Thrown
Turn one short, plucked sound into chords by stacking it at different pitches, and build a moving groove out of harmony.
What Kiasmos said
Janus Rasmussen said the main pluck in Thrown is a Korg MS-20, a synth that plays one note at a time, recorded many times over so that it plays chords. Ólafur Arnalds said the track grew out of a remake of "Sudden Throw" from his album For Now I Am Winter. It was also their first track with strings. It runs at about 120 BPM.
A pluck
A pluck starts sharply and dies quickly: short decay, no sustain. Played in a pattern, plucks work like a rhythm part that also has notes.
Stacking makes chords
One note at a time is a melody. The same sound at three pitches at once is a chord. A note, another 3 semitones above it and another 7 above the first make a minor chord.
Song study
- Thrown.
- In this lesson you will turn one short, plucked sound into chords by stacking it at different pitches, and build a moving groove out of harmony.
The MS-20 they used plays one note at a time. To get chords, they recorded the same pluck again and again at different notes and layered the recordings.
The same rhythm, first as single notes.
Then stacked three high. Nothing new was written, only copied at other pitches.
Stacked, the line turns into harmony.
Go to this study's own pattern
- Hold PATTERN, press T3 (bank C).
- Then press 2.
- If anything plays there, clear it with FUNC + PLAY.
- Press TEMPO, set 120 BPM with LEVEL/DATA, and press BACK.
C02 on the screen, at 120 BPM.
- Set the machines this study needs, the same layout as your course track: T1 KICK, T3 METAL, T5 TONE, T6 CHORD.
- For each: hold TRACK, press the pad, press MACHINES, turn LEVEL/DATA to the machine and press BACK.
Make a pluck
- Press RECORD, select T6, turn SHAPE to minor and DECAY down to about 20.
- The CHORD machine does the stacking for you: its voices play the same sound at different pitches.
Tap T6: a short, plucked chord.
Sequence it
- On T6, place trigs on 1, 3, 4, 7, 9, 11, 12 and 15.
- Press PLAY.
A rolling chord rhythm, the same one as in the grid.
Make it move
- On 9, hold the trig, press LEVEL/DATA until NOTE shows, and turn it 2 semitones down.
- Do the same on 11, 12 and 15.
The second half of the bar steps down: two chords from one sound.
Add a bell on top
- Select T5 (TONE), turn COLOR up until it sounds like a bell and DECAY to about 70.
- Place notes on 1 and 9.
- On 9, hold the trig, press LEVEL/DATA until NOTE shows, and turn it 3 semitones up.
A slow melody over a busy pluck: two speeds working together.
Add the beat
- On T1, kicks on 1, 5, 9 and 13.
- On T3, hats on 3, 7, 11 and 15.
- Save: hold FUNC and long-press SETTINGS.
How did Kiasmos get chords out of the MS-20 in Thrown?
Answer
They layered it. Janus Rasmussen said the MS-20 pluck was layered many times to play chords. The CHORD machine on your Model:Cycles stacks a sound in the same way, inside a single track.
Copy the same sound at new pitches and a line becomes harmony.
This lesson's challenge
Try other chord types on T6's SHAPE (sus2, m7) with the same rhythm, and keep the one that sounds most like night.