2007 - Sem2 - Week1 - CC1 - Modular Programming(1)

This program seems pretty cool. The only thing I can see myself having is patching things in any old way. I’m not really used to that (unless I make a mistake) as I’ve always been yelled at if I patch something wrong. I did patch things in ‘wrong’ but it didn’t do anything so I patched everything in a normal chain.
The ‘tune’ is fairly random. I played around with the 16 step sequencer and particle arpegiator and got some quirky notes happening. I put some low level distortion in via the Deconcrisseur and two band distortion plugs.
Overall my soundscape isn’t anything to write home about but I can see this program being a usefull application.

Soundscape
Bidule file

Haines, Christian. 2007. “CC1-Modular Programming(1)” Seminar presented at the University of Adelaide, 26th July.

Plogue Bidule. 2001-2007 Plogue Art et Technologie, Inc

2007 – Sem 2 – Week1 - Forum – Electronics, Instrument Building and Improvisation

Circuit Bending: the art of rumaging through bins to make ‘instruments’ from other people’s junk. Good Lord! After todays bombardment of buzzes, pops and zaps I can only imagine what the Ode to Headache Symphony No.1 will sound like in week 8. What can I say about the Victorian Synth? I don’t know, but I do know I was doing this exact same thing with speakers as a kid to bounce marbles off of. They’ve just put a name to it now. When you’re actually making noise yourself it is fun I guess, although it gets boring rather quickly, but from an audience perspective I found it completely boring. It takes no musical ability at all and just solidifies the old adage that computer geeks are trying to be musicians and producers. Once upon a time one could buy a computer and suddenly they’d rudely call themselves a Mastering Engineer. Now they can rumage through a bin and call themselves a musician or maybe even a Musical Instrument Engineer? Good grief. And judging by a few YouTube videos this really just seems to be a hobby for the unemployed to waste their waking hours on but that’s just my cynical opinion. ;)

Buzz Buzz Zap Bzzzztt

Haines, Christian. 2007. “Forum Workshop – Electronics, Instrument Building and Improvisation.” Seminar presented at the University of Adelaide, 26th July.

Whittington, Stephen. 2007. “Forum Workshop – Electronics, Instrument Building and Improvisation”. Forum presented at the University of Adelaide, 26th July.

Seb Tomczak. 2007. “Forum Workshop – Electronics, Instrument Building and Improvisation.” Seminar presented at the University of Adelaide, 26th July.

2007 - Sem2- Week 1 – AA1 – What is Sound Design?

Sound design, as we discussed in class, can cover a fair range of work from film work to toasters. A manufactured sound should have a purpose or function but does that sound faithfully reflect that function. The form of the sound may deliberately be non complimentary to the image or device that it will be attached to. Perhaps it would be acceptable for the latest version of Unreal Tournament to have a baby burp each time a gun is fired instead of a huge machine gun sound or perhaps each time your microwave sets of the annoying piezo ding it could instead say “Oi dickhead, get your crap out of this oven!!” Hmm, perhaps not.

I was going to jump right into talking about Ben Burtt but as far as film sound is concerned I couldn’t possibly have a blog on the subject without mentioning Jack Foley. So there you go. I mentioned him and so I don't go too far over the word count you'll have to look him up yourself.

The ‘lightsaber effect’ created by Ben Burtt for the 1977 film Star Wars is no doubt one of the most recognisable sound effect there is and people immediately recognise it and associate it with George Lucas’ epic saga. It has been sampled and used in a few other films since then, but people more often than not make a comment like “hey that’s a lightsaber noise.” The whole idea of the sound was to be unique while still sounding organic. Lucas apparently wanted to get away from the simple electronic sounds and effects of science fiction films of the time for his used universe. A lightsaber obviously doesn’t exist in the real world so Burtt was able to use artistic ideas to represent the form of the sound, but still kept a certain functional element to it by recording a doppler effect (which involved waving a microphone in front of a speaker while it played the buzz/humm noise) to create a sense of movement. For anyone interested in knowing anything further about the work of Ben Burtt, there is an excellent documentary on the DVD Star Wars Episode II – Attack of the Clones named “Films Are Not Released; They Escape.”

And while I’m in full nerd mode, a free cookie goes to the person who guesses what this is from.

Haines, Christian. 2007. “Audio Arts-What is Sound Design?” Seminar presented at the University of Adelaide, 24th July.

The Art of Foley. Philip Rodrigues Singer. “The Story of Jack Foley” http://www.marblehead.net/foley/jack.html (26th July 2007)

FilmSound.org. Sven E. Carlsson “Sound Design of Star Wars” http://www.filmsound.org/starwars/ (26th July 2007)