notesdontmatter

Elder Conservatorium Music Tech Weekly 25/05/06

Audio Arts:

Vocal Micing was the order of the day again this week. Jodie Mills kindly offered her services so we could test our meagre studio skills. Using the Neumann condensor microphone we started with a test take to set audio levels. Jodie is a trained classical singer with an impressive dynamic range so input gain was backed off to about half. Divider boards were used to control the reverb a little but over all it was kept pretty simple. Two recordings were made: one without compression and one with.
Decide for your self which is the better of the two.

Audio without compression

Audio with compression



Creative Computing:

The final instalment of our Pro-Tools tuition focused on some useful tools:

1) Transient select - A function to easily jump to significant transient points.

2) The difference between 'absolute' and 'relative' grids. ('Absolute' snapping to the quantisation value across the session, and 'relative' quantising from the start of the selected region - wherever it happens to be.

3) Save copy in - I'll definitely be using this one, it creates a duplicate folder of your session and all associated files, in case things get too untidy.

We have also been asked to mash the vocal recording from audio arts with NIN.

Here it is:

Jodie vs NIN


Forum:

Stephen Whittington:

Stephen, is an experienced lecturer, composer, pianist and electronic music advocate at Elder Conservatorium. He spoke today of his continuing interest in distributed music performance and the globalisation of consciousness. With a particular interest in vocoding of the human voice, he has been involved in some challenging and diverse compositional projects. The example presented to us was a distributed performance in which the performers were situated in different parts of the world, but all playing at the same time. It featured prepared piano, accordion, and vocoded voice (spoken word) among other things. The performances were all recorded individually before being mixed together. The overall effect sounded like a microphone had been placed in an abstract pianist’s thin walled apartment, situated on a busy pedestrian street. I perceived the accordion player to be a busker playing somewhere nearby, his sound filtering through the walls and window. All the while the pianist created bizarre sounds with his prepared piano, while someone else paced around the room voicing translated i-ching text into some kind of vocoding / modulation device.
An interesting experience to say the least…..

Audio example


Distributed music performance (DMP) is basically any performance in which the performers are not in close proximity to one another. Some links to other people and groups who are developing this concept are below. I came across the idea of DMP a couple of years ago when reading about a new product from guitar and music technology manufacturer Line 6. They now have a product called the ‘Guitar Port’ which allows musicians to jam and compose with each other over a broad band internet connection in real time. Pretty exiting stuff……

IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) Forum

Roger Dannenburg

William Duckworth




















Spaceship earth


















VOIP (Voice over internet protocol)


References:

Stephen Whittington. "Artist Talk – Stephen Whittington - Distributed Music Performance." Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, EMU space, University of Adelaide, 26/05/2006.

Christian Haines. "Audio Arts – Vocal Miking". Practical Class presented at the Electronic Music Unit, EMU space, 5th floor, Schulz Building, University of Adelaide, 26/05/2006.

Christian Haines. "Creative Computing – Pro-Tools". Practical Class presented at the Audio Lab, 4th floor, Schulz Building, University of Adelaide, 26/05/2006.

posted by David J Dowling @ 9:55 AM