Forum week 11

This weeks subject again was destruction and construction. The first presenter, Simon Whitelock discussed how people 'JACK' samples of popular music and either creatively build on the sample to construct, or alternatively loop the sample and virtually destroy the sound. He suggested that by using samples from popular songs increase the chances of success.

The next presentation was by Nathan Shea and introduced the forum to 'Black Metal'. This is a style of music where that could be described as Lo-Fi metal. He discussed the culture behind this music and related this Lo-Fi aspect as kind of deconstructing the music to create a new form.

The final presenter was John Delaney who spoke of created ambient soundscapes that install fear. He suggested that the music alone could not produce fear but it was possible with the addition of visual aspects. He played some examples of soundscapes that create this mood and then analysed some of the aspect that helped to create this mood.

[1]Whitelock, S. "Forum week 11", at University of Adelaide, 24/05/2007
[2]Shea, N."Forum week 11", at University of Adelaide, 24/05/2007
[3]Delaney, J. "Forum week 11", at University of Adelaide, 24/05/2007

CC 1 week 11

This weeks exercise was to again edit a vocal sample using MetaSynth. The finished soundscape was to be edited using all the different rooms and finally put together in the Montage Room.[1] In the sample below I tried to put together a kind of back beat that was kind of industrial and that didn't quite blend together properly. I then layer other sounds over the top for a bit of texture. I wasn't completely happy with this sample but had to settle for it due to the lack of time available time in studio 5.


All in all I find MetaSynth to be an amazing program despite it's glitches, (I've never crashed a computer so many times before). I think that I would still prefer to mix or layer sound in programs other than MetaSynths 'Montage Room', but have found this program to be an incredible sound editor with countless numbers of possibilities.

Sample 1


[1]Haines, C. Lecture "Creative Computing" at University of Adelaide, 24/05/2007
[2]Wenger, E. 2005, Meta Synth 4.0, http://www.metasynth.com

AA 1 week 11

This weeks exercise was to create three different mixes of an Eskimo Joe song. Below is the Pro Tools edit window showing the area which my samples were mixed from.[1]

Edit sample 1

This sample was mixed dry, only using the volume faders to effect the mix.[2] The second acoustic guitar was dropped as the mix was mono and all tracks that weren't used in this section were deleted so as to make the mix window less confusing for this exercise. I aimed in this sample to let all the instruments to be heard without any one instrument dominant.

Dry edit sample

Edit Sample 2

In this mix I kept the two acoustic guitars, which were panned left and right. Two of the three backing vocal tracks were also panned left and right. The volume of the drum overheads was automated to cut out and then slowly fade back in (see edit window for Edit sample 3)

Vol/Pan Sample

Edit Sample 3

The final mix had similar volume and pan as sample 2 but also included EQ on some of the tracks. The drum overheads had a high pass filter plus a little boost in mid to high frequencies to enhance the H/hat. This cut out the spillage from the kick and gave the cymbals a little boost. The snare had a 4 band EQ to try to get a bit more of a snap in it. One of the electric guitar tracks had the mid boosted a little to try to take away what I considered to be a harshish kind of guitar part. The lead vocals had very little EQ added. The final EQ was on one of the backing vocal track named LwdbicHYC (second track from the right below). This vocal in parts mirrored the lead vocals in a lower register, it had a little top end rolled off and the mid to bass boosted.

EQ Sample

[1]Digidesign. "Pro Tools HD version 7.3.1" http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm

[2]Fieldhouse, S. "Audio Arts Lecture week 11" at University of Adelaide , 22/05/2007

Forum week 10

This weeks forum started off with Fred May, who discussed the 'formula' for a successful hit song. He gave an example of one so called formula that he quickly dismissed as not being 'The One' and the went on to discuss some of the factors that he regards may be in this recipe. To a certain degree I agree that there are formula's that companies and others follow to produce a hit song, but I would rather suggest that these formula's can only maximise ones chances for success. Also whatever elements the formula had, these factors would need to be able to evolve, as new styles and trends occurred. The formula would also need to take in to account the fact that each new generation tends to rebel against the music of the previous generations.

Of the other presenters there was Nastasie Dragos who discussed that construction and deconstruction with in songs. His first example o0f techno music showed how adding new elements into the song created a new texture to the music.

The last presenter was Matt Mazzone who presented and discussed aspects of his work on a television commercial. Unfortunately there were problems with the hardware which I think threw his presentation out a bit. Regardless of this he discussed the elements that went in to constructing the music for the commercials.

[1]May, F. "Forum week 10", at University of Adelaide, 17/05/07
[2]Dragos, N. "Forum week 10", at University of Adelaide, 17/05/07
[3]Mazzone, M. "Forum week 10", at University of Adelaide, 17/05/07

CC 1 week 10

This weeks exercise was to edit a vocal sample using the Effects room and Image Synth room from the program MetaSynth. Above is the final wave of the sample below. [1]

Meta Synth Sample

After opening up my vocal sample I copy and pasted it until I had approx. 40-50 seconds worth of vocals. Each copied section was then treated separately in the Effects room, one particular effect I enjoyed was one that involved what the manual described as shuffling and discrete envelopes. This particular effect had a number of even segments, each which could be raised or lowered, in the sample there are two sections in which this effect was utilised and which gave these sections a bit of a rhythmic feel. The last 10 seconds of the sample was edited in the Image Synth Room. This room created a lot of problems, the main one of these was that if only part of the wave was selected to be effected by the Image Synth, on rendering this selection the rest of the wave would be lost. One way around this problem was to have the full wave saved as an aiff, then use the Image synth and render. After rendering copy this wave, open up the full wave that had just been saved and paste the copied Image Synth room part where desired.

All in all these two rooms in Meta Synth give an amazing wealth of effects. Even though there are a couple of little glitches, under normal circumstances, (this means not being restricted by a lecturer to only use this software, he must like to torture students), these glitches are not a problem and can be easily worked around with the help of other software.[2]

[1]Wenger, E. 2005, Meta Synth 4.0, http://www.metasynth.com
[2]Haines, C. Lecture "Creative Computing" at University of Adelaide, 17/05/2007

AA 1 week 10

This weeks exercise involved recording a drum kit in two contrasting styles. I chose a minimal microphone set using 4 mics, and another set up using 10 microphones. In order to streamline the bump in/out I had the assistance of Darren Slynn, Sanad, who also recorded their own samples, as well as the help of Tristan Louth-Robins.

Sample 1

All of the microphones used are listed above. All patterns were cardioid. Pictured right are the positions used for the close and overhead microphones [1]. In addition to these the room microphones (left and right) were positioned to point at the outside edges of the kick drum with a baffle position in between them.(see picture below)[2]

10 Mic Sample

Sample 2

Minimal microphone set up. This set up used four microphones:- Shure Beta 52A/ Kick, Shure Beta 56A/ Snare, Rode NT5 for the left and right overheads.[1]

Minimal mic Drum Sample





Comments

I found that equalising the minimal set up was a lot easier than the ten mic set up. In sample 2 there was a ring coming from the snare mic that i found reasonably easy to get rid of using the technique taught in class [2]. Overall the I preferred the sound that I got from sample 2. In sample 2 I found the EQ was difficult, every time I adjusted the EQ on one mic it brought out other frequencies, ie: I had to consider not only the effect I wanted from that drum but also had to consider what spillage from other drums I might be boosting. Sample 1 also requires a lot more EQ which I will play around with to try and fix the problems with the toms which when played as a wave file using Audacity and Pro Tools were a fraction too loud, but when played using WMV were slightly distorted. This is something I will take into consideration in the future.

[1]http://www.emu.adelaide.edu.au/resources/guides/hardware/microphones.html

[2]Fieldhouse, S. "Audio Arts Lecture week 10" at University of Adelaide , 15/05/2007

Forum week 9

This weeks presenter was Trstan Louth-Robins, a student in the process of completing his Masters degree in music technology. Mr. Louth-Robins started off his presentation with his proposal for his research, this being defining focused listening and, the relevance of focused listening and the music of Alvin Lucier. He gave a brief history of Lucier's work and then played two examples of his work, the first being Lucier's piece where he is connected to a ECG machine which picks up his brains alpha waves which in return activates various sounds in his performance. The second Lucier piece was 'I'm sitting in a room', in which Lucier uses the room's reverberance to effect a monologue that he recites, records and then plays back. Each generation of this recording then moves further and further away from being legible. It is on this work in particular that Mr. Louth-Robins has based his masters on. Louth-Robins then played and explained his work titled Tpot, a piece in which he recorded the sound inside a tea-pot, then played this sound back through the tea-pot and recording it (ala Lucier's 'I'm sitting in a room),each new generation then produced different frequencies and overtones. He then displayed a spectral analysis of certain generations of these Tpot recordings which showed that certain frequencies were becoming more prevalent.

In the final part of this presentation Mr. Louth-Robins spoke of some of his other works which involved in a great part him himself raiding his flat mates kitchens and confiscating kitchen appliances to produce his works. One of these being the using the reverberance of water in steel bowls to produce certain harmonics by tilting them.

All in all it was a very insightful presentation showing the many varied parameters through which sound art can be produced.

CC 1 week 9

This weeks exercise was to again program samples into Reason and create a soundscape. The difference this week was that we had to edit our samples using the Pro Tools plug-ins. The first requirement was to split up the entire vocal sample into regions using Tad to Transient which divided the sample into regions where the computer found transient points [2].(Picture below)[1]

The next compulsory aspect of this exercise was as follows: reverse sample, normalise, select sample plus additional space after sample and consolidate, apply tap delay, normalise, reverse, select ample space after sample and consolidate, add reverb (Dverb), and finally normalise.[2]

The final compulsory element was to use a gate and key to effect a sample. For the sample sound I time stretched a region sample and copied, pasted, reversed, butted up against original sample, cross faded and consolidated. This gave me one long sample which could be activated via the gate using a key track (see Audio 6 track below[1]). Track 6 then had an expander/gate effect added. Clap samples of audio were then positioned on track seven and this signal (not the sound) was bused to the gate via the key. [2]

The gate aspect of this exercise didn't altogether go smoothly. I finally discovered that the problem was that I did not activate the small blue key button located top right of expander/gate window, in addition the bus volume was not up (see below).

I've included two soundscapes below. In the first I was happy with the first half it but preferred the ending of the second soundscape where the performance utilising the panned gate example pictured track 4 and 5 above.

Gate soundscape 1

Gate soundscape 2

[1]]Digidesign. "Pro Tools HD version 7.3.1" http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm

[2]Haines, C. Lecture "Creative Computing" at University of Adelaide, 10/05/2007

AA 1 week 9

This weeks exercise was to record five samples of bass. For this task I had the help of Darren Slynn and his fretless bass (Freddie). All samples were recorded through Pro Tools using the Compressor/Limiter Dyn 3.[1]

Microphone Position

For samples one to three the microphone position was constant, that being approx. 6 inches away from the centre of the cone and on axis.[2]

Sample 1

MICROPHONE: Shure Beta 58
PATTERN: Cardioid [3]

Bass beta 58

Sample 2

MICROPHONE: Shure Beta 56
PATTERN: Cardioid [3]

Bass beta 56

Sample 3

MICROPHONE: Sure Beta 56
PATTERN: Cardioid [3]
NOTE: Patched through the Avalon

Bass beta 56 av

Sample 4

MICROPHONE: D/I

Bass D/I

Sample 5

MICROPHONE: D/I
NOTE: Patched through the Avalon
Bass D/I av

Comments

Of these examples, samples 2 and 3 were what I consider to be the best. These samples gave a nice sound across the board, where as sample 1 using the 58 seemed to give more to the upper frequencies while leaving the lower freq. rather dull and lifeless. Samples 4 and 5 using the D/I's weren't too bad but lacked the dynamics of the two samples that used the Beta 56.

[1]Digidesign. "Pro Tools HD version 7.3.1" http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm

[2]Fieldhouse, S. "Audio Arts Lecture week 9" at University of Adelaide , 08/05/2007

[3]http://www.emu.adelaide.edu.au/resources/guides/hardware/microphones.html

CC 1 week 8

This weeks exercise was to use our sample from Orator and edit them using FScape and Soundhack. After editing these samples they were taken in to reason, mapped to the keyboard and then played to create a soundscape.[1]

The samples this week I decided to tweak quite a bit. Some of the effects that I found interesting were 'Voocooder', 'Serialkilla', 'Freqency Modulation', and 'Exciter', all of which were from Fscape [2]. Whilst from Soundhack I used 'Phase Vocoder' and 'Convolution' [3]. Using these effects I experimented and finally came up with the samples to load in to Reason using the NN-19. In the NN-19 I played with the following settings: OMC, the AMP envelope a little, the Filter envelope a little and finally change to a saw tooth wave pattern. [4]

In the performance of the sound scape, one of the samples was reasonably long, I held this key down to hold it throughout most of the piece while trying to play around rhythmically with the same sound a fifth above this. This was the basis of this sound scape with short sections of other sounds that were able to cut through to create different textures.

Soundscape

[1]Haines, C. Lecture "Creative Computing" at University of Adelaide, 03/05/2007

[2]Rutz, H. 2006, 'FScape', http://sourceforge.net/projects/fscape/, 11/01/2007

[3]Erbe, T. 'SoundHack', http://www.soundhack.com/freeware.php, 11/01/2007

[4]Reason, www.Propellerheads.se, 01/05/2007

Forum week 8

This weeks was part two of the theme of 'Gender in music technology'. I was up first and presented my views on 'non-gender' specific trends in music technology, then presented another view of taking this non-gender view further by suggesting that bands such as 'Kraftwerk' are in a way taking the human element out of their music, (cyborg like in a sense)[1].

Laura Gadd presented her views on equality, similar to that of Amy Sincock in the previous week. In addition she suggested that there are signs of male/female differences in the lyrics that are produced by both.[2] I thought this to be an interesting angle but unfortunately she only put forward a couple of examples.

Ben Cakebread presented his views on performer Freddie Mercury, the gay front man of Queen. He gave a few examples of Mercury's sexuality being an issue, the most prominent being the example of Queen performing in Australia early on in their career and being booed off. Then after finding success, returning to Australia with the status of being one of the biggest bands in the world and finding at this point Mercury's sexuality wasn't an issue.[3]

Peter Kelly was the last presenter and put forward the argument of genetic influence/cultural influence may be a factor in why there aren't many women in music technology (he used the Hindu cast system as his example). He suggested affirmative action as a way to address this imbalance.[4]

[1]Leffler, B. "Forum week 8", at University of Adelaide, 03/05/07
[2]Gadd, L. "Forum week 8", at University of Adelaide, 03/05/07
[3]Cakebread, B. "Forum week 8", at University of Adelaide, 03/05/07
[4]Kelly, P. "Forum week 8", at University of Adelaide, 03/05/07

AA 1 week 8

This week in Audio Arts the exercise was electric guitar recording. All the examples below were recorded with no other effects except for the 'Compressor/Limiter Dyn 3' found in Pro Tools.(Above)[1]

Sample 1

MICROPHONE: Sennheiser
MD-421
PATTERN: Cardioid [2]

POSITION: Pictured Right

SRV 421


Sample 2

MICROPHONE: Neumann U-87

PATTERN: Cardioid [2]

POSITION: Same as sample 1 (sorry forgot to take this pic)

SRV U-87

Comments

Sample one was more of the sound I was looking for . It had a nice blend of good low end and the sort of twang mid to high, not quite as good as Stevie Ray Vaughn (whose piece this is). Sample two gave more of an even sound akin to whats heard in jazz.

Sample 3

MICROPHONE: Shure SM57 (close), Sennheiser MD-421

PATTERN: Both cardioid [2]

POSITION: Pictured right

Riff 421/57

Sample 4

MICROPHONE: Shure SM57

PATTERN: Cardioid [2]

POSITION: Pictured right

Riff SM57

Comments

Of these two samples the compressor was great in evening out the sound between bass notes and the chords (mid/high) Sample 3 was my preferred sample giving a little more mid/high end while still giving a good bass.[3] The 57 for some reason just didn't do it for me.

Sample 5

MICROPHONE: Shure SM57

PATTERN: Cardioid

POSITION: Corner, as pictured.

Corner 57

Comments

I tried recording this sample both in the corner and not in the corner (couldn't include other sample as I already had five). The corner recording was a little fatter in sound and in addition when trying to get harmonic overtones as I was playing it seemed easier to get them with the amp in the corner[3]. This might of just been because of my playing but it felt like I was working harder to get the harmonics when not in the corner.

[1]Digidesign. "Pro Tools HD version 7.3.1" http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm

[2]http://www.emu.adelaide.edu.au/resources/guides/hardware/microphones.html

[3]Fieldhouse, S. "Audio Arts Lecture week 8" at University of Adelaide , 1/5/2007

Forum week 7

This weeks topic for forum was 'Gender in Music Technology - Can you tell the difference.' The forum started off with Stephen Whittington giving a short speech on the subject, ie: the lack of women who composed in the western art music era, whether John Cage's sexually effected his work, Walter/Wendy Carlos (a composer who had a sex change[1].

Ben Probert presented first on issues that may effect the number of women in music technology. His research was thorough and he presented figures from studies and surveys which were conducted on this subject[2].

Next up was Douglas Loudan who suggested that genetics may have something to do with the lack of women in music technology. His suggested that because men like to tinker with things that they are more suited or comfortable in areas such as science, maths and music, whilst women tend to be in areas such as humanities and social sciences. One example expressed was that of cave men and women and that in this time women were at home having babies whilst men were out hunting, unfortunately his presentation seemed to cave in[3].

Amy Sincock presented her views on equality and suggested that that while there are not so many women in music technology, that she is not really in favour of affirmative action, rather that she believes that women should need to earn or deserve their place in this industry in they desire to get on to music tech.[4]

Jacob Morris was the final presenter and use an example of Bjork to express that there are emotions in music technology. He did seem to elaborate that much on this subject.[5] All in all I think that the group came up with some good theories on this subject which is extremely hard to find an angle on even though not all of the presentations seemed to be well structured.

[1]Whittington, S. "Forum week 7", at University of Adelaide, 26/04/07
[2]Probert, B. "Forum week 7", at University of Adelaide, 26/04/07
[3]Loudan, D. "Forum week 7", at University of Adelaide, 26/04/07
[4]Sincock, A. "Forum week 7", at University of Adelaide, 26/04/07
[5]Morris, "Forum week 7", at University of Adelaide, 26/04/07

CC 1 week 7

In this weeks exercise we had to sample a phrase by creating regions and loops in Peak LE and loading these samples into Reason using the NN-19 sampler.

After creating markers for regions and loops, I saved the samples, initialised the patch and imported the samples into the NN-19. After hearing these samples and realising that I would only have access to five octaves of the key board at any one time, I decided to take my original source material back into Peak LE and break up the material into five samples of which two were looped. I took these back into the NN-19 and had them arranged so that at each end of the keyboard there was a looped sample that would repeated and give this piece some underlying layers or lines so as to cover for my lack of keyboard skills. On deciding parameters to set the effects at I decided that I wanted the samples to be legible and understandable so I only tweaked the settings slightly. The fact that you can only make setting that effects the whole of the keyboard and not select different effects for different sections lead me to the conclusion that it would be a great advantage to have at least two samplers to create a really diverse performance.[1]


NN-19 We become what we behold



Reason NN-19 and recording pictured at bottom.[2]



[1]Haines, C.

[2]Reason, www.Propellerheads.se