Breath on the air of a high Altay valley

Cities and Memory - remixing the world

"The original recording is of a livestock market in the city of Altay, Altay Prefecture, Xinjiang, China. There are men shouting and talking, various noises of a livestock market, and a huge variety of bellowing sounds from the livestock. The animal noises are very musical in their own way, but also wonderfully unique and discordant, and I was inspired to use these sounds as the basis for experimentation as I developed the piece.
"Ableton Live is my DAW, and I used some software to convert the audio to midi notes; the 1st half in a chromatic 12 note scale to pick up on the animal bellowing discord, and then in the 2nd half, I used the same software to conform the notes to a pentatonic scale.
"I used this midi with ‘conventional’ instruments, like a Piano and synth vst. But I also put samples from the field recordings into other vst software that allowed me to manipulate the sample and turn it into a playable instrument; these were the Arturia Synclavier, and Madrona Labs Sumu.
"For the drums, I used the Audio-to-Drum feature in Ableton to convert the field recording to drum rack midi, and then used that as the basis for the ‘jazz-drummer workout’ drum track.
"Finally, I used the field recording in another vst and with effects to try to simulate the ‘Throat Singing’ style, which is practised in the Altay region."
Livestock market in China reimagined by Bruce Gray.