notesdontmatter

04/05/2006 Music Tech Weekly

Led Zep @ the Music Tech Forum:


Led Zeppelin, Whole Lotta Love (1970):

Let Jimmy take over....

A brilliant old school hard rock track, it opens with a token ‘ballsy’ guitar riff composed to exploit the desirable dirtiness of tube amp distortion. Robert Plants’ distinctive vocals colour the verses and chorus with seductively (or at least tight pants) driven lyrics as the title suggests.
The interlude of this song is a rhythmic but atonal journey via use of a Theremin, various studio effects (especially delay) on the freakish guitar and vocal parts and percussion to somewhat simulate the act of coupling. Whether or not you find the result an accurate representation could perhaps be indicative of your own sex life.
It recapitulates with a simple but ingeniously effective pentatonic blues slap in the face care of the incredibly talented Jimmy Page on guitar to take it back to the verse chorus outro.

Audio Example:
Whole lotta



Pink Floyd, Bike:

A pop song reminiscent of the Beatles. The lyrics are humorous and rhyme well. The use of the Theremin in the chorus adds an exotic touch.
Listening to this straight after ‘Zeppelin forces some comparison as the interlude/outro of this track kicks in with very similar fashion to Whole Lotta Love even if the subject matter is different. The evil laugh at the ending is notably sinister.



Pink Floyd, Breathe:

Composed largely with the VCS3 (the most used synthesiser of the 70’s) this contains lots of long arpeggiated phrases and Wah like frequency modulation effects. Stabbing volume fading or ‘tremolo’ type effects are also evident and of course ‘breathing samples’. This track, along with Whole Lotta Love were probably my first notable exposures to modern art music at age 14 which for some reason which escapes me, coincided with my first notable exposure to mind altering drugs………………….




















Frank Zappa, Mr green genes from uncle meat:

Zappa in one of his silly moods. Nicely harmonised vocals though. Check out these lyrics and you’ll see what I mean.

Pierre Henry, The Vale of Orpheous:

As I have felt about most of the music concrete works I have heard so far, there were elements of this piece that I appreciated more so than others. Seductive whispering by women in French is never a bad idea for instance. The use of the harpsichord however, (if that’s what it actually was) was disjointed and atonal in expression. I found the ‘Vale’ did seem to maintain a consistent feeling throughout despite cycling through many different sound sources ie; voice, bells, electronic sounds etc.

Audio Example



Artist Talk, Tim Swalling and Jasmine Ward:

Mimicking a process unrelated to sound and converting the found information into sound data was the order of the day here.
‘Artificial Life in the creation of music’ was an interesting concept presented by Tim and Jasmine’s process to be imitated was ‘natural waste reduction or breakdown’.
The idea of mimicking the way biological process discards redundant or weak items in favour of the strong could have desirable results in sound or music composition. After all, one of the hardest things about composing is cutting through the redundancies of an idea to expose its true strength……


Audio Arts:

Acoustic Miking techniques. Long have I desired the ability to correctly mike up my acoustic guitar. It usually records like a plywood cigar box wrapped in fishing wire.
On Tuesday I believe I came a baby step closer to my goal. I previously had no idea how a simple thing like mike placement can make all the difference.

close mic example:


mic @ 2 feet example:



Creative Computing:

More on Pro Tools this week. A few things I didn’t know I’m sure will become useful:

- Track duplicate
- Option Click function for “do to all purposes”, resetting faders and staggering channel inputs, and drag/duplication regions
- Difference between Hard and Dynamic assignment
- Plug in automation
- Auto Write, touch and Latch (Beware of auto Write!)

Check my remix of NIN for a demo of my newfound technical prowess………

Audio Example


Refferences:

Christian Haines. "Creative Computing – Pro-Tools." Lecture presented at the Audio Lab, 4th floor, Schulz Building, University of Adelaide, 04th May 2006.

Jasmine Ward. "Honors Student Presentation." Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, EMU space, University of Adelaide, 04th May 2006.

Tim Swalling. "Honors Student Presentation." Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, EMU space, University of Adelaide, 04th May 2006.

David Harris. "Music Technology Workshop – Electronic Instruments in Music." Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, EMU space, University of Adelaide, 04th May 2006.

Christian Haines. "Audio Arts – Acoustic Miking Techniques." Practical Class presented at Studio 2, EMU space, 5th floor, Schulz Building, University of Adelaide, 2nd May 2006.

posted by David J Dowling @ 9:13 AM