Beating The Fog [disquiet0254] by Formant

This track was created for the Disquiet Junto #254.

More on this 254th weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Fog and Steam: Make music from two provided samples” — at:

http://disquiet.com/0254/

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I took a chunk of the fog horn and ran it through Stutter Edit to create a base of a beat, though you can't hear it much in the final mix. Next I chopped up the fog horn into small chunks and used those to create a pulsing beat. Lots of copying of little snippets. At such a short length the sample doesn't sound like a fog horn anymore.

Next I brought both samples into PaulStretch and used the train whistle stretched 100x and the fog horn stretched 30x as an ambient bed throughout the track.

Then I put both samples into Kontakt and laid them out on the keyboard. The samples are pretty rough to work with like that, and you can clearly hear the loop points in the higher synth pad notes. They also have a bit of an unsettling air to them when played on a keyboard like that.

I took the synth stabs (train whistle) and ran them through some delay and pitch processing for the semi-melodic component. (There's also a robo-voice effect on it that you can hear toward the end.)

The train whistle at the top and end of the track is processed with some delay/pitch and reverb for it's synth-y effect.

The more thumping beat is part of the train whistle recording run through some EQ and sub-harmonizer.

Add some more overall shaping effects and compression, and voilà!