Using Max in Radiohead Concert
Hi
I don't know if it's appropriate for me to post this but I thought I'd give it a go. I'm organising a gig to perform the entire OK Computer album by Radiohead in a few months-it's the 15 year anniversary and I'm a massive fan. I'm fairly new to Max (although I've made some patches to assist with teaching and composition ideas at my college) and I'd really like to get some of the sounds from the album to perform live-either manipulating live instruments or playing with control surfaces.
By any chance is there anyone that has any ideas for patches that I can start building from or any advice for the type of sounds that I'm trying to perform live? I've got some small ideas that I've messed around with on Max/controlling Max with my iPhone via TouchOsc but could do with any help or advice.
Many thanks for any comments.
Hi
major fan here too. Perhaps a fan of dEUS, The Week That Was and James Blake too? ;)
I think you need to be more specific: "get some sounds from the album"........"perform live".......
Do you mean resampling of short samples, or longer verbatim loops, with a live 'covers' band or solo, and with what instruments/controllers?? If you stipulate exactly what you have in mind you'll get loads of suggestions.
Brendan
>If you stipulate exactly what you have in mind you'll get loads of suggestions.
not only that, actually specifying what you need is a great helping in building what you want.
doublepost
Hi
Thanks for the reply to my questions-sorry if I wasn't too specific about what I was looking for, had to rush off to work. Here goes:
The whole idea behind the concert is not just to play the album-though that in itself would be great-but to showcase how perfectly Radiohead combined traditional instruments (guitar/drums/etc) with computer generated sounds (climbing up the walls/Fitter Happier) and try to get everything from the album performed live. I would rather not sample off the album (copyright and integrity) but do my best to generate sounds through Max or from sampling/manipulating the performers live (example: Airbag, I'm going to sample/manipulate singers voice). As for instruments I have the core unit (guitar, bass, drums, keys, vocals) played alongside live strings players and computers running ableton and/or Max.
The songs that I need help with are:
Exit Music-sounds in verse at 2:17
Karma Police-delay/clicking sound at 2:33 and sound starting at 3:33 to end
Fitter Happier-I have piano part and strings transcribed but nothing else
Climbing up the Walls-start/verses and end from 4:07
At this stage I haven't got an patches started as I'm busy transcribing/arranging string parts. Many thanks for your posts and any help/advice you could throw my way. Cheers
"try to get everything from the album performed live" and "generate sounds through
Max or from sampling/manipulating the performers" is so much more specific, i can
almost see the patch in front of me. :)
Hi calimike
as a Radiohead fanboy myself, I thought I'd try to give you some general pointers: the Exit Music outro sounds like a short playground/school kids sample (lmgtfy) looped and panned, so you'll want to look for [buffer~] plus [groove~], or [sfplay~] on its own. Also, search the forum for "panning" or "crossfade". As for the Karma Police outro (my wife and I had our first wedding dance to this track, in an old hotel on a Tuscan hill.... aww!), it sounds like Johnny fed his delay pedal a distorted feedback phrase, then increased the delay time to lower the pitch - just a guess. Some helpful objects might be [tri~] and [reson~] for faking guitar feedback sounds, [tanh~] for distortion and [tapin~]/[tapout~] for a delay line. Search this forum for "bit reduction" too as it sounds like there's a bit of that going on as well. These are just wild stabs in the dark, so good luck!
this guy, and others, have some Max v. Radiohead toots:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qruCD1K8qmo
HTH
Brendan
Many, many thanks for the reply and help with this project. I'll see what I can get out of a patch/post it up once I'm happy with the sound.
I had a look at the youtube link and I'll have a go with messing around with the Max patch ideas in his post-he really knows what he's doing.
Karma Police would have been a great song to dance to at my wedding-wish I thought of that!
Cheers
Calimike
Hi Calimike,
Most of what seems to be happening at the times you posted seems to involve delay feedback and filters, so look into tapin~/tapout~, biquad~ and reson~. For instance the sounds you mention in Climbing up the Walls are most likely a detuned radio played through various different lengths of delay with long feedback tails. The little pops and noises produced by the radio would make those sounds if fed back through a delay. Many of the electronic sounds behind Fitter Happier are made with a delay feeding back through a resonant filter.
There is very likely some kind of downsampling or bit reduction going on with the Karma Police sound, but again, at its core it is feedback and filters. You can downsample with poly~ objects. Search around here for bit reduction, like n00b_meister said.
For the voice in Climbing up the Walls, I've seen Thom Yorke singing live through a hollow body electric guitar. Maybe try that. In the same vein, in my very humble opinion, all this delay messing will be a hundred times more fun done with a hardware mixer, its channel EQ and a delay processor than it will with a computer, but you might want everything wrapped up in neat little Max patches.
Hope some of this helps.
You can use my say~ object for fitter happier..