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.

CC - Week 4 - Performance Sequencing

This week we used Live again. We explored the other session view. This week I made a drum n bass track using samples again. The one effect I used was a filter which you can hear on the drums half way through the piece. There is a problem of distortion which ordinarily I would fix but putting a compressor on the ambient track.


Week_4_Live_DNB_Sequence


**This file is 4.7MB**

Week 4 Audio Arts

This is my final result for the Cubase Sound Track. I am utilising my paper sounds plus some created in Reason. I found that creating sounds in Reason was harder than manipulating pre-recorded sounds.

The lower quality movies don't sound as good, obviously, and not all the sounds can be heard like in the higher quality movies.

Super_High_Quality 16.7MB

High_Quality 8.7MB

Medium_Quality 1.1MB

Low_Quality 464KB


I also have a couple of screen shots of the process.

Half_way_through

Finished_product

Week 3 Forum

Today we were back in Studio 5 for our improvisation. I came up with the idea of doing some turntablism on the Technics decks. I plugged everything into the mixer and set them out perfectly only to find out that the set up didn’t reach any sound source. So I had to move the table closer and try find a longer RCA cable and also an adapter so I could plug that into the mixer. When I finally did this, I couldn’t work out how to get sound to the speakers. I spent the whole class trying to get sound with no luck. It was very frustrating. [1]
Studio 5 has a lot of gear but seeing as though I never use the studio it’s very hard to get any sound going. Dragos had the same problem with his synthesiser. I guess the highlight of the session was listening to Ben on his microphone and David on his guitar, as they were able to get sound through their own amps.

Our student presentations today were by Adrian, Dragos, David and Vinny. Adrian went first and played his Creative Computing piece he composed in SuperCollider. I thought this piece sounded very eerie with some interesting percussive sounds throughout. There were also some pitched tones throughout which sounded like some kind of bell. I thought it was well put together and I especially enjoyed the eerie wind-like sounds. This is the kind of sound scape I would imagine in a movie. Nice one. [2]

Dragos played a piece he composed in Reason because he didn’t want to play any of his assignments (which is fair enough because I did the same). The piece was called Induced and I was really amazed as to how awesome this piece sounded with using just Reason. I asked Dragos if he used any host sequencer and he said he didn’t. The image he was trying to portray was a troubled teen on drugs, I think that’s right, and I could definitely feel that the music was portraying that well. I think that this piece also suits a video game sound track. I’m not sure if anyone would agree with me. This piece was awesome, great job! [3]

David played his Audio Arts assignment, which was a band recording. I thought his recording was very professional and it sounded close to a commercial release. Great job! [4]

Vinny was next, and he played a piece he composed on the Piano. He had his laptop playing a Harmonium sound in Reason, and also a visual animation on the projector screen. The visual on the projector looked like a spiritual/fire-like image. I thought this piece was really relaxing and I enjoyed the journey it took me on. Great job Vinny! [5]

[1] Clipart and Freebies. 'Corel', Photospin.com http://apps.corel.com/freebies/graphics/full/July2-5/PI002093.jpg (Accessed 8th October 2006)

[2] Adrian Reid. 'Music Technology Forum Presentation - EMU Space'. Lecture presented in the EMU Space, Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, 10th August 2006.

[3] Dragos Nastasie. 'Music Technology Forum Presentation - EMU Space'. Lecture presented in the EMU Space, Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, 10th August 2006.

[4] David Downing. 'Music Technology Forum Presentation - EMU Space'. Lecture presented in the EMU Space, Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, 10th August 2006.

[5] Vinny Bhagat. 'Music Technology Forum Presentation - EMU Space'. Lecture presented in the EMU Space, Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, 10th August 2006.

CC - Week 3 - Performance Sequencing

I think Ableton Live is an awesome program. I have been fortune to use it in the past although I haven’t really explored it too much. I would love to continue to use the software both within my university study and also within my other projects. I think that the version in the Audio Labs is very limiting and really doesn’t allow the user to do much. With only one effect it is very hard to have a clean sound as you cannot use Eqs, compressors, or filters (well you can but only one of those). Having only four tracks isn’t as limiting because you can change scenes to add any samples that don’t fit.

I can see the point Christian made about utilizing the limited features to allow for some creative outlook. But, my opinion is that these limitations just make the process annoying.

This is a sequence I made using some house samples.

Week_3_Live_House_Sequence

Week 3 Audio Arts

This week we spent a lot of time discussing sampling. We looked at the NN19 Sampler in Reason. This sampler is ok but there are some limitations which definately set it back from other samplers I have used. The main draw back is the inablilty to select key zones and use velocity mapping. Other than those few features it's a reasonable sampler.

Below I have a sample I processed in the NN19. The sample is a paper recording from week 2. To get the final sound I altered the LFO rate and amount, filter, envelope, pitch, root key on the sample, and volume.

Big_Rip_NN19_Sampler

Week 2 Forum

Today we were introduced to our Forum assessment for this semester. We have to do an improvisation session in front of the class. We were split up into groups and in my group was Dragos, Ben, Albert, Jake and David. [1] Stephen Whittington spoke to us about improvisation for about 30 minutes, which didn’t give my group much time to really do much. We went into Studio 5 and tried to get some sounds but ran out of time.

Today we had presentation by two students, Luke Digance and John Delany. [2] Luke’s presented his Creative Computing assignment. This was a musique concrete piece and I remember being in the Audio Lab at 4am when we were both finishing off our assignments. I thought his idea behind he assignment was original and very well thought out. Before he played the piece I thought it was going to sound like just a bunch of sounds. However, after he played the piece I could hear the different pitches in his tones and I was actually quite impressed as to the end result. I think it was a really interesting sounding piece and I could definitely hear the fundamental frequencies that Luke was aiming for. Great job.

[3] John Delany played his Creative Computing assignment (this was also a musique concrete piece). John recorded Ben Probert’s voice for this assignment. I happened to be in Studio 2 during one of the recordings and it was really cool pitch shifting the voice to create different sounds. I thought John’s piece sounded very good. The vocal changes, I thought, created a kind of eerie sound. I could also hear some resonance throughout the piece, which went really well.

John finished up with a guitar jam he did with David Downing. I thought this sounded awesome. I didn’t realise that John and David were that good at guitar!


[1] Stephen Whittington. 'Improvisation Forum Presentation - EMU Space'. Lecture presented in the EMU Space, Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, 3rd August 2006.

[2] Luke Digance. 'Music Technology Forum Presentation - EMU Space'. Lecture presented in the EMU Space, Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, 3rd August 2006.

[3] John Delany. 'Music Technology Forum Presentation - EMU Space'. Lecture presented in the EMU Space, Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, 3rd August 2006.

CC2 - Week 2 - Cubase Sound Track

This is my sound track so far for the short movie. This is about the first minute or so. I havn't finished all the sounds as yet. The music is in the backgorund.

CC2_-_Week_2_-_Cubase_Sound_Track_796KB

Week 2 Audio Arts

This week Ben and I spent time in studio 1 recording sounds using just a piece of paper as our instrument. At first this seemed very limiting, but once we started we realised that theres a lot you can do with a piece of paper. I was at the Control 24 setting the levels and Ben was behind two microphones producing the sounds. The microphones we used were the KM84i and the Neuman U89.

We tried lots of ideas such as the usual ripping, scrunching and waving. Then we moved to blowing through the paper, and eventually eating the paper.

I have some sample mp3s of the sounds we made. Don't worry about wasting downloads as the files are very small.


Bite_Unprocessed

Chew_Unprocessed **Warning: This sounds disgusting**

Big_Rip_FX

Heart_Beat_FX

Week 1 Forum

This week Stephen talked to us about our assignments in semester 1. He went through the documentation of Program Notes, Analysis documentation, and writing a Score. I think it would've been a lot more helpful if we had this talk before we handed up all our work in first semester. By doing this in the first week back, it’s too late to change what we wrote and we're guaranteed to forget it by the end of the year. Having said that, it was still useful but I know I will forget it all.

I still think that writing a score for music that is generated by electronic means is a useless exercise. There is no possible way I can interpret my piece for creative computing in a score. It was created using samples and synthesis, so how can you possibly write that out in a logical score? [1]

We had a guest speaker this week, Martin Armiger, a film composer. Martin was by far my favorite speaker we’ve had all year. He was a fantastic public speaker, who really knew what he was talking about. I loved that he was involved in the industry and it was really great to hear his insight to what music in film was meant to be about. [3]
I learnt a lot from the one hour we had. I also went to the extra presentation at Flinders University on the Friday. This was a four-hour presentation, which was just great. He went through a number of different films and analyzed them thoroughly in terms of sound and music. I am defiantly going to do a course at AFTRS where he teaches. The only downside to the day was the shocking parking at Flinders University. Thank God I don’t go there.[2]

[1] Steven Wittington. 'Music Technology Forum Lecture - EMU Space'. Lecture presented in the EMU Space, Electroninc Music Unit, University of Adelaide, 27th July 2006.

[2] Martin Armiger. 'Music Technology Forum Lecture - EMU Space'. Lecture presented in the EMU Space, Electroninc Music Unit, University of Adelaide, 27th July 2006.

[3] APRA. 'Awards Central', APRA|AMCOS. http://www.apra.com.au/awards/music/gallery/2004/images/Stephen-Cummings-Martin-Armiger.jpg (Accessded 28th September 2006)