Forum Week 4

"Collaborations" from the forum were discussed as successes, none were unsuccessful. Which is interesting because, as stated, more can be learnt from the failures than the successes. The first presentation, Metalica and Michael Karmen, is an example of an interesting and diverse collaboration. This being Metal and Classical. Although this is not something new, Deep Purple and many other rock bands using a symphony to enhance their work, it is still interesting to see an adaptation of metal to classical. Although presented as a success, apart from a few songs, i.e. "nothing else matters," i didn't think that this collaboration really works. It just seems that the symphony is trying to be put with the metal, not joined together. But this is only my opinion, it is up to interpretation and appreciation.

I had never heard of Trilok Gurtu, and now I'm beginning to feel embarrassed that i haven't as i am a John McLaughlin, Larry Carlton, Fernando Saunders, Billy Cobham, Stanley Clarke and to a lesser extent Steely Dan/Donald Fagen listener. I really enjoy this style of music. I would love to borrow some of this music. This presentation showed the cultural collaborations, and that to create diverse music, people of different cultures mustn't only work together, but rather fuse together to create one broad musical goal.

Collaborations between sound and music in games are very important to have working efficiently. Especially now that music plays a more important role in games, more than just a catchy signature tune, music now sets mood. As games become more advanced, the similar they are to movies. Music creates this atmosphere. Music in games is now almost as important as music in movies is. These collaborations must be working well.

Once again with music collaborations between cultures. For this to work there must be a total respect of one another and an understanding and, if required, a compassion for one's history and culture.

Overall, collaborations are something that we are going to deal with on a daily basis, so it is important to be tolerant and open minded for them to be most successful.

CC1 Week 4

The sound scape was the easy part of the assignment. I went on with the idea that i would create an eerie sound. What i was trying to do was create the image that someone is walking on gravel at night very quickly, as if getting way from something they don't know exists, but can feel its presence. They are walking to their house on a horrible, windy, thunderous night. They enter the house and hide away hearing all the noises outside build and become louder. The thunder becomes louder and more prominent. Amongst all these natural sounds are a few unfamiliar sounds their fear stricken mind in imagining these sounds, they start hearing things that are not actually there. Eventually all the sounds fade away and evidently their imagined fear fades away, however these thoughts are still there waiting to come back again and in the fear they created.
View this photo at http://www.mydatabus.com/public/loudman/d/PaperScore1.jpg (I apologise about the resolution of the photo) i will post a higher resolution photo shortly)
The score was the part of this assignment that took the longest to design. In the end I settled on fairly simple ideas, but in no means easy to actually create. I used Photoshop in this assignment not for the effects it offers (which i didn't use), but for the convenience of it. I took four photos which would, through positioning, represent the sounds used in the sound scape.

The scrunching at the beginning is the gravel footsteps, the higher scrunch is the door (the sound was originally a scrunch, but pitch shifted up). The rumbling is twisting the paper slowed down, so I used the photos of a piece of paper twisted one way, then the other. The rest of the sounds are quite obvious what i have done. If there was a loud sound, i duplicated the image. At one point i sped up and slowed down a sound, this i used a picture simply moving up then down.

So my score not only indicates when to play, but also how to do the action itself. The score is descriptive, not prescriptive.

Finally i would like to add that for rubbing the paper i used my hand on the paper. I understand that this is not purely using the paper itself, but the paper is the focal object, not the hand. The hand is merely a tool used with it, so i believe that this does not compromise the assignment. I did think of other ways of representing rubbing (i.e. placing two pieces of paper over each other), but i didn't think that these ways were as descriptive as the hand on paper.

Overall, an interesting assignment. But the score was very frustrating to create.

Check out the Sound scape mp3 athttp://www.mydatabus.com/public/loudman/z/SoundscapePaper.mp3

Check out the ProTools sequence at http://www.mydatabus.com/public/loudman/z/Picture3.png

AA1 Week 4

View this flow chart at http://www.mydatabus.com/public/loudman/d/Flowchart.jpg

This week we had to devise a signal flowchart of the previous week's session plan. I have written two signal flow diagrams. One in a diagrammatic fashion, showing where the players will be situated. And the other a simple written flowchart of signal transmission. Ive changed a few input/output decisions made in the original session plans to suit the specifications of studio 2.

View the signal flowchart document at http://www.mydatabus.com/public/loudman/z/Studioflowchart.doc

CC1 Week 3

The CC class blew me away with what you can do with computers and audio manipulation. We truly are living in a world where anything is possible and, in the context of Music Technology, every sound is possible. But with innovations like pitch shifting programs, does it make music, and music talent, cheap if all sounds can be synthesised. Apart from these issues, the task at hand was quite a bit of fun. Using the original paper sounds recorded for the previous week's task, i created a whole new set of samples that could be used in the years to come.

The first sound I used was a simple crackled twist of the paper. The original image looked like this. After looking at the short duration of the file, i decided it needed stretching.

As you can see, the amount of different frequencies are much more dense at the beginning and thin out over the time span. Towards the end this creates a really digital, synthesised sound. Very similar to a modem logging on to the Internet. (in know use this analogy frequently, but it truly is the best description i can come up with).

The next alteration I made was removing frequencies from parts of the audio wave.
As you will hear in the final audio file, the frequencies shift up and down according to the diagram. In the end most of the most prominent frequencies are present however is a watered down version of the original audio sample. To me it almost sounds like a very digitised chime.

Check it out in the widget section, its called Paper sound 1 FFT.mp3

The second sound I sampled was from scrunching the paper. I immediately after decreased the speed and increased the pitch.

The next alteration was removal of certain frequencies for a short period of time, increasing the removed frequency over time. As seen in the middle section of the audio sample.

The final change I made was to stretch the whole frequency range of the first section into the beginning of the second and extend the frequencies in the 3000 to 4000 Hz a second after the end of the sample.

Have a listen to the sound. Look at the widget called Paper sound 2 FFT

The third sample i created was using a ripping paper sound. This time i analysed the file at 159 Hz instead of 40Hz. This created a much clearer and crisper sound and image. The next thing i did was amplify a selected section between 500Hz and 200Hz by 40dB.

The next thing I did was significantly decrease the speed and extend a frequency line way past the end of the sample. This extended line of slight frequency change sounds something very similar to a Theremin and the slow speed helps create this sound.

Check out the sound in the widget section. Its called Paper sound 3 FFT.

The fourth sample used a fast twisting of the paper, it almost has a rhythm to it.

All I did was stretch the wave and it created a whole range of samples that i could use. The pulsating of the scrunching creates an almost underwater thumping sound.

Check out the widget called Paper sound 5 FFT.

The fifth sample was of rubbing paper. Again a rhythmic sound and has the most frequency amplitude in the higher ranges.

The first alteration was removal of certain frequencies over time, moving down then up the frequency scale. The next thing I altered was the speed, which I only decreased slightly.

The final alteration was to amplify a middle section between the ranges of 3500Hz and 1400Hz.

The combination of the two alterations creates an interesting sweeping sound that I will defiantly be able to use in future compositions.

Check out the widget Paper sound 7

The sixth and final sound was a combination of scrunching and rubbing the paper. This sample offers many interesting dynamics and timbre.

What I did with the file was amplify a sweeping selected section, increase the speed three times and decrease the pitch down 4 semitones.

The sound it created was like a motor speeding up and slowing down at incredible speed. With a small amount of alteration in the future, i could use this sample for something very similar to this.

Check out the widget Paper sound 8

Overall, most of the sounds are similar, but the exercise showed me the unlimited possibilities of audio and how simple sounds such as paper can create such diverse samples. This exercise also showed another aspect of audio, this being frequency.

Forum Week 3

In this forum class we participated in a experimental music exercise. After receiving a speaking part at the beginning of the lesson i was beginning to question what sort of sounds would be made during this lesson. With the involvement of most music technology students playing a variety of percussion, tonal and vocal parts. I was was amazed at how the piece moved through many highs and lows and ups and downs without a musical score, as such, to follow. Although this was interesting at first, i must admit that it became a little tedious after the first fifteen minutes and found that the ideas presented in the first fifteen minutes were found in the last half an hour. The aim of this forum was to expand our understanding of what music is and to question the, and i say this loosely, "definition" and our understanding of what music is.

I was surprised about the amount of concentration required to do the exercise. Thinking about the time, what you were going to do and how u were going to do it was more difficult than originally thought.

"What is noise" and "what is music" is an opinion and a personal choice. It could be argued that life noises follow a similar rhythm that music follows. Music follows a structure of sorts and so does life. Think about a car, you turn the key, u start the motor, the pistons move up and down to drive the wheels etc..... Is this not a structure or a conformity like a music follows.

My opinion of music has changed significantly after beginning uni and i beleive that the more I study music it will continue to change.

AA1 Week 3 (week 2 assignment)

Nathan and i booked the studio for 3 hours in a row so we could do more than simply set up, get a signal and then pack down again. So we decided to play around with a few things. Nathan brought his bass amp and bass guitar, so we decided to mic up the amp in the dead room. Using the Shure 52A, we placed the mic in front of the amp and tested the signal (after the correct procedure of powering up the studio). We got a signal from the microphone in track 2, and tested a recording in Protools, and although there was a very weak signal, it still worked. After playing around with the preamps on the mixer, we found a level where there was max volume and no clipping. And so after all this playing around, we didn't even use the sound from the microphone, we found it too "trebly" for the sound we wanted. We then patched the bass straight into the patch bay alongside the guitar (which had been passed through an effects processor and wah pedal) and again found the optimum level. After finding a funky drum beat on the mac, we recorded a 50 second clip. The main problem that we encountered was using the headphones in the dead room. It took us (i.e. me) a very long time to figure out that the phones level on the mixing desk was different to the control room level. A very obvious thing, but when you don't know what you're looking for, very frustrating.

Overall, a lot of fun and very interesting.
Look at the Studio Quickstart mp3 at the top right of the page.

Forum Week 2

"I want to be original like everybody else," a very ironic, yet important point to make. Originality is a long and circular argument, the answer to which is of personal opinion. It is said that copying from one person is plagiarism, yet copying from many people is original. This brings up the point of true originality. Is anybody truly original? Is it not true that what we create, or our ideas, have been structured by our education and life influences? I take that example of composer Eric Satie. Although a talented pianist, his theoretical knowledge of composition was very basic, but this is what it made him popular and more importantly, original. Because he wasn't influenced by as many other sources, which are what most composers are, his music was mostly based on his ideas, not the ideas of other people. So is it fair to say that originality comes from innocence. Another poignant question posed during the forum was to do with computer music. Is music made by computer parameters original? Most peoples', including my own, first answer to this question would be no. However, although I do believe that the music itself is not original because of the parameters, I do believe that there is an originality to the programmer’s way of analysing the music. The originality is now shifted from the music to the analysis and the subsequent programming. People hear and analyse music in different ways and this difference in analysis is what makes these pieces original.

Is it possible to be completely original? As i stated before, we area all influenced by many outside factors, such as our education and the people that we surround ourselves with. These influences affect the way in which we think, we grab ideas and ideals from all these people to make us what we are in the present moment. Could you go so far to say that we as people are so conditioned and completely influenced by things other than ourselves, that our existence is not original? We are Frankensteins of people. I know that this is extreme, but the principle remains the same. Can we take originality this far?

The main thing that i learnt from this forum is that originality is a matter of opinion and is based upon many things. But what i can say is that the more original of ideas come from purity (lack of influence) of thought and mind.

CC1 Week 2

The first thing I did was record, using creative audio creator, about 1 and a half minutes of paper noises. Flapping, scrunching, un-scruntching, ripping, twisting etc. Then I selected 6 of the best noises I could find and manipulated them as follows.
The first noise was a twisting noise that I found in the first third of the recording. That goes for about 1 second. It is reminiscent of the sound that windows makes when emptying the recycling bin.

The second thing I did was resample it so it was just under twice its original length. I.e. the duration and the pitch were affected. Then I changed the pitch down and up over time using the pitch bender (as seen in the screen shot).

The Final sound created was done by a final consistent pitch shift up, unchanging over time, to a very high pitch. It creates a similar sound to an internet modem logging on to the internet. I found it amazing how many sounds you could create and sample from this, just from simple adjustments to the waveform of something as primitive as paper.

Check out the sound at http://h1.ripway.com/loudman/PaperSound1Final.mp3

The second sound was created from scrunching the paper. Once again this sound goes for about 1 second. I then slowed it down, without changing pitch, by 18%. (See below).




This created a few interesting sounds, but it was the middle portion that I found the most interesting. This sounds like someone chewing on crunchy food or a footstep in gravel. This sound was not as difficult to create as the first, but I believe that no more alteration is required. This sound I could use for other assignments in the years to come.

Check out the sound at http://h1.ripway.com/loudman/PaperSound2Final.mp3

The third sound was a slow ripping of the paper. I then reversed this sample. After this I re-sampled the wave by stretching it which made it longer and slower. This is where the reversed waveforms show themselves more prominently and, because it was re-sampled drastically, it sounds like a moving block. It sounds almost exactly like you're moving a sandstone block in one of the early Tomb Raider games.

Check out the sound at http://h1.ripway.com/loudman/PaperSound3Final.mp3

The fourth sound started off as a flapping sound of the paper. I then reversed this sound to enhance the flapping (trailing wave forms enhance/create flapping sounds). From here, using pitch bending over time, I started at a very low pitch and gradually moved up to a very high pitch. Although this is not the case, it sounds as if the sample is getting quicker. This creates a very eerie, almost horror movie, sound that I describe by an evil wind with a mind of its own. I will definitely be using this sample in the future.

Check out the sound at http://h1.ripway.com/loudman/PaperSound4Final.mp3

The fifth sound I used Peak LE. I used a sample of sound where the paper was being waggled in an almost rhythmic fashion. I then simply added a ridiculous pitch shift and a low rendering quality to create this sound. (See Photo below)

I can’t think of anything that this sounds like, but I think it just sounds cool.

Check out the sound at http://h1.ripway.com/loudman/PaperSound5Final.mp3

The sixth and final sound I used Audacity, which I preferred for this assignment (that is apart from Adobe Audition which I know quite well). I grabbed a long sound of the paper crackling under all the folds that had been made previously. I then changed the re-sampled it to a slower rate, to -66% (from Audacity) (see below).

I then boosted the bass to a maximum. (See below)



And finally I changed the pitch down 33%. This final sound is a very loud, deep windy sound that could be used for thunder, or even the crackling of gunfire in the distance. I.e. from WW2 computer games.





Check out the sound at http://h1.ripway.com/loudman/PaperSound6Final.mp3

What I’ve learnt from and am amazed by this assignment is that simple alteration to sound wave and samples from things as basic as paper can create such interesting and useful sounds.

AA1 Week 2 (week 3 assignment)

The band I have chosen to record is Billy Cobham and his studio band. His music, (a funky soul sound) would need very little post recording touch ups as usually bands of this nature like a natural sound, or as natural as possible. In fact in most songs only the guitar and keyboards are the only instruments with effects.

For the preproduction I will contact Mr Cobham and consult about sound and overall effect of the music. I will also confirm instrumentation and adjust where required. As solos and songs are improvised in this style of music I will be open to indefinite song times, however I will ask for approximate time duration. I.e. 10 to 12 minutes. I will also confirm solo instrumentation and ask for an approximate time frame for these solos.


In addition to this I will ask about which instruments will amplified so no interference will occur when I do my positioning (i.e. vibrations through the drum kit), in my example I have decided to use a guitar amp but no bass amp. In positioning the players I will put the guitarist next to the keyboard player, as these two instruments work well together during improvised sections. However I will keep the bass player and drummer in sight of these players so improvised cues can be seen. The bass and the drums I will keep next to one another because the beat of the drums and the bass player can work together. Finally the trumpet and sax will be placed in front of the band and next to one another. Please forgive the horrible diagram. I was only using it as an aid.

I will record all the instruments at the same time in 3 takes (bands of this nature work much better when done this way). After this the band will assess the performances and select the best take. They may wish to re-record individual tracks where required. I’ve also opened up tracks for the solos to be re-recorded. After another take of the solos have been recorded, I and the band will select the best sections of solos from the takes and mix them together for each instrument (where required). (Bands of this nature usually desire a natural sound may not wish to "create a solo.") As their virtuosity is of a very high standard, it is unlikely that too many mistakes will be made and there will be more time spent on overall sound and post recording procedures rather than the actual performance recording.

After all this is done the band will add effects to the sounds (if required). Although these sounds and ideas have been discussed before recording, I will leave plenty of time for experimentation with these ideas.

Additional explanation of the session plan.

Guitar has an amp mic and direct input to gather as much sound quality/timbre as possible. The amp presents sounds that a DI can’t reproduce. The DI is used to add effects and/or in case the amp sound is unsatisfactory. Perhaps both channels could be mixed together to create a mixture of both sounds.

The bass has a DI because there is little sound difference that an amp would offer. In addition a DI gives a much clearer and deeper sound (i.e. bassier), which is suitable to Billy Cobham's music.

I've set up 3 room mic for good measure, in case these mics pick up sounds that could be used and for performance evaluation.

Additional Information

I will label the files names extensively (i.e. BC "Stratus" Guitar solo take 2) as to remove confusion.

Forum Week 1

In this class we dicussed the outline of the following weeks and years. I quite like the class and i beleive that i will find it interesting and benifitial dicussing music technology with students at my level and levels much higher. It will give me other people's perspectives. I will also enjoy studying about my topic, gender in Music Technology. It is something i know little about and, as a social study, will be quite interesting. From the presentations that will be given by other students, it will be much more benifitial in terms of hearing their study direction. They may even offer facts and perspectives that the lectures may not have thought of themselves, offering us a much more varied understanding of the course and associated topics. And from the interation side of the forum concept, it will offer on the spot feedback, giving us an even broader understanding and in some cases a way of correction of supposed fact. In loose terms, an editing of knowledge (if that makes sense). Overall i am very much looking forward to these classes.

AA1 Week 1

After viewing and discussing the proper disassembely of the mic stands, microphone holsters and leads (rolling them up), i can see how important these proper procedures are in the context of studio use and more important, studio sharing. We discussed possible problems that could occur if these procedures are not followed. i.e. If the mic stands are not folded up correctly before storage they will take up much more room than required. In addition to this, if procedures are followed, it makes for a much more orgainsed and therefore a more efficient studio. This applies to folding/rolling up leads and placing them in an easily accessable yet non obtrusive place. This also lowers chances for possible accidents, such as damaging equipment and personal injury.