Week 12 - CC1

Here's the score for my major assignment. It's pretty simple. The different colours represent different "instruments" while the durations are represented by the length of the lines.

Through our tutorials with Mark Carrol I was slightly confused about the definition of music concrete. As far as I can tell music concrete is basically music not made from traditional instruments. Natural ‘worldly’ sounds are used to create music instead, but at the same time although there is usually a lot of tape editing and looping involved these sounds are kept natural. That is my dillema. I am going to use some noises I recorded, but I won’t be keeping them entirely natural. I’ll be pitch shifting and stretching the sounds to create a bizarre string quartet.

I will be doing this piece entirely in Pro Tools using the Speed plugin although the original sounds were recorded on a Marantz CP230 with a Rode NT3. The score uses zig zag lines to illustrate the durations of the notes and to represent the movement and duration of the sounds. This zig zag score could be used for a number of different sound sources. One that comes to mind is hack sawing four metal tubes of different lengths and widths. Hmm, I think I'll do just that over the holidays...
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Haines, Christian. 2007. “Creative Computing.” Seminar presented at the University of Adelaide, 31st May.

Week 12 - AA1 - Mixing (2)

First up I opened the last session from last week. I ended up moving all the vocal tracks over where I could work on them easier since I was only using a small section of the song (highlighted in picture). I applied compression to the kick, snare, bass and vocals. I didn’t think it was necessary to compress everything. I found these parts to really ‘come alive’ after compressing. The three chorus vocals (the one that doesn’t say “stayed in bed” were sent through a bus and compressed together on the one aux as demonstrated in class. This helped keep the cpu strain down.

For the second mix I added some reverb. The reverb is quite subtle, but I decided to go for that as I feel it’s fairly easy to exagerate reverbs and I wanted to try and use it to blend and glue tracks together as I find that challenging. The only time it pops out as a major effect is with the delay on the phrase “I know.” Again, an aux track was created with the reverb plugin on it for the vocals and snare to be bussed to. The bus faders were used to set the levels.

A quick “mastering” was done for the last mix. I put Maxim on the master fader, set it’s output to –0.1 and lowered the threshold just enough to raise the levels without distorting. Well, it might be distorting as I don’t have the gear a real Mastering engineer would have.

Doing the mix in a step by step process definitely made these mixes much better than previous mixes I’ve done and helped a great deal in finding places for each sound in a busy mix. It’s just a matter of discipline on my part now to keep doing it this way and not go back to fiddling about with compressors before panning, etc.

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Mix with compression.

Mix with compression and effects.

Mastered version.

Fieldhouse, Steve. 2007. “Audio Arts 1 Seminar – Drums.” Seminar presented at the University of Adelaide, 29th May.
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Digidesign. 1996-2007 Avid Technology, Inc All Rights Reserved.

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Eskimo Joe. 2006. “New York” Black Fingernails, Red Wine (album). Mushroom Records.

Week 11 - Forum - Construction and Deconstruction (2)

After reading a few other student blogs I have a fairly good idea of the presentations. Since I don’t like or 'care' for DJ music, I’ll just do an Edward Kelly and completely ignore Simon's presentation as it will just take up valuable real estate in this blog.

Hmm, Luke Digance’s comments “It was hypothesised that this is related to the writers of the music within the Black Metal genre having a hate for practically every element of modern society.”[1] Now I’m assuming Nathan in fact did allude to this as I make my next statement. This makes me chuckle. Not Luke’s comment, but the statement of “hate for practically every element of modern society.” Now I’m looking at a picture of this band whom I’ve never heard of before and I see them wearing painted faces and black leather costumes adorning studs and spikes. Who do they look like?! Which band has had the biggest influence on what a modern rock concert in “modern society” is presented like?! You wanted the rest, you got the rest. The band that wants to look like the hottest band in the world…WHOEVER!!!!!!!! How can a band that hates modern society take so much from it for their image and try to make it their gimmick? I assume they do not use electric guitars as that is a modern instrument. I would assume I am incorrect.

I’m really dissapointed now that I missed John Delaney’s presentation. Again, I’ll quote Luke, “John came to the conclusion that without the visual stimulation, the music composed has no psychoacoustic result of fear within the listener.” This is exactly what I said last week so it looks like John and myself have come to the same conclusions. It would be very interesting to see what would come out of a conversation between us on the issue of fear in music and whether it could be made possible to create it at will. Judging by the blogs it appears his presentation went a little better than mine. No doubt he’s probably a better public speaker than myself or perhaps it was because he steered clear of words like “formula.”

Whittington, Stephen. 2007. Forum Workshop “Construction and Deconstruction in Music(1)”. Forum presented at the University of Adelaide, 24th May.

Whitelock, Simon. 2007. Forum Workshop “Construction and Deconstruction in Music(1)”. Forum presented at the University of Adelaide, 24th May.

Shea, Nathan. 2007. Forum Workshop “Construction and Deconstruction in Music(1)”. Forum presented at the University of Adelaide, 24th May.

Delaney, John. 2007. Forum Workshop “Construction and Deconstruction in Music(1)”. Forum presented at the University of Adelaide, 24th May.

[1]Digance,Luke. 2007. “Forum wk11" http://www.eclectici.blogspot.com/. (Accessed 26th May 2007)

Week 11 - CC1 - Meta (2)

This time I got around the full bookings of Studio 5 by patching two computers together in the computer lab. I originally had booked the DAT recorder for Tuesday but couldn’t find Peter to actually get it on the day. I thought the patching would be pretty convenient, but unfortunately there was a horrible buzz introduced to the signal. All I did was plug into the headphone jack of the computer running MetaSynth into the Mbox on the other computer recording into Pro Tools. I did get some strange looks from other students when they saw what I was doing.

First up, I went straight back and did the Soundwave voice from last week. Here it is.

I then went and played around with the other rooms. Image Filter had some cool sounds. I drew some squiggles and played around with the effects on the right column. I rendered sections of my voice as I went. Spectrum Synth was ok. It just seemed to me that all that I had to do was move the columns around to make different lengths of ‘ambient sections.’ The Sequencer was probably the best as far as actually being able to tell what the processed sound would be, apart from the Effects Room. This created a kind of video game ‘Mario Bros’ style tune with my voice. Montage Room I couldn't figure out in the time I had.

It’s pretty amazing that all of these sounds were my voice to begin with. The only thing I’d complain about, and it’s no doubt only because I’m not used to the controls or effects yet, is that most effects seem to be pretty random and I had no real suggestion or idea what it would sound like when I chose an effect. Apart from the first two rooms, it just seems like a lot of trial and error to get the sound you want.

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Soundscape.

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Haines, Christian. 2007. “Creative Computing.” Seminar presented at the University of Adelaide, 24th May.

Meta Synth. 2006 U&I Software IIc

Week 11 - AA1 - Mixing(1)

First up I pulled all the faders down. I then went ahead and made a mono mix, so I centred all the panning. I then went ahead and simply started making a balance of the tracks, starting with the drums and working my way right making sure the next track that became unmuted wasn’t too loud so as not to “chase the tail.”

I then made a mix with panning. I starting by alt+click to zero all the faders so as to hear all the tracks at once. I then started panning (without adjusting levels at all) listening for where the sound appeared clearest the most. I then adjusted the levels to balance the tracks.

For the third version I used eq to clean up the sounds. I used HPF and LPF and a bit of parametric to boost a bit of some of the tracks here and there. There was no eq boost at all on the vocals but there seems to be a lot of sibilance. Since a de-esser is technically compression, I left the sibilance alone. I assume we’ll need to address this in the next mix though.

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This exercise was good, but at the same time I feel it was a waste of time simply for the fact that everyone (apart from those living under rocks) has heard this song before and already has “the way this song should sound” already stuck in their head. It was very difficult to get away from that. Speaking of which, I wonder if anyone actually used this song as their reference?!? I know songs get remixed all the time, but we weren’t asked to do that. We were simply asked to balance the tracks. It would have been better if we say, had to mix a song a third year had recorded. As long as it wasn’t anyone famous it would be pretty much a given that we wouldn’t have heard the song before. Hmmm, are we going to be mixing the NIN track as well?

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• Mix 1
• (mono)

• Mix 2
• (with panning)

• Mix 3
• (with panning and eq)
  
  
  

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Fieldhouse, Steve. 2007. “Audio Arts 1 Seminar – Drums.” Seminar presented at the University of Adelaide, 15th May.

Digidesign. 1996-2007 Avid Technology, Inc All Rights Reserved.

Eskimo Joe. 2006. “New York” Black Fingernails, Red Wine (album). Mushroom Records.

Week 10 - Forum - Construction and Deconstruction (1)

After all the ramblings of hit formula and psycho acoustics,one thing is definite. I’m no public speaker.

Everything resonates. It’s the simple fact of the universe, but can we willfully affect that resonance to basically “do our bidding?” Can every number 1 song be deconstructed and stripped of all their dissimilar aspects to only leave the exact same elements remaining for every single song? I would recommend reading the chapter (Well the whole book really. Parts of it is in our readings) in “Mixing With Your Mind” that I refered to today as Stav says it better than I did. What I hoped to achieve was to take it one step further and see if his concept could be applied to discover the ‘secret ingredients’ that go into other genres of music for film scoring and soundtracks. Namely the horror genre.

Some people may have misinterpreted my intention for the Slipknot video (which is my fault for the poor presentation). The purpose of the video was to demonstrate fear in music, whether it could be manufactured/constructed at will and the bodily reactions one has without even realising it, not whether someone would buy an album based on seeing what the artists look like or a debate on whether Slipknot is scary. Slipknot was the best reference I had since I had the video and the album and could do an easy A B comparison with and without visual stimulus. Even though a horror film tends to build tension and suspense in the music and doesn’t usually just jump out at you at the start like a metal concert, it served the purpose of the experiment by seeing the various reactions such as squirming, staring in disbelief, rapid eye blinking and laughter but in hindsight it may have been better to use a film such as the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Presented once with the footage, then with the lens covered so as just to listen to the soundtrack (a dark musical section, not one filled with screaming and a howling chainsaw). Unfortunately I don’t have that video. It is a known fact that famous record producers use formulas. It is also a known fact that marketing gurus use formulas in advertising to sell us their products. Formulas are used everywhere where a buck is to be made. Ignore it if you will, but we are either the manipulators or the manipulated. Anyone that doesn't believe this is a naive fool.

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The other two presenters also basically spoke about “deconstructing” a piece of work. Dragos spoke of the addition and subtraction of loops in songs while Matthew talked us through the working processes of a piece he worked on. I have a funny feeling we will be in for more of this sort of theme in next weeks forum. I hope I’m wrong and there are more lateral thinkers out there.

Whittington, Stephen. 2007. Forum Workshop “Construction and Deconstruction in Music(1)”. Forum presented at the University of Adelaide, 17th May.

May, Frederick. 2007. Forum Workshop “Construction and Deconstruction in Music(1)”. Forum presented at the University of Adelaide, 17th May.

Nastasie, Dragos. 2007. Forum Workshop “Construction and Deconstruction in Music(1)”. Forum presented at the University of Adelaide, 17th May.

Mazzone, Matthew. 2007. Forum Workshop “Construction and Deconstruction in Music(1)”. Forum presented at the University of Adelaide, 17th May.

Week 10 - CC1 - Meta (1)

Meta Synth seemed pretty straight forward. After seeing the demonstration in class I just had to make my voice imitate Soundwave from the 1980’s cartoon The Transformers. I experimented with the pitch shifter and the harmonizer to do it. It sounded pretty cool, but then I remembered we couldn’t save the file with the version in the computer lab and all the studio time is used up. Grrrrr. “Rumble, eject. Operation destruction.”

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Haines, Christian. 2007. “Creative Computing.” Seminar presented at the University of Adelaide, 17th May.

Meta Synth. 2006 U&I Software IIc

Picture taken from the DVD boxset "Transformers – volume 1" Madman Entertainment, 2003.