Forum Week 12

In response to Dave's question of relevance in tech subjects, i have to disagree with him. Although i don't have much interest in many of the forms of electronic music that i have been exposed to in the course, it is my ability to say that i understand, at least fundamentally, the particular style(s) of music/sound art and have decided that it's not for me. But their place in history and the influence they have on today's electronic art world is undeniable and to not be at least made aware of it would be an incomplete education of the subject. But more specifically the question of composing these styles of music. For me i didn't really find the tasks very engaging, however, as Stephen said, it is in doing that you learn the most, and i certainly did. I totally agree that without doing your education is incomplete. And although integrating these techniques into something that you would enjoy and more likely do in the future of your music career is a good idea. It doesn't give you the pure fundamentals of the art. To compose a late romantic piano concerto, you need to know how to write a classical piano sonata.

It may seem that I'm brown nosing, as Sanad has mentioned to me many a time, I truly do believe this. And although a lot of this avant-garde art is too incomprehensible for my closed mind, the fact that I've been exposed to and had it explained and still walked out less than inspired by it. I can at least not make ignorant, at least i like to think so, judgement of it.

CC2 Week 10 (11)

Delay is great. This is certainly something I'm going to use in my patch. Delay effects are the ones that i use most of the time in my own compositions. Now i have complete control over this.

Ive decided to create my favourite delay effect, ping pong delay. Its loosely based on the idea presented in the tutorial, however Ive added a few controls that i would use, i.e BPM controller and i limited the feedback and delay time controllers from one for each channel to just the same for each, i simply don't need this much control and it makes things too confusing and difficult for future use.

Check it Out in the box widget

References:

Haines, Christian. Lecture. "Delay Lines." Adelaide University.

Cycling'74 2006, MSP Tutorials and Topics,
http://www.cycling74.com/twiki/bin/view/ProductDocumentation.

Forum Week 11

The idea of technology taking over the world has been a great influence for many artists. The film industry has offered a great deal of material on the subject, films like the Terminator series, I Robot, The Matrix and has been a very popular topic in the anime field with films like Vexille and Ghost in the Shell. As technology is taking over more and more aspects of our lives and that these technologies are becoming more intuitive it make you wonder if they're intuitiveness becomes an Artificial Intelligence and they start ignoring our requests. When a machine can build a better version of itself is that too far? Do we need to keep them out of the loop? In all these films mentioned above it seems to be that when a machine can do this it ends or enslaves the human race, is there some truth behind this? Would a machine realise that we humans are the creator of our problems and try to fix us? I'm still very unsure, humans need to be kept in the loop, i don't know the power of AI and if it was close to simulating human consciousness it would be slightly worrying.

AA2 Sem 2 Week 11

Game Music is something that really interests me. It's such a new way of thinking about composition and good game music and engines make good games great. As an example Harry-Gregson Williams and his work on the Metal Gear series.

Because the game is a fast paced FPS i made a Drum and Bass style piece with a few sort of psy elements to it (using phasers and ping pong delays). I did this because of my own personal aesthetic. I used Reason to create this song.

Check it out in the Box widget.

References:

Haines, Christian. Lecture. "Game Music." Adelaide University.

Hannigan, James 2004, "Changing Our Tune", 2007,
http://www.jameshannigan.co.uk/changing.htm.

"Chapter 7 - Ideal Production". Brandon, Alexander. 2005, Audio for games: planning,
process, and production, New Riders Games, Berkeley, Calif.

Pp149 - 152. Childs, G. W. 2006, Creating Music and Sound for Games, Thomson
Course Technology.

pp246 - 252. Irish, Dan. 2005, The Game Producer's Handbook, Course Technology
PTR.

CC2 Sem 2 Week 9 (10)

I have to admit, I'm quite lost with this whole FFT thing, i think i really need to go over some of my old lecture notes. I understood it in Bidule, but MSP is a whole other level, i understand that it translates the samples over a list like output, but manipulating that is very difficult. Anyway, here's my patch. I simply multiplied two signals together using coltopol and poltocol, attenuating uncommon amplitudes and accenting common ones. Ive also included individual playback volumes to change the timbre and avoid clipping. Enjoy!

Check it out in the box widget

References:

Haines, Christian. Lecture. "MSP FFT." Adelaide University.

Cycling'74 2006, MSP Tutorials and Topics,<http://www.cycling74.com/twiki/bin/view/ProductDocumentation>.

AA2 Sem 2 Week 10

Open Arena doesn't offer the best ambient sounds, so i picked one of the most interesting ones to recreate, the second sound however isn't in the game, i made it because i believe it would suit what I'm doing or something that i could use in future, a night street ambient sound.

For the first sound i took a sample of a jet plane cabin noise, reduced the bit rate, slowed it down and put it through a dynamic shifting eq to create that creepy slightly changing ambient drone.

The second sound was created from a field recordings of a night scene with crickets and general night ambiance, like from a pond. And mixing this with a background street sound. I found for this i needed the most ambient of noises, anything too close to the mic, or individual wouldn't work for the outcome.

References:

Haines, Christian. Lecture. "Ambience." Adelaide University. 14/10/08

Bernstein, Daniel. 1997, Creating an Interactive Audio Environment, Gamasutra, 2006,
. (Available Online)


pp173-174, 182-189. Sonnenschein, David. 2001, Sound design: the expressive power
of music, voice, and sound effects in cinema, Michael Wiese Productions, Seattle, Wash.

Forum Week 9

Well im blown away by ben's patch. That rhythm operator is fantastic, i wanted to do something like that in my patch, but i didnt have the time to take it on. The interface is amazing and all the bug fixes were great. Great work.

Looking at all the supercollider patches dont interest me very much, everything that im seeing is something that could be done in max, im sure the precision and quality wouldn't be the same, but the result would be something simmilar. Jake's 5.1 surround patch had an interesting sound, but again something that could be done in max and im glad im not doing this next year.

Jakes advertisement was pretty average, but the sound was done well and the rock riff at the end sounded pretty sweet.

It was a shame that Will's game was never finished, but i always like to see people working on films and games and general sound audio work in SA.

AA2 Sem 2 Week 9

Recreating these game assets was fun and it got me thinking about the sounds i need to create for the final project. Its already given me some ideas.

The rocket fly sound was created using a noise generator in Bidule and the sound of a Harley Davidson through a low pass filter.

The no ammo sound was created from me tapping on the table, clicking, rustling paper and a toy gun.

The Regeneration sound was created using the subtractor synth in Reason.

And the Reload/weapon pickup sound was created using a toy gun.

References:

Haines, Christian. Lecture. 'Assets'. Adelaide University. 7/10/08.


"Chapter 5 - Sound Design: Basic Tools and Techniques" and "Chapter 6 - Advanced
Tools and Techniques". Childs, G. W. 2006, Creating Music and Sound for Games,
Thomson Course Technology.

Kelleghan, Fiona. 1996, Sound Effects in SF and Horror Films, 2006,
.