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Rain Rain - OSW transformed!
by MarkHolbrook

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Submitted on: May 02, 2008 - 11:14:35 AM
Last Updated: May 02 2008 - 11:14:35 AM
Keywords Rain (84)OneSweetWorld (20)Transformed (1)
Description OneSweetWorld was walking home cheerfully singing in the rain when out from a dark alley popped the evil Dr. Fourier who kidnapped her, whisking her away to his musical laboratory!

After trying unsuccessfully to clone the sweet singing damsel in distress, he turned in frustration to his transforms and software algorithms and applied them viciously to her sweet voice, hacking, stretching and confining the sounds until he created his own, evil, dark rendition of her sweet song!

Dr. Fourier unleashed his creation upon the world of MacJams touting... "mess with me huh! I'll mess with you! Be transformed... all of you! I will not rest until everyone has suffered the wrath of my equations!"

And so it was. Sweet, OneSweetWorld become more than herself, singing in voices she didn't know she possessed Fourier's transforms rippling up and down her once pure and pristine vocal chords...

Never again would she be clean and pure for Fourier's transformes could not be undone!

(In all seriousness OSW... Your voice is so sweet and pure that to add a sound bed behind it seemed somehow wrong. So I cloned you... make you sing a little higher in places, a little lower in others and created my own girl band... "The raining One Sweet Wonders of the world")

Enjoy folks!
Lyrics Rain rain and lots of water!
Hardware Intel Mac Mini, OneSweetWorld (um... she might be software!?)...
Software: LE8, A few programming tricks of my own, sweat.
Fan List

woofer3

Skean

ageofthedeathtree

rsorensen

mowguy3

magnatone

Feter

lengold

Beforepicture

Vic Holman

gail60

davisamerica

Diviner

guitapick

dirigent

Macaudion

dajama

bud

VicDiesel

Bob Rodgers
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woofer3 said 250 days ago
riders on the storm
into this world we're born........

Mark, - it's absolutely gorgeous.

It's unusual and inventive and instant and well put together and stands alone.

Excellent work,

John.

MarkHolbrook said 250 days ago
John,
Thank you so much. This one took some sweat. Each of the harmonies had to be chopped, fed through a little program I wrote then pieced back into the audio... Add to that that my computer crashed and munched one of the audio files requiring a complete redo...

Arrgh... Anyway your comments are so welcome my friend!

said 250 days ago
very interesting
voice and unusual harmonies. good!

MarkHolbrook said 250 days ago
Eckleiste
Thank you so very much. It was fun to do although quite a chore... When do we get another rock treat from you? I love your last one!!!

tokai said 250 days ago
Sweet
very interesting, great work.

MarkHolbrook said 250 days ago
Tokai
Thank you so much for the listen. OSW has such a beautiful voice... I'm so jealous of people with the "natural instrument". Hers was a pleasure to work with.

drakonis said 250 days ago
Coming to terms with the coefficient
This is another great way to tailor the infinite series of a capellas from OSW's lips... however, I think you flipped a sine at 3:29, on the 7th-order term of your fourier series, causing a tangential inversion, because the lower-pitch creates a tritone dissonance that sounds quite devilish... or perhaps you meant to do that? OK, enough bad math puns... this is great! Very inventive fun! Nice timing and harmony ideas... and perfectly sparse!
ttfn,
Drakonis

MarkHolbrook said 250 days ago
YOU DARE
TO MOCK THE GREAT DR. FOURIER!!! Beware mere mortal Dragon... My transforms can work up on thee as well! Go poof as you typically do and fend not with my creation! It is PERFECTION PERFECTION I SAY... There are NO FLIPPED sines or tangential inversions!!!

Behold... the transform lives!!! HA HAAAA HAHHHHA AHA (cough!) (weeze)... I'm too old for this super villain stuff!

Hey Thanks Drak!!!

Skean said 250 days ago
Hi my friend
You're cool I was thinking if I should put rain in to my latest post but I did not... I'm very glad you did it... You really have master this one.
D-loaded THX for this... Love that pic too the song and pic fits like 4-10s from me.

Peace, Love & Respect
---
Kenta

MarkHolbrook said 250 days ago
Awww
Thanks Kenta! I don't have the chops you've got with the musical arrangements and mixing but I certainly have a great master (Skean!) to learn from!

Thanks for the listen my friend!

ageofthedeathtree said 250 days ago
this is really....
cool! nice work mark! very interesting take on onesweet's awesome vocal performance. i'm diggin what you've done!

age
-sons of hypnos

MarkHolbrook said 250 days ago
Thanks so much age!
OSW has simply put a wonderful voice and it was a pleasure to work with such a pure and beautiful sound.

gregd said 250 days ago
Rain Rain RMX
Pitchshifting the vocals is a cool idea, and the steady sound of the rain in the background really set off the vocal layers nicely. Very ambient and playful.

However, I felt like the tune stagnated after about a minute. I wanted to hear more development, effecting, harmonic addition . . . something.

I think there's lots of potential in this right now.
-g

MarkHolbrook said 250 days ago
Greg
Thanks... I agree... Unfortunately to do what was done was a lot of work. I used a piece of software I wrote (for an entirely different industry) which does FFTs and I was able to filter different waveforms from her voice. So while some are simply pitch shifted, others are harmonics that were again pitch shifted.

I just ran out of sweat!!!

gregd said 250 days ago
Mark
Please don't take my comment as an attack on your experimental approach. I'm all for going out into the wide musical world and seeing what's out there.
I only intend my "gripes" to be encouragement for those times when you find more sweat.

That you used a wave-form isolating program on an audio track is tricky, but I agree with a comment you made later in this track's comments: it is hard to tell that you singled out harmonics. I wonder if there's a way you could present each harmonic that you pulled out in a very clear way, like a new theme in a piece of classical music?

What is an FFT by the way? You've piqued my curiosity now.
-g


drakonis said 249 days ago
F.F.T. Noun
FFT is a mathematics acronym, and has to do with a statistical method of determining which pitch to keep, and which pitch to pitch... it stands for Fifty Fifty Transmogrofier, and it uses the two-penny monte carlo sampling method to determine, at each point on a curve, whether to keep or null out the current value. That's my two cents worth.

OK, OK. That's not true. FFT stands for Fast Fourier Transform, which has become a computerized method of quickly separating multiple overlaid waveforms into their individual component frequencies. When you see the spectral analysis waveforms, where it shows in real-time the music from bass to treble, and you can see where the loud bump is at a certain frequency (like in GarageBand 4 visual equalizer), that is using an FFT to separate the music into its spectrum of frequencies and display it in a frequency-separated graph. If you google "FFT" or "Fourier analysis" you will probably get more info than you ever dreamed of. But hopefully the above explanation is sort of accurate and sort of helpful. :-)
ttfn,
Drakonis

gregd said 249 days ago
Danger: Transmogrifier in use.
Thanks for the definition(s). I'll be more careful around this place now that I know people are using transmogrifiers, fast fourier or otherwise. The last time I saw a transmogrifier used, Calvin turned his clones into a bunch of earthworms. I'm not ready to be an earthworm yet.
-g

rsorensen said 250 days ago
wow!
really cool take on this! must have taken a while! awesome job.

MarkHolbrook said 250 days ago
Thank you!
The tedious part was all the cutting, processing and repasting. When I listen I wonder sometimes if the work was really required. I wanted to pluck harmonics from her voice and I'm not sure if I can really tell if they made a difference or not.

mowguy3 said 250 days ago
I can
see a man with bloodshot eyes,his hair on end, a little foam forming at the corner of his mouth. But what a killer result. Thanks so much Russ

MarkHolbrook said 250 days ago
Thank you Russ
Yeah... a little bloodshot and at times frustrated when things didn't quite work out... But hey it come together... different huh!?

magnatone said 250 days ago
Rain Rain
Mark - this is GREAT! So very creative. I love this one!

MarkHolbrook said 250 days ago
Thank you Karen!
You are always so nice! Angel Convention this is not! But it was quite a bit of work. Thanks for the listen!

Feter said 250 days ago
Rain Rain
nice arrangment ..good back ground effects ..fits
OSW mood in singin .I enjoyed effects you ve done
with her singing .thnx for sharin !!

MarkHolbrook said 250 days ago
Thank you Mr Feter!
A comment from you is like gold in the bank my friend!!!

lengold said 250 days ago
You keep
surprising Mark. This is stunning - very clever - and it works so well.
Cheers
Len



MarkHolbrook said 249 days ago
Thank you Mr Gold!
Well I try... I don't have in a portion of the chops of many of the fabs on MJ but hey I'm having fun!!!

Thanks for the listen!

said 249 days ago
Great!
Simply amazing. I always enjoy your work master! Thanks for sharing. OSW has a real gorgeous vocal!

Take Care
- Yeman A. Al-Rawi

MarkHolbrook said 249 days ago
Yeman...
You are too kind. OSW has the tool... I just hammered with it for a while!

Vic Holman said 249 days ago
not punk?
batten down the hatches we're in for a storm.

pretty weird in the vocal harmonies. but that's what makes it an interesting experiment.

MarkHolbrook said 249 days ago
That coming
from the master of strange chord progressions is saying something! Thanks Vic!

HalwayToNowhere said 249 days ago
Interesting
Wow! Sounds really unique, interesting use of pitch blending to simulate harmony. I really thought it was overdubbed at first. Strangely enough its raining outside right now as I listen... Curious to know if you really recored a storm for this song or if it was a looped sound effect or something. The storm sounds very authentic either way. Good work!

MarkHolbrook said 249 days ago
Thanks
No the storm is just looped storms from the textures in either GB or logic... I think I used both.

SmokeyVW said 249 days ago
wow
this is cool! Nicely done.

thanks



MarkHolbrook said 249 days ago
Thank you
Smokey sir! Always a pleasure to hear from you!

Beforepicture said 249 days ago
Very cool
Kind of a dark Marvelettes harmony style. Nice job, really enjoyed this, was wondering how approached the piece from an acapella style, nicely done.

MarkHolbrook said 249 days ago
Ya it is isn't it...
Well the process was an experiment. I've written software for years that did measurements and waveform filtering for the disk drive industry. I was always curious what would happen is I fed an audio wave through the thing. So I tried it and I liked the effect.

However I'm not sure if the work of stripping a harmonic then pitch shifting it really is all that much different from just pitch shifting the original. Except that the original contains the harmonic whereas the stripped wave is primarily the harmonic...

Anyway it was a ton of work and not something I care to do again soon! But I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Diviner said 248 days ago
Very nice and simple
Its worked very well, the use of the vocals with the effects has produce a nice soothing track. Nice one.

MarkHolbrook said 245 days ago
Thank you
As I mentioned above I was curious what this technique would do. I'm not sure if the result was worth the effort but alas... many things in life are that way. I'm glad you enjoyed it however!

gail60 said 248 days ago
awesome job
Wow Mark...you cease to amaze me with all of your NO TALENT.....geez! You are the man my friend. I love what you did to this. Super job!

MarkHolbrook said 245 days ago
Ha ha...
Gail... If I had ANY talent I would be working as a pro musician. Well maybe I would. But no... I'm just techno-nerd that can't sing but can sort of play a little music.

Here at MJ I'm surrounded by MEGA-talent... and I hope to learn from it!

And if you ever get the nerve to just sing (no piano) then I can work the transforms on you too my girl!

davisamerica said 248 days ago
wow
mark how much work was this man.. pretty inventive stuff here .. impressed am i ... big time

MarkHolbrook said 221 days ago
Mr Jack
To impress you means a lot! Thanks!

VicDiesel said 246 days ago
Rain in the eventide....
Nice idea to just use the vocals (check my back catalogue; minstrel boy). I love the unpredictability of your harmonies. Very creative.



MarkHolbrook said 221 days ago
Thank you Mr. VicDiesel
Your works are legendary! Thank you so much.

guitapick said 243 days ago
~
...and they lived happily everafter...

:)



MarkHolbrook said 221 days ago
Hey Bob!
Thanks for dropping by. I only hope OSW takes a listen sometime <smirk>

said 241 days ago
Rain Rain.
Its really good Mark. You did a splended job.
Well done.

Your little funny story made me laugh too.

Peace Dee.

MarkHolbrook said 221 days ago
Thank you Dee
I'm glad I made you laugh... that was the intent!

said 240 days ago
Crisp and delicious
That is one sweet voice! Mark, you added just the right of digital descant. Unique. Refreshing. Like charged ions in a thunderstorm. Like a face washed clean.

MarkHolbrook said 221 days ago
Hello Richard
This means a lot coming from you! Thank you for the wonderful comparisons!

said 238 days ago
This is
a marvelous track in every respect..loved it

dirigent said 231 days ago
Rain Rain
Absolutely fantastic! Could listen to this all the time. So excellently made. Kudos to you, Love it :-) :-) :-)

Char said 230 days ago
Rain, rain.
What fun. This is delightful. Thank you.

Macaudion said 229 days ago
Hah...
Perfect!

Macca

said 223 days ago
Rain Rain.
This is another brilliant mix and production. Sounds great Mark. You actually seem to be going from strengh to strengh with your muisc skills
as well. You are Amazing yourself. And very talented.

Peace Dee x

richardhowardjones said 223 days ago
MOOOOODY
Had to get my umbrella out

dajama said 222 days ago
Wow
This is very cool. What a creative, innovative approach to take! I wouldn't even be able to conceive of this! Love the rain effects. Thinking of adding them to a song I'm working on myself. Just waiting for a storm! Very cool track - great singing, and a wonderful transformation into something very special. Nicely done. Peace.

bud said 221 days ago
Very cool approach to OSW's vocals
the subtle harmonies really work and the rain bed plays well with them. Great track.

said 216 days ago
Really nice piece
OSW has a great jazziness in her voice. Nice effect usage.



kassia said 211 days ago
Fourier
First off, I think you are way too smart for me. Second, this is brilliantly creative. The work you did extracting harmonics and wave-forms and all that other stuff really paid off. It's a very cool song - great meter and movement. Unexpected harmonies that clearly set a mood. Wonderful work - not too shabby at all Mr. Holbrook.

Bob Rodgers said 194 days ago
Great!
This is very creative and I really like this!
Lovely voice performance and great harmonies and I can understand this taking a lot of work!
Excellent!


timothy devine said 106 days ago
Nice version
I have a version of this too.
a very infectious tune
I like what u did man/ tweek Lindas vocal and drop all the other stuff
I did like the opposite
I merged like three versions
If i had herd yours I defiantly would have loved to use the rain and thunder idea in mine

Linda vox is very cool on this
really good job mixing
dig
peace out

BenedictJames said 37 days ago
If only all rainy days were as good as this...
Very interesting stuff,could easily see it being used on a Cohen Bro's film.
(High praise in my book by the way)

Artist Profile
MarkHolbrook photo
MarkHolbrook

Artist Bio Guitarist, keyboardist, trying to learn GarageBand/Logic 8 and have a little fun Check out the MacJammer blogs... Interviews with various interesting MacJammers! MacJammers My son's first "band" recording - The Kodans! Wall of fire Collaboratio...[more]
Artist Music
Runaway (Feat EEFliess)
Birdman Wayne
Everything to lose
Memory
Wall of fire
Susie's song
Friendship & Faith - MJ Coffee
Rain Rain - OSW transformed!
Mourning Droop
Let yourself go
Dedication
Introspective
Mediocrity
Roadie dream - Woodstock
Piano Thoughts
Fennario
Society Blues
Second song
Cascading Colors
Stopped changing
Takin time
Jennifer
Looking over the mountains
Illinoi