"Thicker Than Water" Backstory

My last creation for CU346 is not so much a creation as it is an experiment. I wanted to experiment with a recording technique known as "doubling," or "overdubbing." Doubling is a technique used to make sounds seem richer or fuller in order to achieve a "thicker" end-sound. To make this thicker sound, doubling has traditionally been done by having the artist play or sing along with a recording of themselves, trying to sing or play as similar as possible to the original recording. This is then added to the original recording in order to make it sound richer. I hope to be able to recreate this technique on my own piece, and to take it to the extreme by adding many more layers of doubling than just one or two.

To make this easier for myself I plan to simply make multiple copies of a single recording using cool edit pro, then slightly stagger the copies in order to make them ever-so-slightly out of time with one another, thereby creating "fake mistakes" which would be created by the artist attempting to replay the previous recording.

This piece will aid in my development as an artist because it will help me to get a better grasp on some complex recording techniques.

This piece could be transferred to any medium, including wax on toilet roll, because the focus of the piece is on the recording techniques that were involved in it's production. It would probably be best if its was just left as a cool edit pro session, because then the person viewing/ listening to the piece might be able to get a better grasp of the recording techniques used.

The piece will consist of exclusively guitar sounds, with distortion effects in the first half of the piece. It starts with a distorted guitar part which follows an ascending chromatic pattern. This is the part that will be used to demonstrate the computer doubling techniques I will use. The second part of the piece will be a clear guitar sound which follows a descending chromatic pattern with several harmonic rows running behind it. This second part is included mainly to offset the thickness of the first part.

Christopher Daniel

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