Capone's Ghost (Disquiet0255) by ikjoyce

This week's Junto involves creating the ghost of Al Capone's banjo playing... I started out with four oscillators with four separate envelopes, to allow me to have four individual strings... however after playing with it for a while it wasn't quite going where I wanted. After some suggestions in the Disquiet Slack, I instead turned to using Karplus Strong synthesis to emulate the string being plucked. This would only really let me do a 'fingerpicking' style rather than the 'strummed' style I had hoped to do, but the sound was closer to a banjo. To make it even closer, the pulse I used to trigger the delay was the output of the four oscillators (a Doepfer A-143-4 quad VCO) - which gives the faint impression of the strings resonating in sympathy. I ran the banjo through a little reverb and also though a reversed delay to give an other wordly feel. To this I added a 'whistle' sound that was entirely wet in reverb, to make it even more 'ghostly'.

More on this 255th weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Capone’s Ghost: What does the banjo music of the fabled criminal sound like?” — at:

disquiet.com/0255/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

llllllll.co/t/capones-ghost-disquiet-junto-project-0255/

There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

Public-domain mugshot associated with this project from Wikipedia.