Autechre reverse engineering contest

[awepittance]

I had an idea, and I'm curious if any producers are interested in accepting the challenge.

basic premise: Try and reverse engineer 2 distinctly different sections from the Autechre song tac Lacora off of the new EP L-event. One of them is more of a 'how did they do that' scenario another is a seemingly more obvious technique being used but with extreme finesse and skill.

from tac Lacora

0:49 - 2:43
'melodic delay/comb effects' <-- you try to make it sound even close to the sonic pleasure of this section. On the surface it may seem like a straight forward technique, a drum beat triggering a delay on the dirty side, which is also generating the melody in this section. Normally if one tried to do something like this it would sound pretty muddy and would need a lot of extra polishing and trickery to get it to sound this nice.

3:29 - 6:00
'how did they do this' <-- you try to show us how

could be some kind of spectral or fft convolution effect, but how is it being applied, how exactly is it manipulating this sound? Is the whole song being re-processed through a spectral dithering effect? Is it just a really good stack of good sounding additive synth patches? your job will be to show us how you think they did it while also mixing it to sound thick decent.

the entries to the contest if this were to happen at all (depending on level of interest) they shouldn't be straight covers or just a demonstration on one of the layers happening in that section. Feel free to do a straight cover of a short section, but also free to do a reinterpretation or conceptually similar but different melody and beat. The main goal here is to recreate the timbres first and foremost. Of course being able to compare the timbre quality would be easier if the tempo or beat structure wasn't absurdly different from the original.
They should be a minimum length of 15 seconds, but it doesn't have to be anywhere the length of an entire track, but feel free to make one if you want. The submissions should be judged on reverse engineering techniques (how close/accurate does it sound) and quality of the mix and timbre (maybe it sounds similar but mixed poorly)

if this ends up happening we should collect at least 5 submissions for each part, people can submit one for both parts if they want, and then take a poll where users can vote

[kausto]

interesting

i'll participate of course

[psn]

I'd give it a go.

[Guest]

is easy just

 

> throw machinedrum down the staircase

> eq the result

[Guest skibby]

i dont own a copy of l event. can you isolate the sections and put on youtube for education purposes?

[mcbpete]

i dont own a copy of l event. can you isolate the sections and put on youtube for education purposes?

Just hit the play button innit - https://bleep.com/release/46422-autechre-l-event

[Guest skibby]

comb filtering (chromatic, aka midi controlled 'comb filter synth'), FM (not just FM synths, but frequency driven vibrato across a group/buss), touches of vocal as modulator convolution on comb filter synth

 

kick triggering some gates and modulation, fft twinkles, resonant filter envelopes, some instruments are going thru 100% wet 0% dry reverb,

 

i dont think theres any additive sythesizers per se, unless you count what happens on the mix buss, which I think is ultimately what their intentions are.

[Guest]

*jots it down*

[Uniret]

Dorkington wins by a landslide

[awepittance]

comb filtering (chromatic, aka midi controlled 'comb filter synth'), FM (not just FM synths, but frequency driven vibrato across a group/buss), touches of vocal as modulator convolution on comb filter synth

 

kick triggering some gates and modulation, fft twinkles, resonant filter envelopes, some instruments are going thru 100% wet 0% dry reverb,

 

i dont think theres any additive sythesizers per se, unless you count what happens on the mix buss, which I think is ultimately what their intentions are.

well describing it would be one component, but the goal would be to put those theories to the test and see how it sounds, or rather have the group vote on how it sounds

[Ragnar]

skillz that's how

[kaini]

intriguing idea. i haven't the skills to pull it off but i'd like to hear other people's attempts.

[Guest skibby]

 

comb filtering (chromatic, aka midi controlled 'comb filter synth'), FM (not just FM synths, but frequency driven vibrato across a group/buss), touches of vocal as modulator convolution on comb filter synth

 

kick triggering some gates and modulation, fft twinkles, resonant filter envelopes, some instruments are going thru 100% wet 0% dry reverb,

 

i dont think theres any additive sythesizers per se, unless you count what happens on the mix buss, which I think is ultimately what their intentions are.

well describing it would be one component, but the goal would be to put those theories to the test and see how it sounds, or rather have the group vote on how it sounds

 

 

https://soundcloud.com/zhaozhou/skibz-triez-tekker

[kaini]

sounds like richard devine!

[Guest skibby]

i wasnt listening to the track in question, i want to actually buy it and then i can look at it closely. i was just trying to get into the flow of how i think they might work. i think its heavily dependent on algorithmic ideas as well as sculpturally chaotic stuff thats gone over and over until it pleases them. what i made took me only a few minutes, and is only a 'shabby imitation' of their style. i dont know richard devines stuff.

 

but so far i think im the first entry in the contest right? whats the prize?

[awepittance]

<p>the prize is being hailed by other members of the forum once all the entries have been submitted. I'm going to stop at 5 per section. In other words the prize is having your ego fed by your fellow peers recognizing your bad ass skills<br />

<br />

skibby, i would prefer that people don't post their entries here and instead PM them to me. <br />

once I get them all I'll do a ekt poll.  Is that your final entry? Since you did such an amazing job redoing that Aphex track maybe you should have a proper copy of L-event before you submit one? </p>

[modey]

I think my 'bad ass skills' have been proven by my deconstruction of the fold4,wrap5 beat many years ago, haha

[Guest RadarJammer]

i don't think EKT has enough meth users to make a contest like this very fruitful

 

i can't imagine trying to reproduce something like this. it would be like trying to have the same dream that your friend had. i don't see the point

[awepittance]

hah i like that comparison, it would be more fruitful than that because if we were to use your analogy, it would be like your friend was able to project a dream onto a 3d video, you could experience the dream yourself. The part where your analogy diverges is the having the same dream aspect. This wouldn't be necessary as when the technology is available to record one's own dream in 3d, you will also be able to with the use of advanced CGI recreate anything you can imagine in 100% photo realistic quality. This way you could use artistic techniques to reverse engineer aspects of your friend's dream that are very abstract and psychedelic, so psychedelic they are hard to put into actual words. Where your recreation itself and it's quality of accuracy would be the only 'proof' you had that you possibly understand the mysterious inner-workings of the friend's dream. Even if you tried to describe how you did it, it still wouldn't diffuse the mysterious power it had, even when reverse engineered artificially.

So who's in?


I'll commit to at least one entry for

0:49 - 2:43
'melodic delay/comb effects'

[modey]

I might give the FFT percussion stuff a try if I have time this weekend. I'm pretty confident that I can get a similar sound.

[modey]

actually, I've come close with this track, from 2003:

http://pselodux.bandcamp.com/track/hands-for-you

 

not quite as bangin' though. plus it has a pseudo Stop Look Listen/Vose In bit in the middle, haha

[mcbpete]

I think my 'bad ass skills' have been proven by my deconstruction of the fold4,wrap5 beat many years ago, haha

I think I still have the .bmx of that somewhere!

[awepittance]

I think my 'bad ass skills' have been proven by my deconstruction of the fold4,wrap5 beat many years ago, haha

that's cool don't remember that actually, do you have a download for it? The intention of this contest is less about reverse engineering 1 element like the beat structure or just 'this is what drums sound like through fft processing'. It's trying to create a sonic palette that mimics the entire package, like how many layers you think are happening, trying to create a sound for each one of those and process it accordingly.

this song I did in 2004 uses a dirty delay comb filter melody on drums, but I wouldn't submit it to this contest because I would consider it a pretty half assed effort as well as sounding very flat and lifeless in comparison to the beginning of this AE track

 

https://fluorescent-grey.bandcamp.com/track/feedbeat-2004

[modey]

 

I think my 'bad ass skills' have been proven by my deconstruction of the fold4,wrap5 beat many years ago, haha

that's cool don't remember that actually, do you have a download for it? The intention of this contest is less about reverse engineering 1 element like the beat structure or just 'this is what drums sound like through fft processing'. It's trying to create a sonic palette that mimics the entire package, like how many layers you think are happening, trying to create a sound for each one of those and process it accordingly.

this song I did in 2004 uses a dirty delay comb filter melody on drums, but I wouldn't submit it to this contest because I would consider it a pretty half assed effort as well as sounding very flat and lifeless in comparison to the beginning of this AE track

 

https://fluorescent-grey.bandcamp.com/track/feedbeat-2004

 

oh yeah, for sure. I think I might need a few more years with tac Lacora before I attempt to re-create it though!