Creative Computing - Week 4 - Sound Generation - 27th of March 2008
The one true Code of arpeggiation..
Arpeggiating modulating frequency streams is unusually tricky in SC at first. I have currently only discovered one tool up to the task - "round". Round takes two arguments and rounds the first one to the nearest multiple of the second. So, if you feed round a continuous sine wave (SinOsc Ugen in SC land) multiplied by the highest value you want it to reach as its first argument, and give it a realistic number to round to as the second, such as 500 rounding to multiples of 50, you'll receive 10 arpeggiated notes per cycle. Simple? No.
My code for this week creates and sets in motion numerous SinOsc Ugens. It arpeggiates some and continuously modulates the frequency of others to produce an epic and ever changing stereo battle for sine wave supremacy.
Audio Arts – Week 4 – “Outside the Square Pt 2” – 25/03/08
Pretty damn cold at the hotel North Alaska..
Starting sound: Creaking noise created from rubbing paper together (consists of five similar samples of varying length).
In Cubase:
First – Death by Ice:
1. Duplicated all and reversed half. 2. Duplicated all and pitch shifted half down an octave. 3. Duplicated half and pitch shifted half up an octave. 4. Duplicated all, added duplicates to the ends and reversed duplicates. 5. Auto-panned each group of five at varying speeds. 6. Used delay and a step filter on each group of five. 7. Reverberated master out.
Second – Death by Acid:
1. Pulled 1st transient from sample 1. 2. Pulled several transients from last sample 5. 3. Reversed 1st one and added to end. 4. Time stretched this to double its length. 5. Duplicated this and pitch shifted down an octave. 6. Arranged snaps from sample 5 as a rhythmic compliment. 7. Ran all through a “bit crusher” while modulating the sample depth over time.
Third – Death by Ants:
1. Duplicated Sample 2 of the 5 five times. 2. Tuned each sample to make a C7 Chord. 3. Ran result through a fuzz unit. 4. Cranked the mid and high-end gain, dropped the low.
Grice, David. “Audio Arts – Week 4 – “Outside the Square Pt 2”. Lecture presented at EMU Space and Studio 1, Level 5, Schultz Building, University of Adelaide, 25th of March 2008.
Ben Probert’s ‘Granular Genesis’ machine, created in Max MSP, was a clever and concisely programmed piece of software. As with my own creation from last year, I felt the urge to try its operation with many different sound sources and samples. Ben did well with his voice alone and gave us a wide variety of sonic outcomes in a short space of time.
Matt Mazzone’s Fresh FM pitches sound like they should be hitting the mark to my ears. Despite the poor quality of the sound file in the first piece, I felt this was the more interesting of the three. The layering was varied cleverly between sparse and dense, with impressive levels of complexity reached at certain points.
As far as Luke Digance’s ‘improvised’ presentations go, this was one of his better ones. His fringe activities of the past month show Luke to be a dynamic and enthusiastic participant in the Adelaide Arts scene – imagine how great it could be if we all worked that hard for free.. Doug Loudon and Freddie May brought back memories of my 1st year semester 2 project in which I adopted a similar approach – check it out here.
Reference:
Whittington, Stephen. “Forum – Week 4 – Student Presentations Pt 2”. Workshop presented at EMU Space, Level 5, Schultz Building, University of Adelaide, 27th of March 2008.
The intimidation of this week’s apparent complexity was short lived once certain group members stepped up. Jake was a major contributor in solving early issues with conversion of input notes to frequency values. I was programming for computer 2 and found that this station needed 2 sets of code in the form of send and receive functions.
As per previous weeks, the solution to most problems was nesting functions. The main difficulty was determining where a function should exist in an unfamiliar piece of code. I recommend separating code into different files the minute it cannot be viewed in its entirety on screen if possible. Giving files descriptive names reduces confusion when scanning through them in the dock.
We have labelled the .rtf-files according to which machine they were being used on in the exercise.
Forum – Week 3 – “Presentations, Round One” – 20/03/08
Proposed arrangement of next year's forum space..
After a minor scuffle to get the audio-visual set-up online this weeks ‘student controlled’ forum was an entertaining 2 hours. Jake’s piece was punchier, being up close and personal in this setting, and more engaging than its presentation at the noisy venue used for Ear Poke last year.
Sanad’s Middle Eastern flavoured, sample driven piece gave a similar impression. It was pleasing to explore those vocal lines and well-recorded samples in a silent listening forum. Of special interest was the freeware program ‘Reaper’ that all PC users present will no doubt be downloading soon.
John’s ‘Chromos’ and ‘Music Technology Blues’ received appropriately contrasting responses. Once again, it’s nice to have the opportunity to hear these works loud and clean (Mac background noise excluded naturally).
Coming back to the Max/MSP programming language from a four month hiatus was not as difficult as I thought. I hope I gave some insight into its possibilities to the newly initiated.
Peter enthralled us with his unique blend of Bidule music for the infliction of sonic pain. Someone mentioned his Ear Poke performance as being the work of a true ‘Music Tech Rebel’, so he must be aiming for consistency.
Reference:
Whittington, Stephen. “Presentations, Round One”. Forum presented at EMU Space, Level 5, Schultz Building, University of Adelaide, 20th of March 2008.
Audio Arts – Week 3 – “Outside the Square” – 18/03/08
Such resonance..
Step 1: Binaural recording:
I ran a headphone set to EMU space, set mics in place (as close as possible to my ears) making adjustments to my position and to the surrounding mics as I played. The U87’s I used proved uncharacteristically boomy in the low end. This was played facing a corner (identified as corner stacking in the reading), which may have been a contributing factor to the extra low end. In reverse however, when I played facing into the space and split the U87’s with a baffle, similar results followed. A little roll off at the EQ stage fixed things nicely though.
Step 2 Outside the square:
I first miced the electric guitar with a single U87 with the Amp playing through the body of the acoustic guitar. This produced a more ‘wooden boxy’ effect similar to a Les Paul Gibson than would normally be evident in a Strat. The recording features an outtake without the classical guitar to make a comparison.
Finally the piano was ulilised the same way, with two U87s as a spaced pair, and the amp underneath facing up. Holding the sustain pedal and playing a few notes produces a very interesting reverb indeed.
Grice, David. “Audio Arts – Week 3 – “Outside the Square”. Lecture presented at EMU Space and Studio 1, Level 5, Schultz Building, University of Adelaide, 18th of March 2008.
This week’s exercises were solved with relative ease. Something tells me things are going to get hard very soon. The first two questions were sorted with the standard if condition do this scenario, with the second problem requiring a nested if statement to differentiate between the higher or lower values.
Exercise 3 required a single for loop with the second main function argument dictating the number of repeats. The fourth problem was solved with an array being filled with the product of the incrementer and the input frequency. The fifth required a separate variable to ensure odd multiples (this one was handled more cleverly by Jake).
I’m pretty sure I’ve completed 6 and 7 correctly, with the only vagary being in the area of ‘mapping’. I assume we are only expected to create a symbolic representation of the objects involved at this stage. The solution I have found is to create two arrays containing the relevant information, thus giving a sequential numerical tag to each string object.
Haines, Christian. “Creative Computing – Week 2 – “Intro to SuperCollider Pt2.” Lecture presented at Tutorial Room 408, Level 4, Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 13th of March 2008.
A blog on blogging, how very.I believe I’ve done my best to respect the concept of blogging in an academic context throughout my last two years at University.As someone who writes little, it is a valuable motivator that has prepared me well for the impending torture of essay hell that will shortly descend upon us once again .Weekly blogging is not only useful as a practice tool for prose, it has played a big role in keeping my perception of course content in check – especially with regard to computer programming.The need to explain one’s problems and solutions on a regular basis really does test whether the knowledge necessary for an explanation exists.If it does not, then there is obviously an issue that may have gone unchecked had one not been encouraged to write about it.
As for the perceived ‘global centralisation ofknowledge’ I don’t know if blogger is going to play the most significant role there.Sources such as Wikipedia seem to hold more credible cards in that regard from personal experience.I think the coming together of knowledge to be accessible to all is a wonderful thing, but I, like many others, have my reservations about the quality and credibility of data saturating the Web.I have no solution to this issue on offer but I plead with the world to maintain a healthy degree of skepticism at all times…
Reference:
Whittington, Stephen. “Forum – Week 2 – “Blogademia.” Workshop presented at EMU Space, Level 5, SchultzBuilding, University of Adelaide, 13th of March, 2008.
Audio Arts – Week 2 – Multi Micing Pt 2 – 11/03/08
In an ideal world...
I am somewhat undecided on the virtues of the Decca Tree technique.While initial forays into the exercise provoked resistive feelings stemming from a ‘pro-stereo’ mindset, as I listened intently to the product of our efforts I deduced there may be some value to its employ.This potential benefit lies in the areas of time saving and capturing organic spatial realism.Yes, one can just pan individual sources to wherever they like in a 5.1 mix but that leaves the realism inherent in the end product entirely in the hands of the engineer.Further still, my own experience in the area of post production would suggest that any system that reduces the time spent tweaking parameters in the studio is worth considering.
I think detraction from this approach begins with the realisation that 5.1 mixing can only produce pseudo-realism.Listening to the spoken word improvisation that our group recorded while walking clockwise in a circle of slowly reducing diameter as a stereo reduction emphasised this.As the numerous voices panned independently from left to right I deduced that this result, despite its instant complexity, would be perceived as no more realistic as independently recorded individuals panned manually following a screen image.The latter would only suffer from excesses in the area of Hyper-realism at the hands of an immature engineer or producer.
Grice, David. “Audio Arts – Week 2 – Multi Micing Pt 2.” Lecture presented at EMU Space, Level 4, SchultzBuilding, University of Adelaide, 11th of March 2008.
With a focus on collaboration much of the discussion reiterated artist's personal experiences in the area and how it has contributed to the realisation of various projects. Some were more vocal in their general promotion of the act than others, covering the ground in perhaps too much detail, but the point was made clear: “Collaboration enriches artistic outcome”.
For me the standout example of this was Ross Benicia’s Audio Mulch software and the associated community of devoted programmers and artists that has emerged around it. The Melbourne ‘Café’ jam sessions described and displayed on video were an inspirational example of collaboration as a vibrant living entity. Topping this off with the ‘Reactable’ was a teriffic finale to his presentation, and an indication of just how different the situation for Music Technology artists is in Europe as opposed to Australia…
Reference:
Bencina, Ross. "The Synergy Project." Forum presented at University of SA – City West Campus, Sir Hans Heysen Building, Level 3, Lecture Theatre HH308, Friday 7th of March.
Gardiner, Matthew. "The Synergy Project." Forum presented at University of SA – City West Campus, Sir Hans Heysen Building, Level 3, Lecture Theatre HH308, Friday 7th of March.
Polson, Deb. "The Synergy Project." Forum presented at University of SA – City West Campus, Sir Hans Heysen Building, Level 3, Lecture Theatre HH308, Friday 7th of March.
Plumley, Fee. "The Synergy Project." Forum presented at University of SA – City West Campus, Sir Hans Heysen Building, Level 3, Lecture Theatre HH308, Friday 7th of March.
Rackham, Melinda. "The Synergy Project." Forum presented at University of SA – City West Campus, Sir Hans Heysen Building, Level 3, Lecture Theatre HH308, Friday 7th of March.
Wilde, Danielle. "The Synergy Project." Forum presented at University of SA – City West Campus, Sir Hans Heysen Building, Level 3, Lecture Theatre HH308, Friday 7th of March.
Creative Computing - Week 1 - introduction to SuperCollider: 06/03/08
I have gone with the approach of applying a little 'nested functionality' in my programming efforts for this week. For the exercise requesting text sentences to be formed via concatenation I have written a small 'nonsense English' program similar to a Computer Science exercise undertaken last year.
Issues encountered this week for the most part involved coming to terms with SC's C-like brevity and multiple options in the application of its syntax. With only the syntactically rigid 'Java Language' to compare the experience to it seems an unclear and mysterious language from time to time.
My major victory for the week was a revelation regarding the use of functions within functions, namely the functions passed to conditional statement operators and loops. The revelation was this: If you need the action taken based on a condition to be a function itself, make sure that function is inside its own {} inside the statement position {}.
Audio Arts Week 1 - Multi Micing Techniques - 04/03/08
This is the spaced pair that produced the worst results.
Below are the results of five variations on stereo micing of the EMU Steinway. Piano player: Jake Morris.
XY-NT4 Stereo Mic:
This example benefited from hard panning due to the close proximity of the mics involved. As they are inbuilt as a close stereo pair, a fair degree of separation seems necessary to imply a true stereo image.
U87's front and back - Set to Cardiod:
This method unsurprisingly returned a considerable more vague stereo image as a result of the mics vastly different positioning on the piano.
Close Stereo Pair - U87's - Set to Cardiod:
Two U87's were placed on a purpose built dual stand and faced diagonally into the piano. The result seems to have produced a stereo blend of sonic characteristics of the sound board rather than string frequency positions.
XY Configuration - U87's - Set to Cardiod:
While this was an unorthodox looking XY set up, mainly due to the awkward size of the U-87's, it has produced a rich and full sound across the piano's spectrum. Panning is hard left and right.
Mid Side Technique - U87s one set to Omni, the other set to Figure 8:
Due to imbalance in the stereo field, the duplicated and inverted Figure 8 channel has been kept at pan position centre to alleviate the 'right side heavy' effect that was initially present. The capture is very full and 'stereo' sounding nevertheless.
