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.

AA Week 12

Hey sorry about the late Submission of Week 12 AA. I was double checking my Blogs and i realized that i hadnt blog my results for this weeks task. So here it is in video format.

AA Week 12

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I simply set up 2 delay lines for each panned channel and played with them creating false stereo spacialisation. What i did like about the end result was the wide sound produced. Especially with reverb, it really does sound like you are playing the sound in a room, even with headphones on.

Then i changed the volume of panned channel so skew the perception of sound. I did this with both channels.

There is another Mp3 file of the second task i undertook in the Box widget.

References:

Haines, Christian. Lecture "Spacialisation." 23/10/07. Adelaide University.


pp 159 - 164. Sonnenschein, David. 2001, Sound design : the expressive power of
music, voice, and sound effects in cinema, Michael Wiese Productions, Seattle, Wash.

White, Paul. 1994, 3D Mixing: Giving your mixes more space, SOS Publishing, 2004,
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1994_articles/nov94/3dmixing.html?print=yes.

White, Paul . Robjohns, Hugh. Bell , Matt. 2002, You are Surrounded: Surround Sound
Explained - Part 7, SOS Publishing, 2006,
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Feb02/articles/surround7.asp?print=yes.

AA1 Major Assignment

Mixing in 5.1 is great. it opens up the world of 3D positioning and this further enhances creative possibility. It is a look into the world of film and game sound design and this i find very interesting.

It was my objective to create a sound scape that would put u into where I was sitting when I recorded the original ‘real’ sound scape and I believe I’ve done that quite successfully. With the exception of one sound, this being the creaking fence, they all quite closely resemble the sound of the original source, be they hyper real or not. I approached this from a highly atmospheric point of view. My sound scape choice is not very busy and doesn’t contain many sounds. So each sound had to be significantly different and most importantly individual.

The first step was analysing the sounds and breaking them down into simple elements that are easy to synthesise, then tweak from there. Wind sounds like a slow AM noise generator. Birds sound like random high frequencies played in short bursts. A door creak and metal creak sound like a high frequency quickly turning on and off. A car sounds like a low hum gradually increasing frequency over time. And finally a plane sounds very similar. The only two sounds I left out from my original analysis were people talking and the music I heard. I left the talking out because the human voice is almost impossible to synthesise and the music because any synthesis I created would actually be music and this wasn’t the objective of the assignment.

In the original recording you heard microphone rumble of the wind and also the recorder running. These sounds I left out because they were sounds created by the limitations of the recording equipment and do not represent any sounds of the environment that I was trying to recreate.

After finally figuring out the temperamental 5.1 system and got it working relatively consistently I set to work with my sounds. With the sound list in one hand and the panner in the other I placed all the sounds in their positions and began tweaking the sounds. For example, using different and sometimes multiple bird call samples, creating an individual sound for each car driving past, volume and distance control, moving automation for the aeroplane and finally adding EQ and effects such as reverb to a few tracks that needed more atmosphere and reality.

Overall I am totally happy with my final result. It fits the criteria and ultimately puts you in the landscape. I am also proud of the fact that I created the majority of these sounds using Plogue synthesis, very little sampling was done to achieve my sound scape.

Listen to my soundscape by navigating the BOX widget.

CC1 Major Assignment

CC performance

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This assignment has opened my eyes to the world of electronic performance. Seeing and listening to people perform electronic pieces in one thing, but actually doing it yourself is another. There are things that are easier than you thought and others that are much harder and even more that you didnt even know existed.

Programs Used: Recorder - Adobe Audition, Sampler - VST VELOCITY through Cakewalk Project 5, Routing/Mixing/ReWire Master – Plogue Bidule, Looper/Sound Modification – Live 6.0.10

My project is an electronic exploration of the sound of an electric guitar. It was my aim, and I believe that I have done this quite successfully, to create a groove from only the sounds of a guitar. This includes drums, bass/riff and chords. This I have done. I created my work by first exploring the sounds of an electric guitar. The initial sound, the kick drum, I sampled from heavily palm muted low tones, and I wanted to try to get the performer to create a timbre that would produce little or no audible frequency, this is very difficult to do, however my final performance produced a result suitable for the task.

I would like to mention at this point that the idea behind my project is that my handed up result will be almost identical to the real time performance, little post production has been done on my final work. And any post production can be reproduced in the performance. In the case of this assignment the only post production I undertook was putting an EQ on the sampled chords and a little gain reduction to reduce some clipping. Nothing apart from this was done as to accurately represent a performance of the piece. The Video that I’ve included in the package is an accurate representation of the true performance. The high quality sample is there to present these results in a higher quality and hence is much shorter than the video.

This kick drum I then transposed down to make the tone even bassier. I originally added a reverb to widen this sound, however, I found that this only made it muddier and would only work on rare occasions due to lucky recordings.

The next step in the performance was to create the snare sound. Once again heavily palm muted strings, this time, however, on the high strings. I then transposed this sound up and added a very wide and open reverb to give it that snare snapping sound and make it more realistic.

The final step in creating a drum groove was the Hi Hat. This took a bit of time to figure out. Eventually I settled on using the scratching of the pick against the woven strings. This I then transposed up an extreme amount, added a slight EQ to make it sound more natural and give it a bit of ‘snap.’

The last easy step was simple adding the riff recorded earlier. Now the groove is complete.

To add my own flavour I put the 4 chords recorded earlier into a sampler and played them on my keyboard. In addition to this I asked the performer to improvise over this.

Both Project 5 and Live’s main outputs have been routed to the rear left and right of my PC. This is where my headphones will be plugged in. The aux busses of these programs have been routed to the front left and right. This is where the house speakers will be plugged in.
My project sets up a ground work to begin with then opens up the piece up to improvisation.

Watch the performance at the top of the page, or listen to it with the BOX widget.