Semester 1 is DONE

Now more effort can be spent examining the phylosophical ideals of time and space, which I think this photo is a fine example of.

Is this really necessary? Do people really find this amusing? Am I overreacting? I may be overreacting to this particular image in itself, but I (and others) have tollerated Doug's racist slurs and backstabbing jokes directed at various students for the last eighteen months and at this point I have had a gutfull.

I can only assume it is a retalliation for my post on his blog because as far as I can tell, this image has nothing to do with any theme in his CC2 patch and as usual he has done this to deliberately incite a hostile reaction. The catchphrase in this picture is ironic, as very soon he will no doubt be a little bit blue too.

http://loudmandoug.blogspot.com/2008/06/cc-assesment-sem1-2008.html

AA2 Semester1 Major Assignment

Band1: White Light

Practice, practice, practice. After the numerous preproduction meetings where I mentioned the bass playing was not up to scratch and more practice was needed, it was evident on the day of the recording that the bassplayer had only ever practiced during band rehearsals. That makes three practice sessions in three weeks. Not good enough. After all my effort to help these guys get to a level where they may actually get a half decent recording was pretty much wasted because of lack of practice by both the lead guitarist and the bass player. The majority of my time mixing has been spent attempting to make the bass player sound decent. It was as if a three year old had gotten drunk and at a spur of the moment decided to start bowing a double bass. It was that bad. Nothing was played in time. Very little notes were even played properly. And don't get me started on the lead guitarists girlfriend offering me her 'production' advice all night. The rhythm guitarist and lead singer, brilliant. For people that have never performed before, they practiced hard and it showed. From where they were a couple of months ago to where they are now is a huge improvement, but yes after you hear the recording they still need improving. Now don't get me wrong, I really like the song. It has so much potential but there would need to be some rerecording of parts. Also the percussion did not get recorded, but it wouldn't be hard to imagine where it goes. This is not only a demonstration of my engineering skills but since I was friends with members of this group, and they trusted me, I had the opportunity to expand on my producing skills as well. This song ended up being edited and mixed rather different in regards to structure and instrumentation arrangement than how it was recorded on the day.

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Mp3

Documentation

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Band2: CASM allstars

This went very smoothly apart from the fact the drummer could not make it in the end, but we survived with a little ingenuity as described in the documentation. There's a couple of bum notes here and there, but hey, once is a mistake twice is jazz. It all adds to the style. It was all recorded in three hours and mixed the next day. If only everyone could come in and lay a track down in only three goes and let the engineer do his job. They took my suggestions well and tried a few different things, and when I said "let's do another take, because I think you can do it better" they did without questioning anything. Great stuff.

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Mp3

Documentation

CC2 Sem1 Major Assignment

For some reason during this past week this project has had trouble working properly on a Mac. It has stumped me as it worked fine till a few days ago and everything except the GUI was done at Uni. The GUI was also operating fine at Uni till this week. It works fine on XP. The problem is that the febonacci scaler stops adding to itself after 47 times. As I said it works fine and continues counting till the end of time on XP. Strange.

Warning: Operation of this Max patch may induce a trance like state.

MAX patch
Documentation

MP3

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Haines, Christian. 2008. “CC2 – Creative Computing Semester 1.” Seminars presented at the University of Adelaide.

1990-2005 Cycling 74/IRCAM

Reason. 2008 Propellorhead Software

Forum Week 12

I’ve had to endure a bit of rap and scratching in my time, notably the experience of monitoring for DMX and putting up with a mate of mines stories of operating FOH for the Hill Top Hoods national tour (which he raved about mind you. Nothing is more rediculous than seeing a fourty year old carrying on like an eighteen year old rapper. “Hey yo!”), but nothing compared to the moron we had to endure at the last forum from the video “How to rock a party.” At least HTH aren’t complete morons. Even the turntablist that opened for DMX got a thunderous roar when he concluded his act, although it was probably the fact that he had actually finished that the crowd were applauding. The only thing different in monitoring scratchers rather than real musicians is that their desks are set on a separate auxilliary so they can control it themselves. They know this and are told this about five times before they go on, but the amount of times I got strange looks and the sign of a finger-pointing-up from the performer asking to get the foldback turned up was rediculous. Morons. I told them numerous times I will have no control over the level. They adjust their own monitoring themselves fed from a feed from the monitoring console. That is how all turntablists have the monitoring set up. It is not a band situation where the levels are fairly constant and need minor tweaking during a show. The records they use to scratch have widely differing volumes and it is easier for them to mix the monitoring levels as they see fit. Well it looks like that is the end of my ranting for this semester.

Oh wait! One more thing I stumbled upon. Are they serious?! This has to be right up there with knitting and origami on the list of worlds most useless courses.

Whittington, Steven. 2008. “Forum.” Seminar presented at the University of Adelaide, 5th June

Forum Week 11

After my brain got over the initial shock of listening to rap music for two hours at last weeks forum, I was able to recollect my neurons and focus on the subject of this week. Are humans being integrated into technology? I would say yes, but I have the naïve thought that it should be the other way around. Integration of technolgy and humans reminds me of a possible future I imagined about fifteen years ago. It is quite possible that there will be tech/human hybrids competing at the Paralympic Games. These games, filled with technological ‘freaks’ with artificial limbs created for the sole purpose of breaking records, will overshadow and be more popular than the regular Olympic games. Another thought is that if we can replace limbs with so called better ones, what will the outcome be for humans? Will humanity go down the path of replacing healthy limbs for the sake of an ‘upgrade’? It could simply be considered an expansion on cosmetic surgery for some people which basically becomes an ethical issue. An issue I think I will leave alone for now.

As for a greener University we could adopt this:
We should only wash half our face on Monday.
Perhaps even a ‘tits out’ Tuesday.
Smoke weed on Wednesday.
Eat only tofu on Thursday.
And wear flares and tiptoe through tulips on Friday.

On a final note is technology attractive, seductive and sexy as Steven pointed out? I guess it is.

Whittington, Steven. 2008. “Forum.” Seminar presented at the University of Adelaide, 29th May.

Harris, David. 2008. “Forum.” Seminar presented at the University of Adelaide, 29th May.

AA2 Week 11

Mastering

I mastered songs from Edward[1] and Sanad’s[2] major assignments from last year.

With VU’s calibrated at –15 (RMS) I used EQ to bring out the vocals more and to add some air in the top end. I also used EQ to reduce the precussive sound from the acoustic guitar. Compression set at 4:1 was also used. The main thing I found was that when the second time “folly” is said, the sound goes dull then bright again. I don’t know if it had to do with mic technique or frequency masking in the mixdown. I am guessing it was the latter. The mix had a bit of out of phase content but nowhere near as troublesome as the next song.

Sanad’s song basically sounded better the minute I flipped one side out of phase, or in this particular case, back in phase. Again the VU was calibrated at –15, this time the song was off the scale with the VU completely pegged all the way through the song. Calibrated at –6 it still went over +1. This time the mastered version is actually quieter than the original, but at least now it should translate well on a variety of different stereo systems.

Personally I am not interested in ‘loudness wars’ so I focused on the tone of the sounds rather than simply making them louder.

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Edward Unmastered

Edward Mastered

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Sanad Unmastered

Sanad Mastered
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Grice, David. 2008. “AA2 – Mixing.” Seminar presented at the University of Adelaide 27th May.

[1]Louth-Robbins, Tristan “Tragic.” 2007

[2]Sanad & Co. "The song with no Tech students." 2007

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