notesdontmatter

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.

posted by David J Dowling @ 4:04 PM