CC1 - Week 7 - Pro Tools

This week we had to make yet another soundscape using Pro Tools. I can safely say that by now I was becoming slightly sick of the prospect of using our paper sounds to make songs, although the provision of a score made the task more interesting, as I was not placing sounds as randomly as before.











For this scape I used many of the techniques such as time stretching and automation effects. I was also quite keen on using the cutting tool to slice my sounds, but i could not work out how to do this, and the computer I was on lacked a Pro Tools reference guide. For the automation effects I made special use of both mute and pan. I found I came up with some interesting effects when I set the drawing tool to random and then muted a long track.

You can here my sound HERE.

Overall I was quite happy with this track and how it turned out. I am also confident that my skills with 'Tools are increasing, and I am gradually getting the knack of all the different functions.

Christian Haines. “Creative Computing”. Tutorial at EMU, University of Adelaide, South Australia. 5th April 2007.

AA - Week 6 - Acoustic Guitar Recording

This week we had to record an acoustic guitar, which was an exciting prospect as I've always wanted to know how to do this properly.

In the first recording, we had used a Neumann U89i angled up towards the sound hole. I didn't really like this sound as it was a tad bassy (which we could have fixed via roll off function on Avalon if we were using it) and it also sounded to me just a bit average.











You can listen to the recording HERE.

The second recording was with the same microphone, except this time it was pointed straight towards the frets. I didn't particularly like this sound either, to me theres was too much top end now, although there is a higher dynamic range than the first recording.










You can listen to the recording HERE.

For the third recording we once again used the U89i, except this time angled down on the guitar, I found this result sounding too similar to the first, which is not to my liking.










You can listen to the recording HERE.

For the fourth recording we once again used the U89i, except this time as a room mic. This recording once again does not sound very nice at all.










You can listen to the recording HERE.

The final recording was my favourite, and was done with two Neumann KM-84i's in the X-Y position, as you can see by the picture. To me this sound had the best and clearest dynamic range and sound.










You can listen to the sound HERE.

This was a good exercise and I have gained some good knowledge on the best ways to mic up an acoustic guitar. In the future I will most likely utilise the X-Y technique.

Stephen Fieldhouse. “Audio Arts”. Tutorial at EMU, University of Adelaide, South Australia. 3rd April 2007.

CC1 - Week 5 - Sequencing

This week we were shown several more features in Pro Tools, and were once again required to construct a song using our 'paper sounds'. I will admit i left this slightly to the last minute, as I only just started it today. The problem was all the studios were booked, and the PC lab was constantly full of classes. I managed to start my song but got kicked out after 5 minutes. Having not completed my song, I will simply post my score and planned ideas.

Blogger is not uploading images at the moment

For this track I decided to use my new skills in Pro Tools to make a dnb track. For this I started to cut up my original recording to make some new sounds suitable as a kick drum, snare and hat. I am planning on adding a few ambient sections, and also on using spear to make some crazy distorted spectral bass lines. I had a quick squiz at the plugins on Pro Tools, but when in the PC lab it seems extremely limited. I thought i might try and use Logic Pros SubBass plugin, but then I realised I don't know how to find the dongle. Maybe next time.

I will possibly now return in the early hours of the morning to complete my song, as even though it will be to late to gain marks on, I would still like to do it just for the skills involved.

Edit: I have now completed my song in the dnb style. As you can see I used a variety of different plugins, often using EQ or Ampli-Tube. I have run out of words now so you will have to deal with my pictures.

You can listen to my song here.





















Christian Haines. “Creative Computing”. Tutorial at EMU, University of Adelaide, South Australia. 29th March 2007.

AA1 - Week 5 - Microphones

For this week we had to do several recordings using different microphones to show mic techniques. I chose to use the AKG condensor mic and the Shure SM58 Dynamic mic. After arriving very early in the morning and after not much sleep, I had quite a bit of trouble sorting out recording. As I decided to record the piano, I had to use the recording space, but I couldn't get the sound from the recording space to the mixer. After an hour of trying different ways around, i decided to send the piano sound to the dead room from the recording space and then to the mixer from there.

I had to do a lot of running back and forth while playing, as I was by myself, which became quite tedious after the first time.

I would ask you to please ignore my skills on the piano (or lack thereof).
I decided not to move the mic around as this was just too much trouble by myself. I simply placed the mics in the lid and let the different patterns do their work.

This first recording was with the AKG in the Cartoid patten.

Listen to it HERE

This second recording is the same mic in the Hyper-Cartoid pattern.

Listen to it HERE

This is once again the AKG, now in the Omni-Directional pattern. With this recording especially you can hear alot more resonance sounds rather than just the piano.

Listen to it HERE

This is the final recording with the AKG, now in the figure 8 pattern.

Listen to it HERE

Finally i used a Dynamic mic, a Shure SM58, which is mainly a vocal mic. As it is usually used for close micing, and I wanted to leave the mic in the same place as the AKG, I simply turned up the trim, and also played a tad louder as well.

Listen to it HERE

Here is a picture of my Pro Tools file, just for your entertainment.








I was interested in these results, as they would be quite useful as a starting point for deciding what pattern or type of microphone to use in different situations.

Peace out yo.

Forum - Week 5 - Collaborations II

Todays forum marked the end of the discussions on Collaborations in music. Today Luke, Daniel, Darren and Alfred presented the topic.

Luke talked about a collaboration between Merce Cunningham, Radiohead and Sigur Ros. This was an interesting Collaboration, as the music was not to be made to accompany the dancers, it was seperate. I would have liked to see some kind of video footage here though so I could actually tell if the collaboration worked.

I found Daniels presentation interesting, as it was on Mike Patton, a man I had heard a bit about before, mainly through his collaborations with Dillinger Escape Plan and Sepultura. Patton has also done collaborations with countless other bands, many of which were highly successful, showing him as being a collaborator of high standard.

Darren led what was without a doubt the best presentation. An accomplished public speaker, Darren kept us on our feet for his whole presentation. Darren talked about collaborations of different music genres, most notably including Steely Dan, Frank Zappa and Weather Report.

Alfred talked about Vinyls and how they are so hard to get these days, which led to how hard it is to get a name for yourself as an artist, which eventually led into a more ethical discussion about music rights.

Overall these last to forums were quite interesting, although I am slightly sceptical about what results the gender in music technology will yield…

Slán go fóill.

Stephen Whittington. “Collaborations II”. Forum workshop presented at EMU, University of Adelaide, South Australia. 29th March 2007.

Alfred Essemyr. “Collaborations II”. Forum workshop presented at EMU, University of Adelaide, South Australia. 29th March 2007.

Darren Slynn. “Collaborations II”. Forum workshop presented at EMU, University of Adelaide, South Australia. 29th March 2007.

Luke Digance. “Collaborations II”. Forum workshop presented at EMU, University of Adelaide, South Australia. 29th March 2007.

CC1 - Week 4 - Creating a Song

This week we were to use our previous paper samples to make an ambient song. I was looking forward to this assignment, because finally I could jump on to 'tools and learn how to make my own music.

One of the harder aspects of this week though, was to make a 'score' of the song, although not in the conventional way. We had to literally score the sound using what made the sound – paper. This could have been interpreted many different ways. One example would be to have a ripped piece of paper where there is the sound of ripped paper, or scrunched where there is scrunched and etc. but as the majority of my sounds were no longer recognisable, I decided to represent the piece following a more spectral base.

As you can see I have labelled the parts to give you a better understanding of what is happening. Just for fun try and follow the score while you listen to the music J. The song can be found here.

Although I managed to complete this exercise, I am still having massive troubles in studio 2, but I will hopefully rectify that soon.

Hit us up and tell us what you think.

AA1 - Week 4 - I/O and Monitoring

In this session we learnt about the process sound goes through whilst recording. This included how it gets from the recording space, to the mixer and then to the computer. The following flow chart shows how the sound gets where.

As you can see from here, after the sound leaves wall bay (junction box) it goes to the patch bay. A patch bay is basically one of those things the old telephone operators used, and simply patches the sound to a different place, or in a different order. This can include patching in effects or EQ/compression. There are three ways a patch bay can be configured. Normalised, half normalised and not normalised. This has got to do with how the patch bay is wired up, for example normalised means the signal goes straight from the in to the out through the hardware, even if you connect one patch lead into either in or out, although if you plug a lead into both in and out (i.e. out to EQ back in to bay) the new signal will flow through. Half normalised is similar to normalised, but you can interrupt the signal, say just taking it out to another place, and the signal will no longer flow through the patch bay but out to where you patched it. If a patch bay is not normalised you physically have to patch it in yourself.

I am still not 100% if this process is correct though, so I shall review the session again soon.

Forum - Week 4 – Collaborations

In this forum, the topic was "Collaborations". Three different people led the discussion, all with different topics. The first topic was led by David and was all about the collaboration between the heavy metal band Metallica, and conductor........ To me this was the most interesting topic, mainly because I am a bit of a Metallica fan myself, and although I do agree that this collaboration worked, I am personally not a huge fan of the production, and I do know that many other Metallica fans did not like the collaboration either, which could lead us to believe that the collaboration was not ‘successful’ as such.

The next talk was from Vinny, and was about a musician named Trilok Gurtu. Trilok was a leading figure in the collaboration of Eastern and Western music. I found this talk interesting because Vinny played a fair amound of music as well.

Following Vinny was Will, who did a talk about collaborations between people making video games, and people making music for video games.

Finally was Sanad, who led what was probably the most 'forumatic(??)' conversation yet. Sanad simply stated ‘What is world music” and then let us have an argument about it, which is to me what forums should me about.

Overall a good week with some interesting topics and interpretations, although I am still quite confused about my topic, Construction and Deconstruction in music, so if anyone has any idea, please do tell...

Sayonara

CC1 - Week 3 - Spectral Analysis

In this weeks lesson we were shown how to use the spectral analysis program named Spear. As part of our task we had to use our original paper sounds from last week to create an additional six samples, using techniques such as time offset and stretch, transpose, pitch shift, and general cutting and pasting. I basically did random things to my sounds, with no specific outcome in mind, as this would give me a better idea of what techniques produce what sounds. It is really quite amazing what sounds you can come up with through spectral editing.

This first sound is probably my least favourite, as it is not that different and not much is happening. I mainly used the frequency transpose and a bit of cutting and pasting.

Sample 1

In this sound I quite like the harmonics. I think this is because i cut the word slayer into the spectrum, which instantly makes it an awesome sound. I also used frequency transpose and copying and pasting to make a large mass which I could cut holes into.

Sample 2

This sound is pretty crazy, I did a lot of time stretching at different frequencies on this one, as well as a bit of frequency stretching.

Sample 3

I am not really fond of this sample, as it is quite short and once again nothing amazing happens. In this sample I used frequency transpose and shift as well as cutting holes.

Sample 4

I basically went crazy with the frequency shifter and time stretcher in this one, although it didn’t really turn out as well as I thought it might.

Sample 5

This last sound is my favourite as it sort of sounds like something out of a sci-fi/ horror movie or game. I time stretched two sections massively (so they were about an hour long) and then cut and pasted several sections again and again. At the end of the sample I used the sound from the start of the sample, and used time stretching to shorten it, then copied it over a range of frequencies. I also had to cut the end off this sample due to it being over an hour long. As i did not know how to do this using Spear, I used a program called GoldWav instead.

Sample 6

Hit up.

AA1 - Week 3 (2) - Studio 2

In this session of Audio Arts, we were introduced into the workings of studio 2. We were told the start up and shut down procedures of the studio, which was the mains power, the computer, the power for the racks, the amps, the ‘tools processor, the desk if its not already on, and finally the speakers. We were also given the start-up procedure which is often used in larger studios, which is DORA.

As part of this week’s assignment we had to spend 3 separate sessions in studio 2, although we were able to negotiate that we spend one 3 hour session in pairs, which was handy for me as I am working a lot of the time on weekends. Doug and I went into the studio, equipped with a bass and amp, a guitar, a crybaby and an amp modeller. We initially DI’d the guitar, looped an apple drum loop and laid down a rhythm guitar bed. After this we added a bass line. At the start we miced up the amp (in dead room) with a shure beta52, but due to the quality of the amp (or lack thereof) we decided to DI the bass as well. Using the ‘tools mixer we also added some effects such as EQ and compression to all the instruments.


The final audio sample is here

I believe this was a successful session and has given me a fairly good idea of how to run both pro tools and studio 2.

Forum - Week 3 - Compossible

In our last forum, we were given the interesting exercise of playing a song which lasted for 45 minutes. There were people singing, people playing percussion and people reading excerpts from books. It was not written as normal music though, only that we were to perform the action within a certain time, e.g. 2’30” – 3’00”. This was a very different exercise, and I can confidently say I have never done anything quite like it before. Although we were not given a specific reason of why we had to do this, I believe it was once again to give us a wider perspective of ‘what is music’. It was interesting to note some peoples reactions to this activity, some people thought it was a complete waste of time, whereas most others where indifferent. I personally was one of the indifferent people, although I thought it was an interesting and fun exercise, I think it would be more practical for us to be having forums on subjects more directly related to music technology.

Peace out.

Forum - Week 2 - Originality

"I am the originator." — Little Richard


In this forum we had a discussion on the originality of music. Stephen Whittington led the discussion, which was an interesting two hours, full of music of vast varieties. Two of Stephen’s quotes which seem to have popped up a few times now, are “I want to be like everyone else”, and “If you steal from one its plagiarism, if you steal from many its research.”

We were then played several pieces of music, some of which were pieces made out of pre-existing music, but chopped up, and others which were ‘original’. We were posed the question of which of the pieces were original. I personally believe that they were all original, even the pieces which were created using other peoples music, because even though they did not write the music, they put a different creative aspect on it, henceforth making it original. But then there is the philosophical question of originality, are any of us actual original? By typing originality into the almighty Wikipedia, I got the following: “Originality is the aspect of created or invented works as being new or novel, and thus can be distinguished from reproductions, clones, forgeries, or derivative works. An original work is one not received from others nor one copied based on the work of others. The term "originality" is often applied as a compliment to the creativity of artists, writers, and thinkers.”1 Although this meaning does support my belief about whether work is original or not, there is still that great philosophical question looming all around us. I could go into a debate about whether anything in life is original, but that would be more of a discussion for a philosophy 101 blog than a music tech blog.

Back to originality in music, although I believe most of the music played to us is original, I do not believe that the majority of music is original, because how can one be truly original when you must follow the rules of counterpoint or jazz. The reality is that so many songs simply use the 14736251 progression, or derivatives of it. To be truly ‘original’ in music, one must throw off the shackles of theory and embrace doing what feels right to them, not what they feel is ‘meant’ to be the right way.

I can think of several prime examples of people who have created good original music without the fetters of theory, two of which are Brian Eno, in his ambience works, and Malefic of Xasthur.
Anyway as you can see from this I really don’t understand the point of knowing theory when some of the best and most original music is created by people who break the ‘rules’.

If anyone wants to have a discussion on originality in music with me, feel free, as I would be interested to hear your views.

Until next time.

En Taro Adun

1. Originality, Accessed 14/03/07, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Originality

CC1 -Week 2 - Paper Sounds

For our first actual creative computing assignment, we were to record the sounds that a piece of paper could make, and then use tape effects, such as reverse, fade in or out, or cutting and splicing to make several samples up to 20 seconds in length. I promptly booked studio 5 and headed up there with Rode (cheers Darren) NT5’s. Once I worked out that I had no idea about how to get a signal from the desk to the computer, I decided to plug straight into the M-Box. After this I simply opened up Peak, set everything up, hit record and went at it like a bull at the gates, recording a variety of paper sounds. I had planned to go in on Monday, but when I got there, I barely had time to finish one sample before I got the call to go in to work – bloody Adelaide cup. So instead I was forced to complete the rest of my loops on Tuesday, within a two hour break between my lectures. After I had worked out that you had hit bounce after applying a plug-in, I came up with the following results.



Sound 1:
For this sound I recorded a paper being snapped (folding together and pulling apart violently). For this sound I simply cut and spliced and then pitch shifted it upwards – way upwards.

Sound 1











Sound 2:
For this I once again used the sound of paper being ‘snapped’ (although a different one this time), and then cut and spliced, and also reversed parts of the sound. I then massively downshifted it using the following settings:
• Render quality: max
• Pitch -2400 cents
• Effect blend 70%
• Smoothness 61%
• Tightness 85%

Sound 2








Sound 3:
For this sound I rubbed the paper between my hands, and then once again used the pitch shifter (I’m loving this pitch shifter aren’t I), and also used the gain change to remove several louder parts of the recording






Sound 3







Sound 4:
In this sample I flapped the paper, reversed a section, used a gain change to remove a louder section, pitch shifted it, and used an EQ to remove excessive low end noise created by the wind of the flapping paper.
Pic

Sound 4











Sound 5:
This sound was of me punching the paper, and this time I did nothing to it except a slight gain change in a few places, and a plug in called the mad-shifta, as you can see below.

Sound 5












Sound 6:
The last sound is of me ripping the paper, which I chopped and pasted several times to make it longer and dodgier. I also pitched it downwards, changed the gain in a few spots, then faded it in. After this I wanted to do an automated EQ sweep, but as peak is not able to do this, I jumped into logic and automated a parametric EQ to do a waveform sweep over the loop.

Sound 6