Forum Week 3

The max patches that were shown looked very complicated and im nervous about how im going to go with this year's work. Although im nervous, im also excited about learning max's potential. I am starting to find that second year really is a big step up from first. There is a huge learning curve, the tasks arnt simply regurgitated, they are discovered.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5beEz1n5A6Y

I thought this was kinda cool.

MIDI interfacing is interesting, and as a method of control, it has opened my eyes up. But i can't wait to get into MSP. Audio processing is more of what im interested in.

Forum Week 2

I don't really have any strong opinions on Blogging. Its a multi-media medium to publicly display whatever you want. They are easy, accessible and open-ended. The fact that people become obsessed with them isn't overly surprising, i can see it becoming very addictive, especially if you were someone who had no other outlet to vent, explain or rejoice something or event. I think that if you want to follow rules, that's great, it makes it much more credible, but if you just want to say whatever and not care about the consequences then go for it. Who cares really, they are just an open, unedited article.

This is really taken quite seriously by many people, and many people make lots of money from it. This website is an example of this.

http://www.problogger.net/

It tells you how to make your blog successful.

It makes an interesting comment about how many people comment on open forum websites like blogs and mentions that 1 in every 100 people will take the time to make a serious comment. This proves that most people are passive and are digitally voyeuristic.

Video logging is becoming quite popular and viral videos are even more popular, people like "nalts" and "charlstrippy" are making viral videos a very profitable endeavour.

http://www.willvideoforfood.com

AA2 Week 4 Percussion

For this task i played around with the room to create an atmosphere, what i found out is that percussion instruments rely heavily on their environment. The best sounds, i.e. the ones with the most depth were the ones using room mics. Getting the balance of the room with a direct sound source is the tricky bit, i found that just the slightest room volume gave it a great sound and good atmosphere, but with too much the sound was weak and uncontrollable. With the room mic levels perfect it was just a matter of playing with the EQ to add more presence. One problem i found was a resonating room sound that became quite annoying and detracted from the recording. To remove this frequency i found it with the eq and dropped just this frequency from the final mix. Here are my efforts playing with the room and percussion.

Check out the files in the Box widget.

References:

Grice, David. "Percussion." Lecture. Adelaide University. 25/3/08

CC2 Week 3 Max "MIDI Keys"

When i first looked at the task in class i was certain i would fail, but after being shown just a few objects it all fell into place. Max isn't as daunting as it sounds. After a bit of playing around, reading the tutes, discovering how objects work and following the criteria, it finally came together. The only problem that still exists is how to choose the input and output devices. I can use the menus, but i cant connect the MIDI info to the notein noteout objects. I cannot figure this out.

Loving max, cant wait to go deeper into this program.

Check out the patch in the BOX widget

References:

Haines, Christian. "MIDI Keys". Lecture. Adelaide University. 20/3/08.

"Chapter 4 - Program Structure and Design". P71-78. Winkler, Todd 2001, Composing
Interactive Music: Techniques and Ideas Using Max, The MIT Press.

Cycling'74 2006, Max Tutorial, 11/1/2007,

Forum Week 1

THE REACTABLE!!! Wow. I remember last year being told about this, but i never really took any notice of it, but after hearing one of the programmers talking about it, it sparked my interest. There are so many unexplored ways of creating music that this instrument allows for. The most exciting of which is playing an instrument communally. More than one person can play this instrument at one time, in fact you could have 10 people playing this. The other revelation is the amount of immediate and creative control that you have, you aren't limited by a mouse or controller wheel of finite accessibility. If you want more simply add it. (the key word being simply)

http://reactable.iua.upf.edu/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h-RhyopUmc

The other presentations didn't really interest me much, but it did give me an insight into collaboration. Scoot wasn't only a collaboration between the programmers, visual artists, project managers and the museums (places of interest) etc. but also the people partaking in the exercise. This fine balance is a hard thing to achieve and i think scoot has successfully done this.

http://scootgame.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVt4MJ1DxOQ

AA2 Week 3 Guitar Recording

For this task I used quite a few mics so i could experiment with ideas. I used an SM58 and 57, the AKG, Sennheiser M421 and a Direct Input. I also played with overdrive and clean and distance from the amp. To accentuate and extend the idea of including room noise i moved all mics about 5 meters away from the amp to absorb the characteristics of the room. I found the best mics for this session to be the 57 and the 58, the 57 offered more definition in the higher end, while the 58 captured the raw grunge and power of the overdrive. Although in the past the 421 has been the guitar mic that Ive sworn by, in this case it didn't show itself to be very useful at all, the sound was far too thin and 'weak.' Thumbs up to the 57 and the 58. When it comes to recording rock these are the two I'll reach for first.

All three of the recordings are a mixture of the SM57, 58 and the AKG. The 57 gave high end definition, the 58 gave the grunge and power of the distortion and the AKG brought out the low end and helped give a 'fuller' sound. I have applied some EQ on 2 mixdowns, the distance recording the one without any production.

All the files and photos are in the Box widget

References:

Grice, David. "Guitar Recording." Lecture. Adelaide University. 11/3/08.

AA 2 Week 2 Vocal Recording

Pop filter!! As i was setting up i went to storage and to my shock there was no pop filter!! I forgive the plosives and other horrible vocal noises that could be avoided by using this. If it weren't for the fact that this task was already way overdue, i would have been much more picky about this. The three recordings i have selected are all using the U87 and were in the dead room. I asked my performer, Amy, to sing two songs in different styles and the third recording an excerpt from my Mus Ed course reader to demonstrate the different techniques used. The first is an Indie style vocal song, I compressed her voice to facilitate a pop band, i.e. fair compression. And i added an EQ, dropping the low end, taking a chunk out of the 1K (this softened many pops and clicks) and boosted the high end to add a certain presence to her voice. I used a very similar EQ setup for the Autumn Leaves sample. The compression on this was considerably different however. I left the compression as natural as possible without taking away from the overall sound. Finally the Vocal Speech was heavily compressed with lots of gain, emphasis on mouth noises and constant volume makes it appear much more urgent and important that what the performance really was.

My sound files and other screen dumps are in the box widget.

References:

Grice, David. Lecture. Adelaide University. 11/3/08.

Anon. 2004, Recording Background Vocals, viewed 05/19/2006
http://www.eqmag.com/story.asp?sectioncode=41&storycode=4716.

White, Paul 1998, 20 TIPS ON.. Recording Vocals, Sound on Sound, viewed 12/1 2007,
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/oct98/articles/20tips.html?print=yes.

White, Paul 1994, WORD UP: Recording the spoken word, Sound on Sound, viewed 12/1 2007,
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1994_articles/jun94/spokenword.html?print=yes

CC2 Week 2 Max/Msp Pythag Scale

Just from these simple beginnings i can see how powerful max is, the customisable interface, and an almost complete control of your outcomes. No more are we limited by what other programmers want us to do, but now we can create our own program. I believe that my patch is very in efficient, however i couldn't think of another way to use less processes. This aside it works. All u need is a simple sequencer, cycle and dac and u can play the scale. I would have liked to have put a delay on each note, but i couldnt figure out how to do this.

UPDATE 15/5/08 : Modified patch "descending scale 2.pat" The patch works by changing the top integer value (i.e starting frequency) and the lower numbers, or the numbers printed, are the following frequencies of the Pythagoras chromatic scale. When you've selected what frequency you want as your starting note. Press the bang, the notes will be printed in the Max window in descending order.

The patch in is the Mybox widget.

References:

"Chapter 3 - Graphic Programming with Max". Winkler, Todd 2001, Composing
Interactive Music: Techniques and Ideas Using Max, The MIT Press.

Cycling'74 2006, Max Tutorial, 11/1/2007,
http://www.cycling74.com/twiki/bin/view/ProductDocumentation.

Haines, Christian. Lecture. Week 2. Adelaide University.

CC2 Week 1 Pseudocode

my pseudocode for the drum kit playing notes from the Dmaj Scale is this.

CASE drum hit of
kick : play D
snare : play E
hi-hat : play F#
crash : play G
ride : play A
high tom : play B
low tom : play C#

END-CASE

I can see how this is the best way to plan for and organise code before you start writing in a particular computer language as it is the bridging language between to the two.

References:

Dalbey, Dr John 2006, Pseudocode Standard, 11/1/2007,
http://www.csc.calpoly.edu/~jdalbey/SWE/pdl_std.html.

Dalbey, Dr John 2006, Vague Pseudocode examples, 11/1/2007,
http://www.csc.calpoly.edu/~jdalbey/SWE/pdl_vague.html.

Edwards, Peter 2000, A Pseudocode "Standard", 11/1/2007,
http://www.csd.abdn.ac.uk/~pedwards/teaching/CS3007/requirements/pseudocode.html.

AA2 Week 1 Session Planning

Ive chosen to make a session plan/track sheet for a standard Red Hot Chilli Peppers line up.

Because this band has grown up with modern recording studios, I'm guessing that they wouldn't have a problem with recording separately, however i would initially do a few recordings with all players in the same room as a reference track, baffling between the players to minimize spill, with the exception of the vocals which would be in the dead room. After a few recordings of this i would then see if any tracks needed improvement and re-record individually accordingly.

I would clearly label each file (eg Guitar SM57 CS*) *"Cant Stop" and record in high quality 96k .wav format.

Folders would be clearly labeled and separated with consolidated audio files with and without effects, all documents (track sheet, lyrics, effect settings etc.) and click track and marker information.

Go to the MyBox widget to look at the Excel file and check out last year's work.

References:

Leadley, Simon 2004, 'Digital Etiquette - Session Documentation', Audio Technology, no.
37.