The Process

The main quality of Ghost in the Machine is it's rhythmic nature. This took tonnes of very painstaking editing in Soundtrack Pro. This meant a lot of lining up sounds and cutting them down so that they began precisely on the beat.

This screen shot is taken from later in the piece when more rhythms are introduced. It only shows a few of the many tracks, but you can see how precisely they are lined up and chopped to fit exactly in each position. They are layered in such a way that at certain points when one sound has played another comes in on the next beat and then another.

I did a lot of experimenting with the envelope tool (especially where pitch is involved) in order to create some more interesting sound.

In this image you can see that the pitch shifting tool has been used in a precise way in order to get exact pitches that can be repeated.

In this image the you can see pitch shifting tool has been used in a much more haphazard way which was actually more difficult to edit as it couldn't be copied and pasted. It creates a fun effect that sounds like a drill going slightly crazy.

I also used the envelope tool to make it sound like the workers were moving from one part of the factory all to the door together.

I panned one set of footsteps to the center, one fully left and the other in the middle. This gives the impression of people from different parts of the room all moving towards the door which is panned totally to the right.

This is what the finished audio file looks like in stereo:

If you look closely you can tell that perhaps the left side is a little too loud when compared to the right, but when listening to the piece I don't think this comes across too aggressively.

These are the original recordings used in the piece:

Many of these sounds were edited and chopped down and used in different ways.
In total the piece had about 20 different tracks in the mixer.

Inspirations

For this project much of my inspiration came from music rather than film or audio plays and the like. The music that most inspired me tended to be of the "Industrial" variety which generally consists of a lot of harsh sounds and driving rhythms.
A big inspiration early on was a song called Reptile by Nine Inch Nails:

At the start of the track Trent Reznor has sampled what sounds like machinery in an actual factory, which is absolutely what I wanted to go for with my piece. Then when the meat of the song kicks in the factory-esque sound still seems to be driving it along. When I came to do the piece I found that keeping it rhythmic and in a straight 4/4 time signature made it sound musical as if the machines had a life of their own.

Another inspiration was Kraftwerk, a German band who were early pioneers of electronic music. They sampled a lot of harsh sounds and used synthesizers to create very mechanical beats.

Not as obviously industrial, but the same sort of idea. Very mechanical. Some sections of the music do use fairly industrial sounds very rhythmically.

In terms of trying to get the sound of an actual factory a big inspiration was Terminator 2: Judgement Day directed by James Cameron. The climax of the film takes place in a large factory and the sounds of machinery come from all around. I wanted to achieve something similar to this.