Forum Sem 2 "The Insturment"

The instrument above is the final version of the instrument that we were required to make for the Forum. Originally I had only incorporated two of the three required aspects, these being tone generation and piezo driving, so in the trouble shooting class during the break the third was added (this being physical computing).

As can be seen above the Arduino board was used with the digital out sketch. This then could activate each of the six square wave generators that were made on the bread board using 2 4093 chips. Each oscillator also had a potentiometer and an LDR connected so as the pitch could be adjusted and the performance could be enhanced.

The signal ran out through a mono jack socket which was connected to a piezo driver which was glued to the bottom of a small cast iron fry pan. The second piezo (mic) was connected using a peg to a small metal bowl which could then be moved and adjusted to played around with the timbre.

Below is a screenshot of the Cubase MIDI piano roll which in which the sequence of notes, (which was looped) was kept simple for the purposes of this exercise. There is also an mp3 in which both myself and Tristan Louth-Robins are playing the instrument.

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Unfortunately due to my files being lost when 'My Data Bus' stoped its free access, I've lost the the mp3 which had highlights of this instrument being played (we videoed it). As I cannot edit this video at home I've uploaded the entire video clip to Youtube. (approx. 5 mins duration)

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Link to Youtube Video

Haines, C. 2007. MTF Forums - Semester 2 at the University of Adelaide.

Tomczak, S. 2007. MTF Forums - Semester 2 at the University of Adelaide.

AA 1 Sem 2 week 5

Even though I'm very inexperienced when it comes to 'Sound Art' I can't stop thinking that unfortunately a lot of what is passed off for sound art is just put into this category mainly because it just doesn't fit into music or any other category. Having said this I'm not against any Sound Art which has some kind of point or aesthetic to it which leads into the piece of work that I've chosen for this blog, 'Spray'- by Alva Noto . The piece is over 7 mins. long and is primarily made up of filtered noise. The piece starts with just a few fragments of noise which build up to a large noise texture which is filtered in various ways.

The artist Alva Noto, also known as Carsten Nicolai was born 1965 in Karl-Marx-Stadt. He is co-founder of the record label Raster-Noton as well as being involved in a number of groups, ie; Signal, Komet, Byetone and Cyclo. "His music features prominently in his art. Nicolai’s work exposes the limitations, and potential beauty and creativity, possible within strict logical systems."1
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Spray

Link to artist website

1 Wikipedia. 2007. Carsten Nicolai.< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carsten_Nicolai>. Accessed 17 September.

CC 1 Sem 2 week 7

This week exercise was to perform some sampling in real time using the limited version of Live, which only allows you 4 tracks with which to work and using a bunch of NIN samples. This whole exercise was a great deal of fun and considering we were using the limited version, the mind boggles with what could be done with the full version.

NIN mp3.

Haines, C. 2007. Creative Computing Lecture at The University of Adelaide. week 7 2007.

Forum Sem 2 week 7

This week the forum again further investigated the program board Arduino. The exercise was to upload the digital out sketch to the Arduino board and by using the PTAH MaxMSP patch use a MIDI piece from Cubase to activate the four oscillators that were set up on a bread board using a 4093 chip.

This was the first usage of the Arduino board that I could see myself using. With this and a bluetooth Arduino board the practical uses for this process could be limitless. Unfortunately I have no mp3 example of this as the dongle for Cubase had gone missing and the only alternative was to run the process in the Audio lab which I was afraid might interrupt others who were working in there at the time.

CC 1 Sem 2 week 6

This weeks exercise was to again further naturalise the MIDI file used in last weeks blog. This week to further the natural sound the volume was automated to try and emulated what happens in real life. In addition to this I wanted to try and incorporate some effects but unfortunately I couldn't find any that I thought would enhance the sound.
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Black Dog mp3.
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Haines, C. 2007. Creative Computing Lecture at the University of Adelaide.

CC 1 Sem 2 week 5

This weeks exercise is to download a MIDI file of a song off the Internet and make it sound more natural (or should I say even remotely natural). I chose Black Dog by Led Zeppelin. The first mp3 below, (original file) is of course the file as it was when downloaded. In the second mp3 (altered filed 1) I played around with the velocity and slipped various notes backwards and forwards in time so as the piece wasn't so rigid in its beat/rhythm. It is also note able to add that a second guitar part was deleted to help clarify the exercise.

Please note Christian that the mp3 files for these I couldn't find so I bounced a couple of new mp3 as I still had the original Cubase file. The main difference being that I don't have a USM VST plug in so the guitar sounded a little different in the originals.

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Black Dog Original mp3

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Altered File 1 mp3.

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Haines, C. 2007. Creative Computing Lecture at The University of Adelaide.

AA 1 Sem 2 week 7

This weeks exercise was to attempt to make 'natural' sounds using any of a number of mostly analogue synths in studio 4. The process of this on a synth is not a very easy task. Of the examples pictured above (and in the mp3 below) the only example I feel is reasonably on track is the wind/thunder region. All of these samples were played on the Juno 06.

Juno mp3.

Haines, C. 2007. Audio Arts lecture at University of Adelaide. 4 September