CC2 Week 10

Ive played around with the bpatcher object to create moving user interface. To do this I've created bpatchers within a bpatcher. This is something similar to what i'll be doing for my assignment. The splash screen is something quite simple, but its quite effective. I was reading about using .mov files. I will definitely explore this, video tutorials perhaps? I tried using the graphic object to create some visualizations that work with MIDI data, but i haven't had any luck. I'll have a closer look at this sometime over my holidays, visualizations are something im interested in. Its a great way to experience music.

Unzip the files and run Main Patch.pat to check it out.

References:

Haines, Christian. "Interface Design." Lecture 22/5/08. Adelaide University.

"Chapter 5 - Interface 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,
http://www.cycling74.com/twiki/bin/view/ProductDocumentation

Forum Week 10

I'm a fan of DJ Shadow because of his awesome ability to find rare and timeless beats and fuse them into something that sounds modern and sometimes quite edgy. He has an incredible ear, he know what he's looking for. His earlier work like Preemptive Strike and The Private Press is definitely his best work, "Organ Donor" is absolutely fantastic, the organ riff with that infectious beat just cant be beaten.

His later works, in particular The Outsider, just doesn't have the same appeal as his earlier stuff. In this album hes worked with a number of rappers and it just doesn't fit properly with his work. His style has been born from breaking away from the rappers and there is a reason for this. There is one gem on the album tho "This Time." Is great and it shows his awesome DJ/Mixing skills, u cant tell its been mixed.

AA2 Week 10 Mixing

This time i played around with reverb and delay and I'm fairly happy with the guitar solo sound i ended up with. I used a shortish delay so it wouldn't intrude on the rest of the solo as its quite quick. I've also put some reverb on the supporting guitar part and on the drums as a whole to give it some ambiance. Not too much tho as its a rock song, but it fills it out. It also covers up a bit of the Over Heads sound, there was a bit of room in those, but little in the rest and it sounded a bit odd, so the reverb covers this up a little. The last example is a mix of drums, bass and guitars.

Check out the files in the box widget:

References:

Grice, David. "Mixing." Lecture 20/5/08. Adelaide University.

White, Paul. "Advanced Reverberation." Sound on Sound Magazine. October 2001.

White, Paul. "3D Mixing." Sound on Sound Magazine. November 1994.

Forum Week 9

Sebs work is pretty kewl. Playing around with retro technology to bring back the old sounds in a new way. People love those sounds, they have a sort of nostalgia about them, so using them in new ways deffinatly draws attention.

I really like this Milk Crate idea, its a great way to from quick collaborations, i can see this becoming like a modern studio jam session, but in the form a game. The rules are simple yet very effective

The rules...
The objective of milkcrate is to write, record and produce as much music as possible, creating a completely finished product within twenty- four hours of beginning the session
No member of the group is to leave the environment, within reason
All materials and raw sources used to create music must be explicitly non- musical
All the materials must fit inside or on a milkcrate
There is a limit of one milkcrate per person
At least one member of the group must be productive at all times
These rules are modular in nature; milkcrate sessions may have additional constraints, so long as they do not break the existing ones.

(http://milkcrate.com.au/iswhat.html)

I can imagine people doing this a sort of musical sport. As in every friday night, so changing the rules from 24 hours to something around 3 or 4 hours and perhaps allowing a set of samples for each week, and the best team or individual able to create the best judged result wins for the night. Im not sure if this happens already, if so then im not surprised. If not then there is definately oportunity for something here.

CC2 Week 9

I can defiantly see myself using coll in my CC project and the preset object is just too easy to use. Ive used the delta time (timer object) to define the duration and the trigger times (metro) which, in a sense, keeps some some of interesting rhythm and performance. The logic components help with the very long delta times, the other logic only lets notes pass to the harmony accompaniment if over a certain pitch value, so not to create horrible low note interval beating. Ive included 2 presets with 2 different melodies and a 3rd customizable preset. Enjoy

Check out the Video and the patch in the box widget.

References:

Haines, Christan. "CC Week 9." Lecture 15/5/08. Adelaide University.

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

AA2 Week 9 Mixing

I played around with the compressor and plugins again on that song. I added heaps of compression to the drum kit and it gave me a very controlled sound. Best for Rock. I played around with the EQs on a a few of the Drum Mics aswell, the examples ive given show the difference with the plugins. I also added a lead guitar track, the sound ive got there is pretty close what i want in the end. Notice the change from double Tracking to single channel in the solo.

Check out the sounds and photos in the Box widget.

References: Grice, David. "Mixing Week 9." Lecture 13/5/08. Adelaide University.

CC2 Week 8

In this patch i haven't used the midiparse or midiformat objects, i simply used the pitch and velocity values to control the filters in Reason's Analog Synth. One is oscillating and the other just ramping. I played around with adding the probability sequencer to the patch, but i just couldn't get it to work properly. A lot more playing around and many tedious hours may possibly solve this, but this is just something I'm not going to use, i understand the concept of mix matching MIDI input values, i.e substituting pitch for a filter value, and MIDI routing (Max to Reason).

I had a bit of a play with the seq object, lots of potential, but its the mtr object I'm more interested in. In the context of this patch i could record the control performance as well. How awesome is that!! I didn't get around to looking at how u can use this as an accompanist, but very impressed, even the ability to detect mistakes, Max you've outdone yourself.

Heres the video



References:

Haines, Christian. "CC2 Week 8." Lecture. Adelaide University. 8/5/08

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

Forum Week 8

Best Forum Ever!! It was all about the small things that you dont normally think off. How many chairs were available, only somebody who's been in the business for a while would have thought of something so simple yet important. The importance of preparedness, schedules and being prepared for everything was really driven home with the big band example. That many people and that many mics is just to big to not be prepared. I'm learning a lot of these ideas now with AA recording. I can see how small issues with a small band could be very large issues with large ensembles.

The way that the Pepsi ad has been constructed. The over compressed files without crossfading is a real eye opener into the way they now construct advertisements and pop songs. Made for radio and made for short attention spans, with little or no dynamic variation throughout the song. We really are an immediate society.

http://www.auldworks.com/bbrec1.htm

Forum Week 7

i never knew how "close to the action" Adelaide is in Electronic Music. I knew nothing of Tristram before this class and now i can see how much of an integral roll he's played in Electronic Music. Being apart of designing the VCS3 just says it all. What i find particularly amazing is how dedicated he was, nobody (very few and very far) understanding what his work was about, and being criticized from every angle, yet still managed to make amazing discoveries. Not that he was the only case of this, especially in this field, but still something to mention. The fact that we can now tinker and explore the very instruments he was designing is a fantastic way to literally keep in touch of electronic past.

Its very interesting to hear some of his later works, composed for orchestras and acoustic instruments. Although these pieces do draw from his electronic past (lines and themes), it says a lot about his musical mind, education and passion.

References:

"Songs from a Life." Tristrum Cary. 2000

http://www.tristramcary.com/

http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Lib/Cary-Tristram.htm

AA2 Week 8 Mixing

YOU CAN SKIP THE FIRST PARAGRAPH IF YOU WANT, JUST BLABBERING!!

Mixing at first is very tedious, organising your files, setting up buses after buses, blah blah blah. But after all this leg work it becomes quite enjoyable, adding effects and plugins. Hearing the difference between raw and modified. After this is done it again becomes quite tedious, tweaking the plugins, outboard etc. Tweaking is so frustrating, hearing the same bit over and over again, finding the perfect levels only to find out that the volumes and effects you've added don't work with the rest of the song. But ultimately the final product is very rewarding.

The 3 examples are a clear example of why you should use reference songs, and test it on multiple speaker systems. THE BASS IS WAY TOO LOUD!!! But if you look past this you can see that Ive done a few things to the signals. Compression on the bass, EQ on all instruments, used multiple guitar recordings panning left and right and reverb on the snare and guitars. I'm fairly happy with my result, apart from the bass, but this is a simple volume issue. Ive even done some manual compression on a soft note from a guitar riff.

Check it out in the Box widget.

References:

Grice, David. "Mixing (1)." Lecture. Adelaide University. 6/5/08

White, Paul. "Mixing Essentials." Sound on Sound Magazine. October 2006

McKercher, Paul. "Mixing Psychology." ???? Mus Tech Reading IIA 2008

Starvrou, Michael. " More Salvage Mix Techniques." ???? Mus Tech Reading IIA 2008

CC2 Week 7 Probabilty Sequencer

At first I was totally lost and had no idea where to begin, but slowly after closely analysing the Tutorials i began to find my way, the big discovery for me was using the sel object to trigger the notes, i have no idea why it hadn't dawned on my before, just one of those things i guess. The Patch is fairly straight forward and the instructions are simple.

I didn't understand the importance of lists in Max/MSP until i started actually playing with it, address/value lists are going to be very helpful when doing the major CC assignment.

I know this patch is a little inefficient, but this was the best way i could think of doing it.

Check it out in the Box Widget

UPDATE, i just reviewed a problem with the patch, the velocity and duration wasn't set when you first load up, that has now been fixed. Check out the Probability Sequencer2.pat

References:

Haines, Christian. "Probabilty Sequencer." Lecture. 1/5/08. Adelaide University.

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

AA2 Week 7 Piano

I really enjoy recording piano, the instrument (especially the Steinway) is such a fantastic work of craftsmanship and the resonating sound qualities of the strings and the body come together to make a wonderfully dynamic and versatile sound. It fills the room with its full sound. Trying to capture this is what i enjoy about recording piano. I used 6 mics, 3 pairs. 2 NT5s, 2 NT3s and 2 U87s. I put the NT5s in the open piano pointing towards the high and low strings and panned them left and right in the mix down. The NT3s I put in the corners of the room about 5 or 6 meters away from the piano to create a stereo room sound and panned them left and right in the Mix down. The U87s I put in a MS configuration and did the necessary post production (invert, pan) for this configuration. I know that we didn't cover MS in the lesson, but i believe i haven't had enough practice with MS in the past, in fact i have only observed this technique and not actually done it myself. So i saw this as a good opportunity to get some personal experience. I am quite happy with my final product, i think i captured the sound of the piano pretty well. A small amount of EQ i think is required (which i haven't done to preserve the microphone technique) to make it more tonally dynamic, the highs a little higher and the lows a little lower. Overall Enjoyable.

Check out the Files in the Box widget, the photos Ive taken are in there as well.

References:

Grice, David. "Piano Recording." Lecture. Adelaide University. 1/5/08

Robjohns, Hugh. "Recording Real Pianos" Piano Principles. Sound on Sound Magazine. May 1999.

Stavrou, Michael Paul. "PNO Secrets." Mixing With Your Mind.