Manwhore

Well, this is the project then. I'm not going to bother talking about the mic placements or technical side of things as these aspects are cover in the PDF files at the end of this blog.

In this project I had the opportunity to record a Hammond Organ, (pictured right) running through a Leslie rotating speaker cabinet. (pictured below right). I'd never had an opprtunity before this to be around a Hammond/Leslie combination before and never really thought that I would ever realistically get a chance.

As the Hammond was cranked up it the power of it was unbelievable. When it played notes in the low end you could feel the vibrations through your body. The rotating cabinet put out an incredible sound and as can be seen right we miced it up top and bottom. The horns that can be seen at the top cavity in the back of the cabinet right, show the two horns, one of which is blocked and only really used as a counter weight.

At this point I'd like to thank the guys in the band, 'Aussie Bloke' (Mark Richardson, Rob Riley, Tony Lavis and Emmo Granozio), as well as Tristan Louth-Robins who helped with the bump in and bump out of the main recording session. Below is a mp3 of the recorded song "Manwhore" as well as all the related PDF's.

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Manwhore

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Pre-Production,pdf

Recording.pdf

Production.pdf

Newspaper

Newspaper
Bradley Leffler
Minutes ‘ Seconds (Italic 11pt Arial)

The raw source material for this piece all came from sounds that have some kind of association with the newspaper, these being the sound of reading an article, the sounds made by the newspaper itself and finally sounds utilising the headlines written out and made into a filter for Meta Synth. All of these sounds were then manipulated to form different sounds that at least to me, represented the articles from the paper. The original concept for the piece was to have two contrasting sections, but the piece just developed into one long work with contrasting sections. Also relating to its form I’d originally had everything planned out but chance seemed to play a part in this as I had thought that I would start at the front page and work my way to the back page. Instead of this I tended to shuffle through the paper until I found an interesting story, then repeated the process.

The piece begins with two short articles relating to politicians. The recording of these articles were sped up and then a few sounds that were representative of the feelings they evoked were laid over the top of them. The next section represents the many different happenings occurring around the world at the same time. Sport then begins with a sound meant to reflect a crowd cheering and finally the last section is the culmination of all of these stories running around inside my head.

Score

Newspaper.mp3

CC 1 week 12

Similar to Schaffer and Henry works with Train sounds and Orchestral sounds, this piece will be based on one particular source, this being the newspaper. The textures of all sounds will be derived from a newspaper which will also act as the impetus for the score. I will find sounds associated with newspapers, ie: reading, rustling etc. These sounds will then be arranged and manipulated to create the 'Music concrete' piece of music.
The piece will consist of two contrasting sections, (A & B). Section A will be based on the more serious stories towards the front of the paper and thus shall have a dark ambient underlying tone that will be interrupted by bursts of sounds. Section B will have a lighter feel with sounds crossfading in and out and will be based on some of the lighter stories from the paper.
The sounds to be used in this piece will consist of sounds made by the paper alone as well as stories being read, recorded and then manipulated. In the samples of read sounds I will attempt to make certain words legible while the rest citations become less legible, (ala Stockhausen). The last process to be used to produce sounds will utilise filters in MetaSynth. Sections of the paper will be retyped using different colours and font sizes and these retyped stories will make up the required filters.
Software to be used in this piece will be as follows:-

• MetaSynth, for Filters and general sound editing.
• Audacity
• Spear
• Peak LE
• Pro Tools, for final mix down.
  
  Please see the Jpeg below which roughly shows the conception of the piece.

AA 1 week 12

This weeks exercise was to mix down three different mixes of Eskimo Joe using Compression, Effects and Stereo Processing (and Automation).[1]

Sample 1

In this mix I compressed the Kick, Snare, Drum Overheads, Electric Guitar and one of the Vocal Tracks. After compressing all of these the mix seemed to loose a bit of its brightness.

MIX 1


Sample 2

In this mix I kept all the compression from the previous mix and added some distortion to the
Electric Guitar as well as to the 'Stu Verse' track. The 'verse git' track was reversed and slightly adjusted to fit in with the rhythm. The final effect used was on the lead vocals which had a delay added to try to fatten them up.

MIX 2


Sample 3

In this sample for a change I picked the beginning of the song to mix. The 'verse git' was bused to two different AUX tracks that were panned left and right and which each had a different delay and different parameters. One of these AUX tracks also had a pitch shift (up an octave) effect on it. This gave an effect similar to U2 and Eno.

MIX 3

Comments

Over all I wouldn't have minded spending more time on sample 3 to see how far away from the original I could have got this without completely "Jacking" it to pieces.

[1]Fieldhouse, S. 2007, "Audio Arts Lecture - Week 12", University of Adelaide, 29/05/2007

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