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aa - semester 1 2007 assignment

Recording Tristan Louth-Robins demo style.

Tristan plays acoustic guitar and accompanies himself with voice.

Also on the track featured, Seb Tomczak sequenced an outro using 4 bit gameboy power, and Lauren Sutter plays violin - twice.

We recorded this song (and two others) over several days at the Electronic Music Unit at Adelaide University.
Then I spent far too long mixing it down (don't bring up software problems please :).

tragic.mp3

EDIT: just noted that the mp3 file on the link was truncated, have adjusted link.






Here follows documentation of the events.
http://www.hddweb.com/93140/PreProduction_Tristan_LouthRobins.pdf

http://www.hddweb.com/93140/Preproduction_session_plan.pdf

http://www.hddweb.com/93140/Recording.pdf

http://www.hddweb.com/93140/production.pdf

cc - sem 01 2007 assignment

Composition in the style of Musique Concrete

Edward Kelly

3' 00

This piece was created in regard to the aesthetic of presenting pre-recorded sounds in an unrelated abstract manner, thereby recontextualising them into a new pattern.
From this presentation a piece of sound art is created.

The material was deliberately a minimal choice of source sounds. There were four; a vocal sample, a drum sample, an accoustic guitar sample, and a paper sound sample.
These sounds were imported into various editing software, and therein manipulated using cutting/pasting, pitch shifting, time compression/expansion, equalisation, delay, volume and panning information.

This was a deliberate choice to emulate (to an extent) working with physical tape through the limitation of processing techniques.

The piece is a linear transition through sound variation and sources. Generally sounds are introduced, repeated, moved and manipulated, then they are superseded by the introduction of new sounds.

It has no set rhythym or tempo other than the length of the sounds used in a repeating manner. These sounds are generally effected in a way that there is little perfect repetition, creating movement and flow.

download: Score.pdf, Composition in the style of Musique Concrete.mp3

Music Concrete : A technique wherein natural sounds - such as a voice, an instrument, or the ticking of a clock - are recorded and then subjected to modification by means of altered playback speed, reversed tape direction, fragmentation and splicing of the tape, creation of a tape loop, echo effect, and other timbral manipulations.
highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072852607/student_view0/part6/chapter28/key_terms.html

... (known to some as Musique Abstraite, literally, Abstract Music) as the sounds are recorded first then built into a tune as opposed to a tune being written then given to players to turn into sound. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musique_concrete

f - week 12 - improvisation/composition

The dichotomy of improvisation and composition.

"Improvisation is not composition."[1]

"Comprovisation."[1]

This leads me to an idea I've been working on for a few pieces. During the course of this forum[2] it evolved into several movements :)

Basic idea - say at least 5 musicians with discrete parts. Give some idea of tempo, each one different. Make them start :) all at differing tempos. Then each player is to either speed up or slow down until some sort of sync is reached, where rhythmically the piece seems to make sense. Stay there for a little. Stop.
Repeat with new information for seperate movements.

Each part is to be very harmonically simple, potentially single notes, or mayhaps 2 note arpeggios or simple rhythyms. eg....





[1]Whittington, Stephen. Quoting an unknown source. University of Adelaide, Schultz building. 31 May 2007.

[2] “Music Technology Forum – Week 11 – Composition/Improvisation". University of Adelaide, Schultz building. 10 May 2007.
Presented by David Harris and Stephen Whittington.

cc - week 12 - preproduction form [1]

Well here it is. My preproduction form.

It documents how I intend to go about creating a piece using the techniques and software that we have covered over this semester.

The document itself.doc .
sem_1_2007_CC_PreProductionComp.doc


It pretty much outlines how I go about making most of my sound/music.
I start with a sound then run with it.

It is all about the sound and what it suggests upon repeated listens.
You put it through effects, listen...

Faith.


[1] Haines, Christian. Creative Computing week 12 lecture. University of Adelaide, 31 May 2007.

aa - week 12 - more mixing

this weeks task - mix down once more eskimo joe with more stuff !!! (ie compression, fx...) [1]

Once again I headed into the studio to listen to eskimo joe... new york indeed.

I chose a more interesting part of the song, in that it wasn't just chorus but had a bit of outro verse . This made it more difficult; more tracks overall to incorporate, and a bit more excitement to build.

First mix, I panned, adjusted levels, added eq (a lot, but I think I added more as the mixes progressed as well), and compressed the bass and vocals.
ej_eq_comp.mp3

Next up a bit of reverb to the vocals, and exciter to some of the guitar. The reverb I did by sending a number of vocal tracks to aux 1 (this also for compression) and then using a send to aux 2 with the reverb on that (the picture manages to miss the reverb track). I also used a seperate reverb on one vocal channel, this I used as an insert and played with the mix to sit it nicely.
ej_eq_comp_fx.mp3


Finally I tried a bit of mastering, and yes it is louder :)
I don't know why but I think it sounds clearer with a bit of standard compression first, followed by the maxim plug-in.
ej_eq_comp_fx_master.mp3

I did find that I was changing the mix slightly for each version as well, deciding that this guitar was now too loud etc. This picture is from the final mix, with compression and maxim on the master fader.


Oh, and I didn't get to try patching through the real desk, not enough time. Maybe next semester :)

[1] Fieldhouse, Steve. Mixing Basics 2. University of Adelaide, 22 May 2007.

cc - week 11 - meta synth montage goodness

_____This week we were introduced to the metasynth montage room.[1] Basically what I wanted last week.______



I got a bit more into the image synth.
Analysing a sound I made, and then using the selection/transfer tool to select areas and then drag/copy around using the different possibilities (additive, subtractive, erase etc).
And the selection of either left, right or left and right (can't remember the boolean symbols :) made for good stereo processing.

I had a brief toy with the image filter, spectrum synth and sequencer but enjoyed the image synth/effect room so much more that I did the bulk of my processing in these rooms.
Again the graphical editing of parameters over time, was very pleasant!!



The montage room was also fun, although possibly a bit budget in some respects (unless it was all user ignorance :). A global pan for the entire channel for example.
I still found it quite challenging to do what I consider very simple tasks such as eliminating the pop/click at the end of some rendered samples. Using studio 2 made it necessary to do this in the montage room and zoom/scrolling takes a bit of getting used to, and the fade outs also. Hence there's still at least one click in the finished product.
I also didn't work out if there was a way to change the effects on a channel over time either.

cc week 11.mp3

Getting it to an mp3 was a bit of a challenge in studio 2, but sort of worked out how to use soundflower !!



[1] Haines, Christian. Creative Computing week 11 lecture. University of Adelaide, 24 May 2007.