Éclat: Part 41

Welcome to this very special Quarantine Edition of Éclat Crew!

First of all, I want to say that I hope that you are all well and healthy out there.

A really big part of the 'healthy' side of things is about our mental health. I know that music producers can feel isolated at the best of times; now with the current state of the world (you know what's going on, I won't go into details), it's even more important than usual that we get off social media and do the things that we enjoy. I know that something that makes me really happy is sharing my music-making experiences with you all, and I'm sad to not be able to do this in person with all of you; however, I hope that we can all come together online and make the most of things.

Today's challenge: Make an AMBIENT TRACK using only the samples in the provided Sample Pack. Download the samples from WeTransfer here!

By ambient, I mean a track without a discernible beat or rhythm. You can use any effects you like and can edit the audio in any way you like, but don't use any other sounds or synths you already have.

This Sample Pack is made entirely of audio that I recorded in my apartment on the Voice Memo app in my phone! It took me around 10 minutes to walk around my apartment, banging on things and tapping on things, to put together these 30 samples. If you're stuck at home and stuck for inspiration, I suggest you to look around your house and see what interesting noises you can come up with to make things out of! If you've got a contact mic, a zoom recorder, or a tape recorder, you can get even more interesting results.

The usual rules apply! Try to make your track in two hours or less, and try to make it 2 minutes long or less (though for once our listening times won't be constrained by our neighbors!) Once you've made your track, send it to us via WeTransfer, and we'll upload it to the Éclat Soundcloud for sharing and listening.

 

Here's what we made! (you can submit your track for this challenge ANY TIME, and it will be uploaded to the Éclat Soundcloud.)

 

You might have heard us talking about Granular Synthesis in previous editions of Éclat. This is a really cool technique to create glassy, shimmery and ambient sounds out of any kind of audio. Check out a couple of tutorials on Granular Synthesis in a few different DAWs here.