Reviews

Sound On Sound

Occasionally, one stumbles across an audio utility that is far more useful than its minimal price tag suggests, and such is the case with Ambient, available from Audiobulb records. Written by Christopher Hipgrave as a standalone Max/MSP application running on Windows & Mac and given inspiring album-like artwork from graphic designer Mike Podolak, Ambient is described as a "unique ambient soundscape generator", and is simplicity itself to use.

You simply load in any single audio file (it accepted all sample rates I threw at it, and maximum length is only limited by your available RAM), and click on Start for playback and Records to capture the results in real time to a new file as you manipulate the various parameters on offer. At the heart of Ambient is a granular sampler that spits out a stream of "grains" at your chosen speed and pitch, but with variable random-pitch and pitch-quantise functions to make things potentially more musical. There are three additional pitch-shift layers available for extra richness, an Amplitude Envelope, so you can add real time fades, plus effects including delay, various filter options and ambient reverb. However, this bland description of the controls doesn't prepare you for the results, which I found truly inspiring.

Ambient is perfect for the avant garde electronic composer, but it is also a wonderful tool for sound designers and, indeed, any other musician who needs a kick start for creativity, some ambient backdrops or some fresh audio flavouring. Highly recommended! - Martin Walker

Ark Magazine

Audiobulb Records specialize in exciting and experimental ambient music and they have just released a piece of software that allows even complete beginners to manipulate sound; creating huge sound-scapes. Ark Magazine was one of the first to get our hands on a copy. Here’s what we thought...

There’s something about ambient music that has always fascinated me. While some would dismiss it as “just noise” the level of subtlety and images created in that noise can be simply awe-inspiring.

I play the guitar but I’d never tried to making music using a laptop, preferring to use instruments rather than relying on a cold, clinical machine to do the work. That was until I loaded up the simple Ambient software. I didn’t have any instructions and having tried this kind of software before, and understanding it about as badly as the noises I made it produce, I didn’t hold out much hope for making it work.

To my complete surprise, however, I quickly and painlessly managed to load up a song that was stored on my computer and was ready to begin manipulating it. 10 seconds later, I was cowering as a throbbing, disturbing bass tone was being emitted from my tiny speakers. It was shaking my eyeballs and was genuinely unsettling. Considering the song I’d put in was a pleasant jaunt with acoustic guitar and a tambourine, the transformation was simply incredible as the song was now unrecognizable but was absorbing to listen to, and like nothing I’d heard before. I twiddled a few more of the labeled, virtual knobs, and the noise was gradually tamed back to a state where it sounded like a human could have created it.

Intrigued by my first adventure into the software, I decided to do some experimenting and so I plugged in my guitar and recorded a few samples of noise from long drawn guitar notes to high pitched squeals of feedback. Considering what the software had done to the gentle tune I’d tried earlier, I thought that it would revel on getting its hands dirty with some more abstract sounds. I first tested it with some random stabs on a guitar, which was already being distorted. On putting it into the software I had no idea where to start manipulating it so I hit the ‘random’ button. The many reverb, pitch shift and grain size knobs suddenly jumped to all different positions and what sounded like a fierce wind was ripping through the room. I pressed it again and somehow it had managed to construct a gentle beat out of the mess of noise I’d entered.

I wasn’t prepared for what it threw back at me though as I twiddled with a few knobs for the feedback sound and my speakers pierced the room with what sounded like somebody dying painfully. I tried another setting and was presented with what can only be described as peace in sound form. As I listened carefully to it, drifting into a state of eternal bliss, the sound was comprised of many different layers of noises which were floating in and out giving the sound different textures to it. I’ve no idea how it had produced them from what I’d put into it though.

The software is certainly not just for mucking around on though as it has a record facility which will record as you play with the noise and can record for as long as you want, until your computer runs out of space. This gives the option to twiddle with knobs while recording and it has already been used by Christopher Hipgrave to create his album ‘Slow, With Pages of Fluttering Interference.

I found that the controls were a little fiddly and if you needed to be extremely precise in what you were altering this may cause a little trouble as some of the mouse movements were a bit clunky in dragging the virtual knobs around.

The random button was a brilliant idea though and ten seconds after loading up a few high pitched notes from the guitar, I’d managed to make them sound like the biggest mosquito of all time and elegant churchbells – just by clicking my mouse twice.

In all this is a pioneering and yet beautifully simple piece of software. It opens up endless possibilities for creativity and is an absolute steal. - Alistair Webster.

Vital Weekly

This is not the first time that I review software; it is the second time and it's an updated version of the one I wrote before, Ambient V.03 (see Vital Weekly 845). I have very little knowledge about technology, to be honest, and, as I pointed out before, I am quite lazy. I don't mind if somebody else does the legwork for me. That is one of the reasons why I like Ambient so much. I have used that first version a lot since I got it. Here's how it works: you load any sound into it, be it very short or very long, and you can change all sorts of parameters, Grain randomness, Granular randomness, pitch shift, delay, reverb, amplitude envelope, filter and you can tweak it around until you find something you like. Then you hit record and let it run by itself until you are done.

The recordings can then be opened in any other program you use for mixing and editing. You can feed the result back in Ambient and use it as source material. You can save your favourite presets and you can connect via Midi learn a controller to it. My most beloved feature is the 'random' button though. It takes your sound in the most unexpected territories and I can hit it for as long as I think is necessary to find the right sound. Don't let the name 'Ambient' misguide you, as it is not necessarily an ambient outcome. I guess it depends on your choice of input, but also some combinations rip speakers and headphones apart. So is this something for lazy people (like me)? I don't think it is, as it all very much has to do with what you put into this, and what you do with the results.

With technology, I always feel one should work with something one is comfortable with. Just last week I discussed with someone why I was still using software A for multi-tracking and not 'B', which was so much easier to use, time-saving etc. 'You will regret not using this earlier'. I don't subscribe to the whole notion of regret, as it has to do with the choices one is making. I know 'B' is better, faster, cheaper and yet I stick with 'A' because I am comfortable using it and not easily prepared to go through another learning curve. If you want to release a cassette and use apps that play random sounds (like those sleep sound generators), then you should that. If creating modular synthesizers is your alley, then go ahead. It is never about what you use, it is how you want to it. Rather than writing myself something in Max/MSP which is at the basis of 'Ambient', I'd rather take 'Ambient', because it is so easy to use.

The last time I wrote I had no idea if I would be using 'Ambient' a lot, but in the years that followed I can safely say I used it a lot, in all sorts of combinations, as a live instrument, as stand-alone software, feeding it to analogue machines and was at the source of much music.