Laid up under the weather this weekend — which is a genteel way of saying I got hold of some mishandled fast food. So I combined some harmonies from Propellerheads’ Reason 7.1 with audio generated in Csound 6. Female and male voice samples are from the Reason sound bank. In the middle are some iterations of random female and male solo vocalizations (using instrument code from Prof. Jean Piché) from Csound. And underneath it all, the entire Aeolian scale in F (at least I think it’s Aeolian) sounding simultaneously in women’s voices (version 1) or orchestral strings (version 2).
There’s a sound similar to hissing steam throughout. This is in the voice samples, which are on the “breathy” side (as my dad, the music teacher, would say—disapprovingly, no doubt).
Download Dirge with vocal background (09:13, 5.5 MB).
Download Dirge with orchestral string background (as above).
I don’t consider this music to be sad in any way. To me, it’s more in the vein of “solemn.”
And no, I have no illusions about quitting the ol’ day job.
Joseph Ervin Jr: Synthesizer Fan 