AA2 - Sound Design

This week we had an environmental focus on what sound is. i decided to do my assignment at my boyfriends house seeing as its in the country and he has quite a few animals, so i knew there would be a lot of 'environmental' sounds, as opposed to more 'suburben' noises. Rohan decided to join me, and, whilst doing my sound study, very thoughtfully decided to sit next to me making stupid noises. As you can tell in the picture the only way i could make him stop was by kicking him, which, unfortunately, only made him sing louder. I also had other noises to incorporate, including the kitens running around and play fighting, birds in the trees, cars going past, and background noises, which included a chainsaw and cooking noises coming from inside the house. Unfortunately i had nothing to record it with, so i just tried to make my pictures and graph as detailed as possible. Overall i found it pretty simple and (almost!) relaxing.

AA 1 Final Assessment

For my recording i did 'If You Dont Know Me By Now' By Simply Red. My performers were Nathan on bass guitar, Doug on piano, Amy on Vocals and Sanad on drums. The aim was to try and make a similar sound to that of the original, recorded in the 80's, but also try and use as little effects as possible.
The recording sessions went quite well, although the piano was played slightly too slow and the voice was recorded along to the piano, so that when the drums were recorded they ended up being slightly too fast throughout the song. My other little problem was that Amy was drowning in the flu when i recorded her, and i couldn't wait any longer or i would have run out of time, so i had to use quite a lot of reverb on the main melody plus the fills to try and covr this (even though you all already know because i just told you!)
When it came to mixing i used compression on the drums and the voice,to try and stop any clicking. I also used reverb on both of these, to cover the cold in Amy's voice, and also the give the 80's effect on the snare that was present in the original recording.
I know this recording was quite rough, as i don't know enough about recording and the programmes yet to use them to my full advantage, but i believe that this is only the beginning and that it can only (hopefully!) get beter from here :D.
( I am unable to post the music up right now because my USB died, so i have to fish them off of Christian, but i will get everything up her ASAP )

CC1 - Week 12 - Musique Concrete Project

Composition Reproduction

Name: Laura Gadd

Course: Music Technology


Description

Develop a compositional plan and describe it in detail (300 words). The plan must research, examine, assess and describe items under ‘aesthetic criteria’.

When I began to organise what I was going to write for this assignment, I started to think about what I wanted to get from it. When looking up some extra information on ‘Musique Concrete’ from Wikipedia (1), I discovered a word that Pierre Schaeffer loved to use; ‘Jue’. Jue, originally coming from the French word Jouer, means 'to enjoy oneself by interacting with one's surroundings', as well as 'to operate a musical instrument'.
When I read this it made me realise that I wanted to write something that would really represent musique concrete in its early stages, because this was where the subject fascinated me most. I want to keep my finished product as simple as possible, as Pierre had done with his first piece Etude aux chemins de fer (Study on railways) (2).
I will use the materials I have produced so far throughout the term, and use programmes such as Pro Tools, SoundHack and Reason to manipulate them. I want to try and create something that is not so much ‘harmonic’ as it is ‘abstract’ or ‘musique concrete’ as Pierre likes to refer to it, as he believes ordinary music is ‘abstract’.
I want to try and use as least amount of my sample materials as possible, as I feel this will help to keep my piece simple.
I will be using a lot of reverb and delay, as well as other effects such as ‘shuffling’, transposition of sound levels, pitch and volume, until I find the sounds that I desire.
This piece will not make any sense, as I do not want it to. This piece is intended to be very ‘random’ and ‘spectral’, as this was what helped Pierre prove his point to the public that this new found ‘Musique Concrete’ was not intended to always ‘follow the rules’, but used as a way to express yourself with newfound technology.


References:

(1) Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ‘Musique Concrete’, Viewed on May 5th, 2007, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musique_concr%C3%A8te

(2) Carrol, Mark, Perspectives in Music Technology , Week seven, Pierre Schaeffer and musique concrete’,EMU University of Adelaide, viewed on May 5th, 2007.

Forum week 11 - Build &/or Destroy Music

This week was a very interesting topic, talking about how remixed music is either being built or detroyed when remixing popular songs.
Simon (1) went first and brought up the first and very simple fact that pretty much everyone hates Justin Timberlake's music, but whenever you hear his famous line 'I'm bringing sexy back' and one of his many remixed version, it will make many want to get up and dance.
He then went o to talk about similar songs like the 'Ghostbusters' Theme, showing a remix that he did himself, als which he decided he had 'destroyed' not 'built'. haha. I actually didn't think it was that bad.
He also had a large section on 'Daft Punk' Showing a few songs that they had "Jacked" a very repetitive word used in his speech. One of these songs, which actually turned out to be a no. 1 was 'Stardust'.

Nathan went next talked about Metal music, black metal in particular. He talked about how they like to go the opposite way with technology, many recording their songs by the simplest technology means, and definately not using any high tech equipment. He also pointed out a very amusing fact that there are christian bands that play 'Black metal', the only problem is, is that they actually calll it 'Unblack Metal'. (2)

Thirdly the third person (I'm so sorry i did not get your name!) talked about 'music's power to create different emotions and influence us', particularly focusing on scary music. He described it as being a lot like bright music Vs. scary music = Major Vs. minor. He also explained how both physical and timberal elements are used when trying to get the right effect. He then went on the play us many exampls, many from an artist named 'Lustmord', whose music i found very interesting.

References:

(1) Whitelock, Simon, Forum #1 music technology Week 11 - 'Building &/or destroying music', EMU University of Adelaide, May 24, 2007.

(2) Shea, Nathan, Forum #1 Music technology Week 1 - 'Building &/or detroying music', EMU University of Adelaide, May 24, 2007.

CC#1 - Week 11 - MetaSynth (2)

This week was an extension of last week's prac, where we learnt how to use the rest of the rooms (1). These included the Image Filter, the Spectrum Synth, and Sequencer and the Montage Room. The montage Room was able to put all of the effects you had made together and our task this week was to try and make a small 30 - 60sec sample of our effects put together (2). I found this week much more fun as i understood it more and had the change to put more thought and imagination into it.
I have taken pictures of some of the effects that i used and the overall finished product in the Monage Room. These should pretty explain themselves.


Here is one of the first effects i made using the shuffler effects in the sound effecs room.


Here is the bassline i used, although in this pic it is inverted and i forgot to take a pic of it when i re-inverted it back again.


Here is the overall setting in the Montage Room, where i have put all of my effects together to make a 'sort of ok' sample.

The hardest problem i had this week was to get everything in the same pitch. I would make a really nce bassline or melody, but it would be completely out of key with the one i wanted to put it with. I'll have to try and overcome this problem.

http://www.mydatabus.com/public/rewind/Finalmotageyea.mp3

References:
(1) Haines, Christian, CC#1, Week 11 - 'MetaSynth #2', EMU University of Adelaide, Thursday 24th May, 2007.

(2)MetaSynth Pro 4.0, 2004, EMU University of Adelaide, last used on May 30th, 2007

AA Week 11 - Mixing (1)

This week was the start of our mixing process, and to be honest i actually had no idea what to do. After asking about 50 thousand people i had a rough idea of what to do, so I am hoping what i have done is right.

Mix #1:
For my first mix i individually changed the faders and changed it to stereo form, with the same panning as when loaded.I Turned up the vocals quite loud, and i believed it had a good effect. It was a personal choice as i don't like hearing all the songs that come out these days where you are unable to hear the lyrics. I also had the piano and 'effected' piano up quite loud. I liked the effect.

http://www.mydatabus.com/public/rewind/Fadedmono1changed.mp3


Here is the fading i used kept in mono form.

Mix #2:
This time i kept pretty much the same fading as i had in Mix #1, but had it instereo form and put panning in, mostly in the parts which already had a left and right setting, and also in things like the guitars and piano parts. When listening to this in my headphones i thought this sounded awsome, although, as i was told in Audio Arts (1), i knew that you would have to stand right in between the speakers to hear the full effects when being played out loud.

http://www.mydatabus.com/public/rewind/Pannedstereo2changed.mp3


This was the panning i used for mix #2

Mix #3:
For my last mix i kept it in stereo and had the same fading, but by this time it was plainly obvious that the drums needed to have some EQ put on it, as they sounded horrible. I applied different EQ effects for the kick, snare and KitFX. Overall i found the drums to be a lot clearer and the whole piece seemed to have a lot more clarity.

http://www.mydatabus.com/public/rewind/EQtodrums3changed.mp3


Here is the EQ i added to the kick


Here is the EQ's used on the drum parts.

References:

(1) Fieldhouse, Stephen, Audio Arts 1 - Week 11 - 'Mixing (1)', EMU University of Adelaide, May 22nd, 2007

CC1 Week 10 - Metasynth (1)

This week we were introduced to a new programme; "Metasynth" (1). We were showed how to use two of the functions 'Effects Room' & 'Image Synth'.(2) We were to create a 45 second piece by manipulating the recorded quote used in previous weeks.In my recording i used 4 different manipulations of the quote using different effects in the effects room. The first time i used the quote i simply changed the speed with a random fast, slow, fast, slow effect. For the second quote i, firstly, harmonized it using an almost contrary motion of triangular waves with the high and low voices. I then put a shuffler over it and adjusted it until i found a beat that i liked. For the fourth recording i transposed my voice up a 5th, then added a gradually increasing reverb over the top. For the fifth quote i changed the pitch and time, where both the pitch and time rise both about a third, then stay that way for approx. half the piece, then rise fully for the 2nd half.For the third recording, wch was done in the 'Image Synth' room i started by analyzing the first of my quotes down into the picture grid. I then added notes spaced ocatvely at the beginning of each bar. The notes were represented as blocks. I then used a different (smudged) brush to put some more octave notes at the bottom, almost like a bass line. I then rotated it so that everything i had just done sounded completely random and nothing like it was supposed to.




http://www.mydatabus.com/public/rewind/ccwk10audacity.mp3

References:

(1) Metasynth.4, 2006. Website = http://unisoftware.com/MetaSynth/index.html

(2) Haines, Christian, CC#1, Week 10 tutorial - MetaSynth (1) (Processing), EMU, University of Adelaide, May 17th, 2007.