Week ending 06/04/2006
Post for week ending 06/04/2006
Audio Arts:
Focus: Headphone monitoring possibilities and limitations for all recording spaces in EMU.
For sending a headphone mix to the dead room from studio 1 let me get this straight;
- Sound source is in the dead room
- Microphone is in the dead room receiving the sound source
- Microphone is plugged into studio 1 jack 1 on dead room wall bay
So, to receive this signal in studio 1 we must remove the jack from the top left of the studio 1 wall bay and place it in the far left plug for receiving from the dead room.
Then to get a headphone signal;
- On the patch bay, route from output Aux L&R to headphone in L&R.
- Then click on the ‘monitor auxiliary’ button on C24
- Adjust auxiliary volume as required
- Check level is coming through on the headphone amp
Headphone signal must then be routed to Studio 2.
- On the EMU space wall bay route the headphone out 1 plug to the headphone in 3 or 4 of studio 2
- In studio 2 route the incoming signal from headphone outs 3 or 4 on the wall bay to headphone 5 which goes to headphone out 5 on the dead room wall bay
- Plug the headphones into the dead room wall bay and its time……………….. to ROCK!
Ps; for non recording line monitoring of the recording space plug a Mic into input 17 on the EMU space wall bay and crank up the ‘monitor listen’ fader knob.
References:
Christian Haines. "Audio Arts - Studio 1." Practical Class presented at Studio 1, EMU space, 5th floor, Schulz Building, University of Adelaide, 4th April 2006.
Forum part 1, listening:
1. Edgard Varese, born in Paris 1883 died New York, 1965;
Equatorial:
Well, the father of electronic music eh? Perhaps the father of incorporating early electronic instruments into an organised sound structure would be a more fitting title in relation to this piece.
He seems to be going for a very dramatic effect in this composition. The instrumentation still sounds very orchestral despite the inclusion of the Ondes Martenot machines. It reminds me of John Cage to a certain extent but sounds less disjointed than some of Cages’ pieces.
The harmony at the end was a nice touch after the bombardment of aggressive horn playing.
2. Milton Babbit;
Ensembles for synthesiser:
Serial music. Some interesting melodies and rhythmic patterns turned up here and there but overall it reminded me of my computers inbuilt speaker when it’s connecting to the internet.
The thing that frustrates me the most about serial music (especially integral serialism) is that when you hear a passage that you actually like you know there is little chance of hearing it again.
3. Barry Truax;
Wings of Nike 1 album. 1987.
This I like, it conjures images of cavernous surroundings. Something like the inside of an extinct volcano. I feel this kind of sound design has numerous applications, especially incidentally in film or the video game industry.
References:
¬“Edgard Varese, the Father of Electronic Music”. 1996. Accessed: 06/04/2006
http://personal-pages.lvc.edu/~snyder/em/varese.html
Greg Sandow. “The fine Madness of Milton Babbit”. 2004. Accessed 06/04/2006
http://www.gregsandow.com/babbitt.htm
David Harris. "Music Technology Workshop – Electronic Music." Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, EMU space, University of Adelaide, 06th April 2006.
Part 2. The Squawk Box;
I don’t like to think about the inevitability of University merging with business in the future. I think this will be detrimental to the evolution of an academic society. No longer will avenues of scholarly study be undertaken purely for academic purposes. Indeed if there is no money making vocational outcome at the end of one’s degree displayed in flashing neon lights then it will most likely be considered an impractical course of study and eventually dropped from a Universities list. This is not a good sign for the Arts in my opinion, and is certainly a step away from a creative and free thinking nation.
On another subject covered I think it would serve students and the university in the future to offer a choice of Core subjects related to a degree in Music Technology. There are a considerable number who have no desire for traditional theory knowledge and realistically will probably never use it if their focus is more on sound design and programming software. I have a keen interest in music theory and history myself but I do think a good point has been raised nevertheless.
References:
Stephen Whittington. "Industry Discussion – What is Music Technology." Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, EMU space, University of Adelaide, 30 March 2006.
Creative Computing;
Sound hack:
I remember well the torture of using sound hack in the nineties with slow old Mac’s. As a result I don’t think I’ve actually used the program since. Using the Phase Vocoder function on a G5 however is a whole new ball game. It seems that this program, written some 10 years ago is only realising its potential now. I managed to create an eight minute soundscape from a 10 second sound file using the function window in the phase vocoder. The result was actually quite pleasing. More on this next time………………
Audio Example: (coming soon)
try thisReferences:
Christian Haines. "Creative Computing - Soundhack." Lecture presented at the Audio Lab, 4th floor, Schulz Building, University of Adelaide, 06th April 2006.
Music technology forum 30/03/2006
Part 1: John Cage
Ah, I knew it was only a matter of time. You just can’t leave a class in the hands of David Harris and think for a second that they won’t be subjected to John Cage.
The first piece Music for Carillon was classic Cage (1954) in his strange element.
Step 1: Arrange a collection (a specific collection that is) of church bells in a space for recording.
Step 2: Compose some precise music to be played on the bells by writing a score that can not be read by conventional music training alone, but will actually require a lot of explaining and tuition from the composer before performance results will be satisfactory.
Step 3: Find some performers who are open minded to learn and perform the piece.
Now this sounds like an interesting process initially, but I must say the end result didn’t sound like it justified a lot of careful composing and skilful score reading. In fact I would offer the challenge that if you placed a group of non musicians in front of the bells and asked them to strike at random you would not necessarily achieve a lesser sonic result.
I guess what I’m trying to say here is that the piece sounded very random despite its pedantic organisation.
The second piece I found more aesthetically pleasing. Williams Mix reminded me when I was aged about 9 or 10 I actually composed a tape collage piece of music myself. Now I could try and kid you into believing that as a child I had leanings toward all things avant garde and anarchistic and wore a beret to school and had a little goatee beard and whatever but no one would believe me I’m sure. Actually I did pretend I was an anarchist for a while but that’s just because I wanted people to think I was different and I found them all so mainstream and boring. Anyway I digress. The fact is with no knowledge of people like Cage or that anyone would actually do this kind of thing with any serious intention in mind I just happened to look at the stereo one day in1984 or ’85 and had a new idea that could alleviate my boredom. The end result of my own effort was a disjointed piece of work that equated to nothing more than a linear collage of samples from tapes and LP’s that I figured for whatever reason would sound funny joined together and played back on tape. This took me the better part of an afternoon on school holidays to achieve.
Cages piece on the other hand took a laborious nine months to compose. The fact that a lot of time went into this is immediately evident when you take into account the clarity and the fluid way that he gets the samples to flow into one another. No clicks or pops here, unless they are a part of a sample itself. This might not seem like such a big deal to anyone who works in the field of digital audio, but take into consideration that this had been composed in 1952 when tape recorders had only been on the market for approximately four years. There is no cutting and pasting with digital tools going on here, this is laboriously splicing and joining tape with the most primitive tools created (or improvised) for the job, given that at this stage even tape editing was in its infancy. This being said, the end result is truly remarkable, a warm clear recording that keeps you interested from start to finish. I didn’t find myself covering my ears as I have done while listening to some other Cage pieces. This showcases Cage as a composer who embraced and experimented with technology whenever he felt appropriate, to expand the sonic potential of his compositions.
I couldn’t help feeling that there was some irony in the fact that this beautifully crafted tape collage had found its way onto a vinyl recording which served to smother its clarity with a healthy dose of clicks and pops of its own……….perhaps a transfer of the master tape to CD may be the order of the day if it hasn’t been done already.
The third piece 101 was mostly quiet and creepy sounding except for the short loud horn sections. There seemed to be a lot going on in the string section with a reasonable degree of intensity even though it was a quiet piece. Much of the creepiness comes from the use of micro tonality, something which can be performed on stringed instruments very effectively.
I found it interesting that Cage requested the violin players to use a technique which is detrimental to the longevity of their bow (using the horse hair only on the strings and not the wood). One would think he would have a hard enough time finding the right musicians for this kind of music without telling them they have to damage their instruments as part of their performance.
The time bracket concept seems to work in this set up as it gave the piece a free time feel whilst retaining a certain degree of necessary structure.
I liked the use of the bullroarer toward the end of the piece, and was impressed by the warmth of the bass presence in the recording. This piece was from 1989 so I believe advanced recording techniques have improved the sound quality of Cages’ recorded music significantly.
For more info on John Cage and a reference for this post see:
http://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/cage.html
Part 2: Chris Williams
It’s informative to have a talk from someone who is currently using Pro Tools in the professional world.
Recording in a minimum number of takes as Chris advises is good in theory and generally produces the best results in my experience. However, in practice it doesn’t always work out that way. I have spent many a recording session in front of my computer ripping through take after take (once I counted over a hundred) and still not achieved a satisfactory result. I didn’t think to ask Chris how he may deal with this as an issue when it arises, especially as the producer trying to coax a decent result out of a performer. Has anyone else out there had trouble / success in this area? I’d love to hear some remedies.
His comments on the acoustic ambience of a recording in the context of a piece of written (spoken) work were certainly valid. I would probably never have thought so many issues could arise from recording for radio theatre. I would have liked him to elaborate a little more on how to create an outdoor feel when recording in a closed space.
It also would have been good to have seen more of the specific tools and features of Pro Tools that are suited to this kind of work. He did spend a bit of time talking about the organisation of data (specifically sound files / regions) which was directly relevant to what we have been discussing in Creative Computing the last two weeks but apart from that we didn’t see much more than the edit window containing a large arrangement of regions.
I enjoyed the first musical example he played us.
I was kind of disturbed by the second.
Studio 1:
Had a good play with C24 on Wednesday evening. Some features I found particularly pleasing were the ability to control insert effect information via the hardware control knobs on the desk and automating the volume faders. After speaking to some fellow students I quickly discovered I was not the only one who found substantial enjoyment from drawing ridiculous fading patterns on screen and watching the faders dance (don’t worry Christian it’s out of my system now so I’m not going to burn out all the fader motors for my own pointless entertainment).
Just getting a feel for the desk at this stage and experimenting with its functionality and various time saving devices. Lots of fun, can’t wait to do some serious work in there, especially with 5.1 mixing / recording……………
Creative Computing: 'Spear', spectral audio editor:
Spear (www.klingbeil.com/spear/) is proving to be an interesting tool. Is it supposed to have a looping function? If so I couldn’t find it.
It seems to have a lot of potential for creating new sounds via bizarre equalisation ideas. The power to be able to look at a given set of frequencies and remove them at will is remarkable when I consider my less than satisfactory EQ’ efforts using pro tools in the past.
Another feature that caught my attention was the ‘playback scrub’ tool. Now this may have been a feature of other audio editors in the past but it’s the first time I’ve come across it. I love the way you can treat the audio like an LP on a record player and drag it forwards or backwards at whatever speed you like. It encourages a lot of new ideas that one may not have even considered using a particular sample for. The audio quality stays consistent during time and pitch editing (within reason) which is another plus.
I’ll add more to my blogs on the subject of Spear as my experience increases……...
Refrences:
Chris Williamson. "Artist Talk - Sound Production and Direction for Radio Broadcasting." Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, EMU space, University of Adelaide, 30 March 2006.
Michael Klingbeil. "Spear; Sinusoidal Partial Editing Analysis and Resynthesis." Spear Homepage. 1995.
http://www.klingbeil.com/spear/
David Harris. "Music Technology Workshop - John Cage." Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, EMU space, University of Adelaide, 30 March 2006.
Christian Haines. "Audio Arts - Studio 1." Practical Class presented at Studio 1, EMU space, 5th floor, Schulz Building, University of Adelaide, 28th March 2006.
Christian Haines. "Creative Computing - Spear." Lecture presented at the Audio Lab, 4th floor, Schulz Building, University of Adelaide, 30 March 2006.
