[Track Of The Week] Dra5t3k’s ‘Trigger’ made with Cassini Synth and NanoStudio

This week’s featured track is Trigger by Dra5t3k. It’s a nice little piece made with Cassini Synth for iPhone, NanoStudio, and mixed in GarageBand for Mac. Dra5t3k had a chance to tell me a little bit about how it was made… “I first improvised a spontaneous little ‘ditty’ in the Cassini synth app, on my iPhone 4, that ran about a minute and twenty seconds long. I love that synth. The rich sounds and deep effects gave me a good base to work on for this piece. I recorded the playing, and saved it to file, and then copied it from within the app. After that I pasted the sound file into Nanostudio app. I believe this is an Intua copy/paste feature built into both apps. Once in Nanostudio I used the file as a sample within several different Eden synths within Nanostudio all at different settings, and arranged differently. For example the higher pitched notes are all being played at recorded speed and pitch, and I repeated that segment 16 times with a gap at the second to last segment. On a separate Eden synth I took the same sample but transposed it 12 steps down (1 octave) and this not only lowered the pitch but slowed the sample down by half. Now I repeated this segment 8 times. 3 more samples were done at lower octaves and slower speeds so that at the lowest bass pitch, the original one minute sample only plays once throughout the whole 15 min piece. This longer composition creates an effect of overall consistancy because the notes are all related in pitch and time, creating a sort of meditative effect because our brains can predict how the song will play out. Near the end of course I dropped the higher notes to focus on the bass notes because I love bass and also wanted to create some variety in the song. The final step is syncing the song with my computer and opening it up in GarageBand for desktop Mac. There I can utilize features not yet available in the iOS platforms like tremolo effects, graphic equalization etc. Other notes are Nanostudio also has lots of filters and add on effects I used, left and right channels, and I also lowered the overall pitch by 32 cents to have this piece in concert A 432 hz, which is a nicely more natural pitch for our ears to hear.” Check out more iOS music made by Dra5t3k on SoundCloud