Week 4 Forum

Our improvisation session for this week did not run as smoothly as anticipated. Still, it was better than last week. My turntables had disappeared so I had to find another instrument. This time I experimented with the Theremin and one of the synthesisers. The Theremin eventually became very annoying, as Ben will confirm. The keyboard allowed for a wider variety of sounds. [1]

I found that the Theremin created a whining sound and that was really all it did. Today was still a headache when trying to route everything into the mixer. We did get some kind of jam session going but we still need to do more work. Jake had some nice drumbeats going and David was playing some nice riffs.

Today the presentations were Henry, Daniel and myself. Henry was first to play his piece called Lucky. He played his Creative Computing assignment, which was an electronic piece he composed in SuperCollider. This piece was dedicated to his grandfather, a photographer in WW2, to express and remember his life. I thought that Henry portrayed this idea very well. My favourite part of the whole piece was the photograph sound at the very end. To me this symbolised a “Polaroid” of the sounds cape. Henry created some really nice, interest ding sounds and I liked the piece overall. [2]

Daniel played us a Heavy Metal recording of his called If when you say heaven you mean the gates of hell. I can’t remember if this was his Audio Arts assignment, or if it was just a recording he did in his own time. I thought the recording was well produced and I didn’t notice any glitches. Although Daniel did point out that he wanted to fix some of the drum and bass sounds. [3]

This week it was my turn to play some music and I chose to play my own music rather than my assignments. I did this because my assignments were rushed and I didn’t like them at all. Also, I don’t think that my assignments show what kind of music I can create well. I played three pieces and I forgot to tell the class what the names of the tracks were. The first piece was a clip I wrote for a video game company who I am currently doing contract work for. The second piece was a drum ‘n’ bass track I whipped up the morning before Creative Computing that morning. The final piece was an electronic piece I composed as an assignment for my SAE course. If anyone is interested, the names of the tracks were:
1) Running
2) Untitled
3) Rain

The track Running is a working progress, which I would like to finish in the near future. It is currently attached to the prototype of an RPG game for Silhouette Studios. The final piece Rain was played on Fresh FM 92.7 a couple of weeks ago and is currently on the station’s playlist. So anyone who listens to that station look out for the track Rain by Matt Reverie (my alias producer name).


[1] Electronic Music Unit. ‘Studio 5’, http://www.emu.adelaide.edu.au/images/facilities/studio.3.jpg (Accessed 9th October 2006)

[2] Henry Reed. 'Music Technology Forum Presentation - EMU Space'. Lecture presented in the EMU Space, Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, 17th August 2006.

[3] Daniel Murtagh. 'Music Technology Forum Presentation - EMU Space'. Lecture presented in the EMU Space, Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, 17th August 2006.