CC2 Major Assignment - Electronic Music Composition

For my composition I decided to create a Random Note Generator / Fibonacci Series Generator / Record & Playback Sequencer. My Analysis describes the different functions in detail. In a nutshell I have various parameters that can either be varied randomly, using the Fibonacci Sequence or manually by the user. The sliders next to the LEDs are varying the harshness of the control data. Yellow LEDs are random and Blue LEDs are Fibonacci generated number sequencers.

At the top the user must first select the device they want to control in Reason. I have bussed the Combinator, NN19, Subtractor & Dr Rex into IAC busses from Cubase. Cubase and Reason run in rewire and the sounds are generated for Max. I found out, after I handed up my assignment, that the Combinator doesn't work. Also my presets don't work but I already knew that.

I have some pictures of my patch, my documentation and my patch.


my patch . . .



my patch in action with Cubase and Reason. . .



screen shot of my patch. . .



screen shot part II. . .



my Fibonacci patch. . .



my line patch. . .



score. . .


Documentation
PreProduction
Analysis
Program Note
Score [9.5MB]


Audio
Fibbon Ree [5.5MB]


Patch
Fibbon Ree [452KB]

AA2 Major Assignment - Recording Project

This is my recording project for Audio Arts this semester. As you will hear, if you listen, there are lots of problems with the guitar part in Late Again. This was due to a problem with the timing and I still don't know why it happened.

In the song What Goes Around Comes Around, there are problems with the vocals. There were artifacts which I didn't pick up in the recording process. There is also a problem with the vocals standing out too much. They are too loud and I don't have enough reverb one them. The only problem is that putting more reverb would have made the artifacts more obvious in the mix. For details on the effects I used and the recording and producing process check my documentation. It explains my processes in a lot of detail.




inside the studio. . .




patchbay and interface. . .




my craazy patchbay. . .




my vocalist Katerina. . .




I was quite happy with my Mastering results. . .



[5.1MB]
the band jamming. . .



[3MB]
inside the studio. . .

There is meant to be sound on both movies but it's not working. . . just like everything else



Documentation
Pre Production
Recording
Production


SONGS
Late Again [6.7MB]
What Goes Around Comes Around [6.9MB]

Week 12 Forum - Improvisation

I thought that a two hour discussion on what improvisation is was a bit too longwinded for me. I know we have to introduce this concept to the first years, but I still feel I've had enough improvisation from last year.

Last year it went for a whole semester. I found that after the first few weeks last year there wasn't anything new I could really do. All I can think of now is to play a different instrument each week. I hope DJ Tr!p comes back because he was awesome!

I think that Steven Whittington and David Harris spent way too much time defining what things are when they could be just doing it. Who cares what the exact, precise, intellectual definition of improvisation is. Go to the piano and just improvise!

Yes there is a difference between composition and improvisation but does knowing the difference make you any better at either? Some of the most talented musicians of all time can’t even read music and just play music because they can. I think intellectualizing the topic just makes it unnecessarily boring.[1]


[1] Stephen Whittington, David Harris. 'Music Technology Forum Presentation - Improvisation'. Lecture presented in the EMU Space, Electronic Music Unit, University Of Adelaide, 31st May 2007

CC2 Week 12 - PreProduction

In a nutshell, I am hoping to create a Random Note Generator / Basic Sequencer. As everyone knows of course, time is scarce and it may be difficult to create everything I have hoped for in my PreProduction.



This is what my patch looks like so far. It doesn't fit on the screen but you get the idea. . .


Documentation
PreProductionComp


[1] Christian Haines. "Creative Computing: Semester 1, Week 12. Integrated Example." Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 31/05/2007.

AA2 Week 12 - Mastering Part 2

The challenge this week was to master some music and try and make it as loud as Eden Sounds mastering. My mastering isn't as loud but I think it is pretty close. Tonally it doesn't sound as good but I was still happy with the loudness.

I used a gain plugin and then a limiter at the end. I had dithering added during the bounce. I tried using an Adaptive Limiter but found that I couldn't stop the channel from clipping.




Here is an mp3 of my mastering
No Mastering [944kB]
Eden Sounds Mastering [944kB]
My Mastered Mix [944kB]


[1] David Grice "Audio Arts: Semester 1, Week 12; Mastering" Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, 29th May 2007.

Week 11 Forum - “To build or to destroy?” – Construction and Deconstruction in Music Part 2

Today our presenters were Simon Whitelock, Nathan Shea and John Delany. It seems that the only person who actually spoke about the topic was John. Simon talked about DJs and their jacking of music. The term was discussed with hilarity during the forum. I feel like I should have taken the opportunity to talk about DJs during my presentation last week. I've been a club DJ for about three years now so I have experienced the "destruction" of classics. Simon played a song, which used a sample from song Around The World by electronic group Daft Punk. I picked this the use of this sample in about a second.

Nathan Shea talked about Black Metal and music of that style. I don't know anything about Black Metal and I have no interest. It sounds worse than musique concrete. He also played some drum & bass, which was refreshing.

John talked about Lustmord an ambient electronic composer. I thought his insights on dark ambient music were very well put and his music examples were interesting.[1]


[1] Simon Whitelock, Nathan Shea,John Delany. 'Music Technology Forum Presentation - EMU Space'. Lecture presented in the EMU Space, Electronic Music Unit, University Of Adelaide, 24th May 2007

CC2 Week 11 - Distributed Performance

This week Jake and I did some interesting dual performances. We used Reason as our sound source and manipulated some drums samples in the Redum. Jake's Max patch was sending out some drum samples to me and I was controlling them in Reason. I was altering the parameters in the Redrum such as volume, duration, pitch, tone, velocity, panning etc.

Our performance went for a while and I have extracted almost 2mins.

my patch. . .


my Reason file. . .


Jake's Max patch. . .

You can check out Jake's blog here: http://weimerhead.blogspot.com/


Here is an mp3 and my patch
mp3 File
Max Patch
Reason File


[1] Christian Haines. "Creative Computing: Semester 1, Week 11; Distributed Performance" Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 24th May 2007.

AA2 Week 11 - Mastering Part 1

This week our task was to do a Master of our best mix. I chose my first mix from week 8. Unfortunately on the weekend I left my headphones at the club I was DJing at, so I had to use my sister's dodgy ipod headphones. I am so used to my own headphones as I use them for everything, so I'm sure this weeks mastering will sound different to when I do my final assignment. Maybe it's good to use a different listening environment every now and then. Still, nothing beats my Sennheiser HD25. They're a cracker of a can!

[1][2][3]Dream on Apple. . .


I used Logic instead of ProTools. I did this for two reasons.

1) It's Sunday night and I'd rather stay home. My copy of ProTools has a problem with the plugins whereas my Logic works fine.

2) During class I didn't feel we really needed to specifically use any type of software. I gathered from class that in a professional situation you would pay a Mastering Engineer anyway.

Therefore I don't think it really matters what software we use as long as we use the same underlying concepts. This I did.

The reference song that I used was Missy Higgins - Steer. I chose this song because I think this young singer sounds a lot like her. It also had the same general musical feel.

First up I pulled up a Linear Phase EQ. I boosted up the vocals to make the overall sound brighter. The problem with working using a guide vocal is that my mix wasn't really ready to master. I did think that putting that boost around 4kHz made a better sounding mix.

Next I used a multi-band EQ, or a Multipressor in Logic. I tended to compress the frequencies below 100Hz. I think that maybe it was because of my headphones but I was using my reference song as a basic guide for bass. My most common mistake in the past has been producing music that has way too much bass. Even though I produce Dance music there is still such a thing as too much bass! In the Multipressor, I also adjusted the other bands to try get a cleaning sound.

Next I used an Adaptive Limiter to try and squash up the overall sound. I did get a few more dB out of my mix. This plugin is very much like the L2-Ultramaximiser. I have learnt about mastering when I was studying at SAE so I had used the Waves plugins for mastering. I find the L2-Ultramaximiser very useful for compressing and gaining that loudness that you want. The Adaptive Limiter in Logic gave me almost the same power.

I then used a Stereo Spread plugin. To be perfectly honest, I don't really know how to use these kinds of plugins other than for experimentation. I know that in mastering you can use a stereo imaging plugin, but I don't know what settings you would use. In my case I put a slight stereo spread on the higher frequencies above 2kHz.

Finally I placed a plain old Limiter at the end of the chain of plugins. This was basically to stop any clipping. I had no gain on this limiter as I already had the Adaptive Limiter earlier in the chain.I know that you are meant to place a Dithering plugin as the last plugin in the chain. In Logic there isn't a Dither plugin, rather it is there as an option when you do your final bounce. I find this a bit annoying but I can't complain really when you consider the huge amount of other plugins at my disposal.

I think my master sounds better than the original but with proper monitoring could sound much better.[4]

These are the plugins I used. . .
and here . . .

AUDIO
Week 8 Mix [835kB]
Mastered Mix [884kB]


[1] Tom's Hardware. Avivo vs. Purevideo. http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/09/avivo-vs-purevideo/ (Accessed 27/5/7)

[2] Head-Fi. Headphones in Australia. http://www.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=72883 (Accessed 27/5/7)

[3] Nick Starr.com. twitter. http://www.nickstarr.com/2006/09/13/2g-4gig-silver-ipod-nano/ (Accessed 27/5/7)

[4] David Grice "Audio Arts: Semester 1, Week 11; Mastering" Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, 22nd May 2007.

Week 10 Forum - “To build or to destroy?” – Construction and Deconstruction in Music Part 1

There was a new topic this week in Forum, which was great. I was getting sick of the feminist debates in the previous weeks. Today the topic was construction and deconstruction of music. The presenters were Freddy May, Dragos Nastasie and myself.

Freddy was first up and gave quite a lengthy talk about the so called 'magic formula' for a hit song. Now, whether I agree with this formula is hard to say. I have to admit at the very beginning, my initial reaction was this is all pathetic and there obviously isn't a formula to the so called perfect song. But, after Freddy went through his reasons, and an example of a formula I started to think that maybe he was on to something.

It is certainly true that there are some classic songs in the 20th century that have continued to be popular. Having said that, there are lots of songs now that are very popular and will continue to be popular in future years.

I still think that majority of the youth population enjoy the current pop, Top 40, Video Hits etc. There definitely is a magic formula for pop music. It's very simple: Sex sells. I have to admit, I have bought a record or CD because the singer was a stunner. But the difference here is that it is the record company that is using a formula not the musicians. Really this is just clever marketing and is very different to the point Freddy was trying to make. Freddy was strictly talking about musicians and their ability to write hit songs.

[1]It seems record companies know the perfect formula. . .

If you look at the most popular songs of all time, like some people pointed out in forum, they are not all similar. So even though they may share some characteristics, I don't see how they can share all characteristics. Freddy claimed that the 'perfect' song would contain all these ingredients. I don't think these songs are popular because they all share similar qualities but rather because of the musical era and what they were bringing to society at the time. The Beatles is one of the greatest bands of all time but their music certainly doesn't have the same impact now compared to 40 years ago. At the end of the day my answer is: I don't know. If there is a formula I hope someone lets me in on it.

Dragos was the next speaker and he talked about the breakdown of songs from various genres. I could relate to what he was saying in the techno music side of deconstruction. I commonly create all my sounds and place everything in an 8 bar loop to see how it sounds. Then I slowly mute tracks to hear what it would sound like to slowly drop sounds out of the mix. It is true that electronic music is usually based around one loop. But, like Dragos said, the way in which those sounds come in and drop out can make or break a song. Even though it is repetitive, the continuous layering of sounds is what creates interest and keeps the clubbers (or DJs) pumping.

I was last to present, and luckily I was last as my presentation wasn't going to take half an hour. I presented a TV commercial I did the sound and music for. The company was the MRC (Media Resource Centre) and the individual film company was ECO TVC. The commercial was called 'Blink of an Eye'. I did do two other commercials but the 'Blink of an Eye' was the only one that made it to TV. All three films were in the Adelaide Film Festival and the 'Blink of an Eye' won.

My presentation was a nightmare as I'm sure everyone realised. For starters my DVD didn't work so I had to find the VTS files of the movies. That meant I couldn't use QuickTime, which was a pain because I couldn't import the movie into Cubase. Cubase wasn't working anyway Grrhh! so I used Logic Pro. Normally I wouldn't mind using Logic but I haven't used the video functions before in Logic whereas I have in Cubase. Because Cubase wasn't working I ended up just importing all my sound files into Logic and playing each track separately and explaining where I got the ideas from.

Basically I wanted to show what I was presented with (i.e. a movie with just speech) and show how I constructed the sound effects. I also explained how I wrote the music and how I related it to the images. If you watch Channel 10 continuously, you're bound to see it sometime.[2]


Just look out for a massive blinking eye


These are the other commercials I did but are not on TV.


[3]


[1] 'The Hollywood Gossip'. Vanessa Minnillo to Guest Star in Pussycat Dolls Show. http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/categories/pussycat-dolls/ (Accessed 18/5/7)

[2] Freddy May, Dragos Nastasie. 'Music Technology Forum Presentation - EMU Space'.
Lecture presented in the EMU Space, Electronic Music Unit, University Of Adelaide, 17th May 2007

[3] 'Media Resource Centre, ECO TVC'; Blink of an Eye, Talking Trash, Supermarket (17/5/7)

CC2 Week 10 - Interface Design

This weeks patch was based purely on the visual side of our patch from last week. I wanted to try and get the patch to work first which I did.




Here is an mp3 and my patch
mp3 File
Max Patch
Cubase Session
Reason File


This is my visualisation of the patch. The colour scheme could be better but it's not too bad.




Max Patch with visuals



[1] Christian Haines. "Creative Computing: Semester 1, Week 10; Interface Design" Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 17th May 2007.

AA2 Week 10 - Avalon

Our task this week was to record an instrument through the new Avalon preamp. I recorded myself playing piano and although I did notice a difference between the sounds, I don't think it was as evident as it was in class.

When we compared the guitar sound through the Avalon in class, I noticed a massive different in warmth and overall quality. When I listened to my piano recording I thought the recording through the Avalon did sound warmer but not $3000 warmer. There definitely wasn't the wow factor I experienced in class. The recording through the Control 24 is brighter but still sounds fine to me. Unfortunately there is a little clipping in some areas. I only noticed this the next day and didn't feel like redoing the whole recording session.
[1]
I had the microphones set up in the midside technique originally but changed to A-B. This was because I couldn't get the microphones to sit right in the mid-side and it was frustracting constantly having to alter the positions (the stands were a bit dodgy). When I was in A-B configuration, I found I had to make the gain of one side larger than the other. This must mean that the lower down the piano you go the less resonate frequencies you find in the recording process.[2]


AUDIO
Avalon Recording [1.1MB]
Control 24 Recording [720KB]


[1] 'Front End Audio'. Avalon Design. http://www.frontendaudio.com/Avalon_AD2022_Preamp_p/10212.htm (Accessed 17/5/7)

[2] David Grice "Audio Arts: Semester 1, Week 10; Avalon Preamp" Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, 15th May 2007.

Week 9 Forum - Tristan Louth-Robins

In our forum session for this week masters student Tristan Louth-Robins gave us a presentation on his work. His study has been influenced from Alvin Lucier an experimental "composer". Alvin's main work is a piece called I Am Sitting In A Room. This piece is created by recording the words "I am sitting in a room". The recording is played back and re-recorded many, many times. Eventually, all that is heard in the recording is the resonant frequencies of the room.

This is an interesting idea but in no way would I consider it composition. I also feel this idea is puffed up to make it more intuitive than it actually is. The final resultant sound isn’t worth the effort. This is so common in sound artists we study in the conservatorium. “Composers” are glorified for their music because it is different. It doesn’t sound good so why is it so great?

Tristan’s work revolves around using teapots to resonate the frequencies. The underlying concepts are basically the same. I feel Tristan is very knowledgeable in his chosen field and I hope he can make it more interesting than the majority of the “composers” we’ve studied in the last year and a half.


[1] Tristan Louth-Robins. 'Music Technology Forum Presentation - EMU Space'.
Lecture presented in the EMU Space, Electronic Music Unit, University
Of Adelaide, 26th April 2007

CC2 Week 9 - Data Management & Application Control

I couldn't do this week's patch so here's my attempt. Big thanks to Ben who helped me out. My patch can record data into coll but plays back the wrong notes. It sounds great but is not what's I wanted obviously. Then number boxes I have coming out of stripnote show that the correct values are going through the gates but I have no idea why it's not working.

For some reason every computer I have used in the Audio Lab has started using Cubase fine and then crashes and asks for the authorization (i.e. dongle). This happened as I finished my patch so the sound source in my mp3 is from Reason. I have attached my original Cubase session file which was working fine earlier. I spent as much time as I could on this week's CC before I went mad.




Here is an mp3 and my patch
mp3 File
Max Patch
Cubase Session
Reason File


[1] Christian Haines. "Creative Computing: Semester 1, Week 9; Data Management & Application Control" Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 10th May 2007.

AA2 Week 9 - Mixing Part 2

This week I was all pumped to do a completely different remix of Drama Queen. I was thinking of doing either a chilled house remix or an upbeat drum 'n' bass remix. When I went to Studio 2 the soft synths in Logic were not working for some reason. I then went to Studio 5 to use the Native Instruments, but couldn't work out how to get sound to the speakers and also the MIDI wasn't working. By this time I was stressed and had lost all my enthusiasm so I decided to just work on the ProTools session.

I spent quite a bit of time working on the vocals and trying to isolate them to sound good. I know the exercise was to only use the vocals as a guide, but after hearing many of Ben's mixes I saw that it was possible to make them sound good. I have no idea how Ben did it but I just couldn't work it out. I tried using distortion, compression, EQ, de-esser but nothing worked for me.

In this mix I got rid of many of the guitar tracks because I though there was just way too much. I changed the type of distortion and added some delays to the main lead. I also made use of the guitar riffs at the end of the session and cut them up and matched it to the song.

One very stupid thing I did was spend lots of time aligning two guitar parts and was pulling my hair out wondering why they were out of time. Then I realised I have a delay on one of the tracks that I forgot about! Grrrrhh! That was a waste of an hour!

I have a guitar wah effect on one of the main guitar parts, which complements the other part. I think the idea is good but the overall sound isn't the best because I had to work out which riff goes with each part of the song and I didn't know what the notes were. So, because it was all by ear it was time consuming and not always matching perfectly.

I have a screenshot of my mixer window to see the effects and an mp3 of the final mix both with and without vocals.

I know, there's a bit of clipping

Mix with vocals [4.1MB]

Mix without vocals [4.1MB]


[1] David Grice "Audio Arts: Semester 1, Week 9; Mixing" Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, 8th May 2007.

Week 8 Forum - Gender in Music Technology Part 2

This week was another debate on gender in music technology. I felt that most of what needed to be said was said last week. Still, we had some different and similar views this week. The presenters this week were Bradley Leffler, Laura Gadd, Ben Cakebread and Peter Kelly.

I didn't see any really new concepts this week in our discussion. Again, I'll point out that I don't think women really have it that bad. I think women should just accept their role in society. They should stop complaining about injustices and just strive for their goals. If they are as skilled as men in an appropriate field then they will succeed. Using the excuse "men get higher preference" is justification for failing.

If you don’t get a job as a sound engineer it’s not because you’re a women. It’s because you’re a bad sound engineer.[1]


[1] Bradley Leffler, Laura Gadd, Ben Cakebread and Peter Kelly. 'Music Technology Forum Presentation - EMU Space'. Lecture presented in the EMU Space, Electronic Music Unit, University Of Adelaide, 19th April 2007

CC2 Week 8 - MIDI Information and Virtual Instrumentation

This is my Max patch for this week. I found that I could get some really great sounds by varying multiple parameters at once. I would like to be able to switch between devices in Reason to enable Max to jump between different sounds (of course you can do program changes I suppose). I will look at this later.



Just like the stock market


AUDIO
mp3 of my patch [3.2MB]


MY PATCH
Max Patch
Max Text File
Reason File


[1] Christian Haines. "Creative Computing: Semester 1, Week 8; MIDI Information and Virtual Instrumentation" Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 3rd May 2007.

AA2 Week 8 - Mixing Part 1

This week we had to mix a ProTool session of a recording of a new talent. The singer in this recording has a remarkable voice and definantly has loads of talent. However, trying to create a decent mix with a bad recording to begin with was close to impossible. I would love to hear how this girl sounds when recorded professionally.

I attempted to hide the background guitar in the vocals using EQ but I found it took too much of the voice out. I have two recordings. On the first one I have taken out the electric guitar (I thought there were too man guitars) and I haven't used compression. In the second recording I have used compression and added the electric guitar. I used the guitar effect but used a bass preset so the guitar didn't take up too much of the vocals. Overall the mixes still don't sound all that great but I did what I could with what I had.






Mix 1 [835kB]

Mix 2 [785kB]

DNB Mix [268kB]

[1] David Grice "Audio Arts: Semester 1, Week 8; Mixing" Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, 1st May 2007.