Monday 26 March 2007

Week 4 - CC1 - Sequencing (1)

I agree completely with Christian's comments about "decoupling the brain from technology."[1] Computers create the trap of 'looking' at sound instead of listening to it. Although I had done MIDI sequencing before, this was a new experience for me. I was intrigued by the idea of 'sequencing without using MIDI.' This experience has brought a new and positive approach to sequencing for me.

This week we needed to imagine a soundscape which would include our twelve sounds we created over the last few weeks. Instead of doing the "imagining part" I did something a little different. I felt I needed a set goal or else I'd be there "imagining" forever. I made little icons and shapes to represent each sound. I took the two longest sounds and used those as the main track over the 45 seconds and layed their respective shapes (a bunny and a long piece with a spikey section) at the bottom. I then took handfulls of random icons and dropped and flicked them on the space. Where they landed is where their respective sound would appear in the mix. I lined them up vertically so they were neat and decided to add a few extra "beats" for some sounds where I thought it might sound good. At this point I had no idea what it would sound like. I then sequenced the audio files in Pro Tools so they would faithfully represent the sequence on paper. All done.

This track has no panning or fader automation. How the icons landed is how they got represented so some sounds are louder than others but I think it gives the track some depth. The only tracks that were altered were the two long ones at the bottom which had Time Expansion applied to stretch them out closer to 45 seconds.

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[1] Haines, Christian. 2007. "Perspectives in Music Technology 1A." Seminar presented at the University of Adelaide, 21 March.

1 comment:

Darren S said...

Love ya work. Chuck it into Audacity and crank the gain so the loudest bit is just hitting the red and spit out the red hot louder version, please!
DarrenS