you haven’t heard, they’ve been developing a technology called Rack Extensions, which will allow third-party DSP developers to create and sell new devices to fit into Reason’s “virtual hardware” rack, with all the same routing functionality and other workflow benefits of Propellerhead’s own built-in devices.

To go along with that exciting news, I’ll be designing some device interface mockups and posting them up here this week. Not devices to actually make sound, mind you, but device interfaces to demonstrate the work I’ll be doing as a graphic designer for developers looking to get involved in the Rack Extension market. In this first mockup, I’ve created my own realistic, high-quality knobs, sliders, and buttons that feel right at home among the existing Reason devices:

Rack Extension art mockup: "Amateur Home Mixdown" by Michael Mancuso (Click for fullsize)

Rack Extension technology will open the floodgates for countless new synths and effects in Reason, filling every imaginable niche. Major companies including Korg, GForce, and Sonic Charge are already on board creating Rack Extensions, along with smaller developers like Peff.

There will be more options (and toys) for Reason users than ever before, and all of them will be able to fit seamlessly into the rack with the same level of inter-device control users are accustomed to in Reason already, via the CV and audio routing ports on the back of every device.

Their interfaces, as well, will be held to the same high standards of quality and consistency as Propellerhead’s own creations. For smaller developers seeking to find a place in the new Rack Extension market, this can create a new entry barrier that — fortunately — can be very easily overcome through the involvement of an experienced interface graphics designer.

Throughout the week I’ll be creating and posting more device interface mockups, showing different visual directions that fit within Reason’s paradigm. I look forward to working with new developers as the Rack Extension market takes off, and I’m confident that my years of hands-on experience in Reason and in-depth understanding of its look and feel will be of great benefit to any developers needing an interface that complements the work they’ve put into their sounds.

For inquiries about commission work, contact me via email at esselfortium@remove this text if you’re not a spammer.gmail.com

As part of this project, I’ve made the entirety of last year’s Seventeen More Times and 2007′s A Terrible Flood available to listen for free online. If you haven’t heard them yet, it’s never been easier!

Even better, the Demo Reel on the main Music page features four new, never-before-heard songs that I’ve written for various projects in the past year:

• “From Here To” — A fuzzed-out, bombastic post-rock song that’ll almost certainly appear on my next album in some form or another.
• “Distant Pier” — A brief, melancholy night theme played on piano.
• “Waltz of the Demons” — A mystical, completely re-orchestrated take on a classic from the Doom soundtrack. The original song by Bobby Prince can be heard here. My version will appear on the soundtrack to The Shores of ZDoom.
• “Heatbox” — An upbeat, minute-long background track I composed for a Richard Day Research product demo video.

Its sequel, Doom II The Way id Did, has also been officially announced recently. A bunch of maps have already been submitted to the project and are downloadable from the development site, including three I’ve built that I’m quite proud of: the American McGee-styled Water Main, the John Romero-styled Leap of Faith, and the Sandy Petersen-styled Dead Sea. The project is off to a really exciting start and is slated for a September release.

If you haven’t heard about the project already, it’s a community-created Doom.wad replacement built in the style of the mappers at id Software who made the original game’s levels. The structural scale, level flow, architecture, and countless other aspects of the original maps were closely studied in aiming to create as authentic an imitation as possible.

More information (and, of course, a download link) can be found at the official project site, the release thread on Doomworld, and my own page about it.

In other community news, the 18th Annual Cacowards also finally came yesterday. 2011 was a surprisingly active year for great Doom projects, and so I’m honored that a few projects I worked on got mentions in it. Congratulations to all the winners, and here’s to another productive year!

These updates fix minor bugs that have cropped up since their original releases earlier this year.

If you still haven’t played the Vaporware Demo or SpaceDM9 yet, in my heavily biased opinion there’s never been a better time to check them out!

I contributed three maps to it (MAP03, MAP17, MAP29), out of the total of 45 submissions made by various community members. There are a lot of gems in there, and it’s definitely worth a look if you’re a DM player, particularly considering that there’s now a permanent server hosting the whole set on Odamex.

Whatever the case, you can get more info, check out a bunch of screenshots of my contributions, and download the whole pack here.