Week 2

In Audio Arts this week we started spending time in Studio 2. It was good to see a Pro Tools HD system with a pretty good recording space. I really like the way the studios have been set up so that you can communicate between the different studio spaces. I would have liked to see more inputs and outputs but this is something I can overcome when it comes down to recording by being selective with the amount of microphones I need in a session. [1]

In Creative Computing we started spending time on OS X and its relation to Audio and MIDI. Even though I have already spent a lot of time using OS X, I found that there are some preferences that I have overlooked in the past (like the alert sounds). I look forward to learning more about Soundflower. This software sounds interesting and I have already started to think about ideas on how I could use it. OMS and Opcode are new to me. I have seen these before but I don’t know what they mean. I’m sure this will be a topic of study later on. [2]

Our forum speaker this week was Warren Burt.[3] Overall I couldn’t believe some of the work Warren has invented in the course of his career so far. Even though music technology is a relatively new topic of study, Warren proved to have broken the boundaries through creative, innovative ways music technology can be expressed as a technical form and as an art form. I really appreciated how he had created music using raw materials, and also non-musical devices such as a calculator, radio, old guitar strings, old computers, theremin and more.

One creation of Warren’s, which I especially liked, was his 5-Pound Synth. This included a calculator, radio, sampler and an effects unit. I am not entirely sure how this works, but I think the calculator sent a digital signal to the radio, which in turn sent a specific frequency to the sampler. The sampler would then send its sound into the effect unit, which would shape and create a new polished sound. This concept, or idea is not something I have seen before and Warren has opened my eyes to a new way of thinking.

The Ardvark synthesisers are also great creations. The Ardvark 4 had 16 Digital to Analogue converters and produced different, unpredictable sounds using Granular Synthesis. I don’t know a lot about Granular Synthesis, except that the sounds are created by altering the samples of the sound in different intervals by expanding or compressing (I think). The only synthesiser I have used which uses this method of synthesis is Propellerhead’s Reason’s Maelstrom Synthesiser. Overall Warren’s ideas were very innovative and I really learned a lot.

Towards the end of the session Warren showed how he used the software Plogue Bidule. Again, this idea of merging random musical tones with graphical dots and other patterns gave me some ideas on how in the future I could do the same. This was something I had not thought about before and it was great to see form of how software usage can create a creative final product. [4]

[1] Christian Haines. 'Audio Arts Lecture - Studio 2'. Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, 7th March 2006.

[2] Christian Haines. 'Creative Computing Lecture - Audio Lab'. Lecture presented at the Audio Lab, University of Adelaide, 9th March 2006.

[3] Tropicapricorn Global Arts. 'Warren Burt'. Tropicapricorn, http://www.warrenburt.com/ (Accessed 13th March 2006)

[4] Warren Burt. 'Music Technology Forum Lecture - Schultz 1004'. Lecture presented in Schultz level 10, Electroninc Music Unit, University of Adelaide, 9th March 2006.