AA3 - Week 4 - Production 'Outside The Square'

This week we were to use unorthodox methods of production to create interesting and original sounds. Audacity was my weapon of choice, as most of you would have already guessed. The first sound (1n0te.mp3) I created uses a single pluck from a violin, which I then (in this order):
Compressed,
Amplified,
Slowed down,
Time stretched (a lot),
Duplicated and time-shifted so that the time stretching artifacts are filled in,
Noise removal,
Original pluck added to start.

The second sound (GuitarShimmer.mp3) started as a snippet from a band that I had recorded in first year. First I ran it through numerous reverbs, both normally and in reverse. I then duplicated it and pitch shifted one up an octave, adding a bit more 'meat'.

The final sound (RevMetal.mp3) is something I have been meaning to try for a while but never got around to it - reverse delay metalisation. The idea behind metalisation is that a delay set to a delay time of less than .2 of a second adds its own pitches, so I wanted to try this in reverse, much like reverse reverb. I recorded myself talking, then reversed it and added two lots of delay, then rereversed it. For something so simple it certainly sounds cool. I had to layer the original recording over the top quietly, as the clarity of the words was somewhat lost.

BenAAwk4.ZIP 907kB

David Grice. "Audio Arts: Semester 1, Week 4. Production 'Outside The Square'." Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 25th March 2008.

CC3 - Week 3 - SCOSC

I had originally been a part of the Tuesday night shenanigans for this week's CC, however I was unfortunately too busy becoming an uncle for the first time to my new niece Caitlin.

I still plan to complete the tasks, however not in the graded time frame.

Just give me 0 if you have to, I won't regret it regardless.

Forum - Week 3 - Student Presentations 1

This week we kicked off the student presentations with Sanad, Jake, Peter, Dave and Johnny "Kick A Hole In The Sky" Delany. Sanad presented a fantastic composition that used Iranian singing and found sounds to create a very cool piece. I wouldn't mind a copy of it, as it would certainly become a staple song on my MP3 player.

Jake probably presented something interesting, however Dave took the opportunity of a captive audience to unleash the beast, more commonly known as "aquaDementia" (at least that's what I would have called it). His MaxMSP patch, although complex, showed a promising amount of depth, perhaps even more than the average Reason sampler.


I have always been a fan of John's Perspectives composition from last year, so it was great to hear it again. If there was a subwoofer set up I would like to have heard his other piece "Towards The Centre", however the enforced stereo set up would not have done it justice. Finally, Peter kept us up-to-date with his latest Plogue Bidule experiments. Just the sight of those wavy cables gave me shivers.

AA3 - Week 3 - Recording "Outside The Square"

This week I had originally organised to record some Tibetan bowls, however while setting up for the recording I realised I had forgotten to send a reminder email to the... bowlist. So instead I recorded myself on acoustic guitar, as I wanted to try out the dual figure 8 mic setup in the Michael Stavrou reading.

So obviously my first recording was exactly this. I played a blues scale and sung it (!) at the same time, with two Nuemann U87s placed strategically so that the dead spot was aimed right where the respective unwanted sound source was. For demonstration's sake I have panned each mic hard left and right. I was impressed at the outcome, and I will no doubt use this many times in the future.

(word count!)

Recording 2 : My attempt at finding the 'tip of the flame' with a U87. Somewhat successful. Now realise the mic was still set to Fig8.

Recording 3 : Leaving the 'flame' mic in position, I placed another U87 behind the guitar body, Fig8. Did the Midside trick on this mic (invert etc.). Very nice and warm result. (Now called "Rearside".)

Recording 4 : (Pictured) Placed two Fig8 U87s directly in front of guitar, with dead spots aimed at guitar body on perpendicular angles. Panned left and right respectively, interesting result. Would work well as backing rhythm guitar. Apologies for the excess noise and breath sounds (something to consider in future recordings).

BenAAwk3.ZIP 454kB

1. David Grice. "Audio Arts: Semester 1, Week 3. Recording "Outside The Square"" Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 18/03/2008.

Forum - Week 2 - Blogging

Not the best way to break in the first years, I must say. I recall when I first started my course I seriously doubted the integrity of the Music Technology department, what with all the 'weird' electronic music. I didn't even know what 'avant-guard' was. While knew that Stephen was taking the proverbial piss, I could also see that the first years didn't know whether to laugh at the jokes or cry because of the money they spent on the course. Regardless, once the conversation turned from urbandictionary to the ethics of the weblog, the room once again resembled a typical Tech Forum.

An issue that I would have raised had the conversation not changed direction, was the dilution of the purpose of the weblog. I imagine before teenagers got their grubby little hands on it, a blog would have been quite a respectable place for people to log their adventures in their chosen field so like-minded people could share the experience. I can imagine a scientist researching something, and other scientists in the field keeping up with the progress of the research and offer thoughts and tips. Alas, the ravages of youth have disseminated much of the merit that was once possible, and now a scientist doing any such thing would be devaluing his/her work. IMO (sic).

The world's greatest blog. Press the 'stop' button before it loads all the pictures. But let it load some, otherwise nothing will make sense.

1. Stephen Whittington. "Music Technology Forum - Blogs, Assessment & Student Discussion." Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 13th March, 2008.

CC3 - Week 2 - Introduction to Supercollider (2)

This week was slightly easier than last week. Exercise 1 involved embedding an if function within the 'no' answer of another if function. Exercise 2 meant adding in an additional equation to discern the frequency deviation. Exercise 3 and 4 required copypasting from the class notes. Ex. 5 meant changing the for from 4 to a forBy, allowing customised step size. Ex. 6 used the switch control, and Ex. 7 was just 6 with an added modulo and different names.

As I completed this in PsyCollider, I saved it in .sc format, which I know is recognised by Mac.

BenCCwk2.sc

Haines, Christian. “Creative Computing – Week 2 – “Intro to SuperCollider (2).” Lecture presented at Tutorial Room 408, Level 4, Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 13th of March 2008.

AA3 - Week 2 - Multi Micing (2)

Working with surround sound is something that has interested me for a while, and considering Gricey can only listen to our results in stereo I attempted to mix the recording in 'Virtual Surround'.

I teamed up with Luke this week, first to record in the Space using the infamous Decca Tree setup. For the recording, I entered the room from 'behind the tree', walked past it on the left and sat down at the piano directly in front. After playing a bit, I get up and walk past the tree on the right, and exit the room out the back right. The left, centre and right channels were panned respectively. For the rear left channel, I duplicated the track, inverted one and panned them left and right. The phase effect is somewhat analogous to hearing a sound behind you, so I simply eased off the pan on one of the tracks which moved the sound to the rear left. I then repeated this for the rear right channel.

The second mic setup was a Digance endeavour, in which we placed the microphones evenly around the room facing into the centre. I then proceeded to run in circles around the space, playing Aphex Twin on my mobile phone.

Over all I think the concept of recording in surround is flawed, however my virtual surround experiments seemed to work alright. If the recordings were made normally (close micing) and then mixed in virtual surround I believe the effect would be a lot more... effective.

AA Week 2 .ZIP 1.0MB

[1] David Grice. "Audio Arts: Semester 1, Week 2. Overview of 5.1 microphone configurations." Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 11/03/2008.

Forum - Week 1 - "The Synergy Project"

"Synergy" to me carries the same weight as "Synesthesia" - not much. I have found such blatant word-dropping to be a tactic that the more weird art nuts use to try to establish themselves as pioneers of an emerging industry. I find a striking similarity to this kind of faux self-actualisation within the musical genre of death metal, where bands use track titles like "Lavaging Expectorate of Lysergide Composition" in an attempt to seem educated, whereas the track itself will probably only have two notes in it. I also intentionally avoided spelling it Synaesthesia - ooh, let's add an 'a' so people with think of encyclopaedia!


All in all the theme of collaboration was touched upon several times, mostly when the artists were not self-promoting. Ross Bencina was definitely the most engaging, yet ironically spoke the least about collaboration. While his life story was illuminating, it dimmed in the bright lights emitting from the Reactable videos. Oh, if only we could get access to one. That would be absolutely maaad.

"Her name was Deborah Polson..."



Bencina, Ross. "The Synergy Project." Forum presented at University of SA – City West Campus, Sir Hans Heysen Building, Level 3, Lecture Theatre HH308, Friday 7th of March.

Gardiner, Matthew. "The Synergy Project." Forum presented at University of SA – City West Campus, Sir Hans Heysen Building, Level 3, Lecture Theatre HH308, Friday 7th of March.

Polson, Deb. "The Synergy Project." Forum presented at University of SA – City West Campus, Sir Hans Heysen Building, Level 3, Lecture Theatre HH308, Friday 7th of March.

Plumley, Fee. "The Synergy Project." Forum presented at University of SA – City West Campus, Sir Hans Heysen Building, Level 3, Lecture Theatre HH308, Friday 7th of March.

Rackham, Melinda. "The Synergy Project." Forum presented at University of SA – City West Campus, Sir Hans Heysen Building, Level 3, Lecture Theatre HH308, Friday 7th of March.

Wilde, Danielle. "The Synergy Project." Forum presented at University of SA – City West Campus, Sir Hans Heysen Building, Level 3, Lecture Theatre HH308, Friday 7th of March.

CC3 - Week 1 - Introduction to SuperCollider (1)

An inauspicious start to the year. With such a vast amount of computer language terminology and logic to absorb in one (very busy) week, I'd be lying if I said it was fun. So-called "help" files aside, I have managed to gain enough understanding to somewhat fluently create mathematical equations using SuperC, to the extent that was covered in class. As for the other set tasks, "putting words into sentences" was a little vague so I assumed the sentences could span across lines in the post window, and "printing an input string multiple times" was seemingly out of reach, despite the 45 minutes spent.

My first impression of the actual sound-creating example codes was surprise, as such a small amount of code is required for some very interesting sonic results. Unfortunately, after I tried writing my own 'functions', I can now see that even a small amount of code can take hours, and I assume creating something that is aurally pleasing would add even more hours of trial and error to the mix.

BenWk1.rtf

Haines, Christian. "Creative Computing - Week 1 - Introduction to SuperCollider (1)". Lecture presented at Tutorial room 408, Level 4, Schultz Building, University of Adelaide, 6th March, 2008.

AA - Week 1 - Stereo Micing

This week was stereo micing, and rather than show off what I know I decided to venture into uncharted territory (ie. make it up as I go along). Jake and I recorded piano due to the ease of access of the Steinway Grand. All the results and pictures are in the .zip at the bottom of this entry.

We started with an XY positioning of two Neumann KM84s, the difference being we placed them above the pianist's head. The result was fairly analogous to the sound a pianist would hear, but is pretty boring to listen to. Note: one of the KMs had considerably more noise than the other- I have sent a support form already.

Next was what I considered the complete opposite of the previous recording, a spaced pair of KM84s placed at either front corner of the piano and pointed into the body with the lid closed. The result is much nicer than the last, with a much healthier stereo field represented.

We then moved on to using Neumann U87s. First we simply used a spaced stereo pair as I had never actually tried it before. The outcome ended up a little lacklustre, particularly in comparison to some of...*

Week 1 Audio Arts (.ZIP, 1.35MB)

[1] David Grice. "Audio Arts: Semester 1, Week 1. Overview of stereo recording for live performance." Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 4/03/2008.

______________________________________

*(200 word count reached, feel free to disregard the following)... the more tricky micing techniques possible. I find it does not really capture the sound of the piano accurately, and feels somewhat fake.

We then elaborated on the Midside technique with the aptly-named "Bumside". This involved a U87 placed in the body of the piano, and another underneath the piano. I originally performed the 'duplicate, invert and pan' on the U87 in the piano body, however this made the mic underneath more prominent, meaning a loss of high end. Thus I simply recycled the process for the mic underneath, and the result was quite nice. One complaint I have is that having a mic underneath means the clunk of the pedal is much more prominent, so I probably would not use an omni polar pattern underneath again. (You can also hear my phone get a message right at the end of the recording- whoops!)

Finally we used the Midside technique for a room mic recording. I am surprised at how well this came out, the added ambience of the room really brightens up the sound. I imagine this would work very well when combined with the spaced stereo pair of KM84s, or even on its own in a more acoustically piano-friendly environment.

2008

New year, new blog template. I went with 'Green' apparently. In case anyone cares, the transparencies were done using 24-bit PNG pictures; easily the best thing since the automatic bread slicer.In a similar vein to Weimer, I have tried to keep clutter to an absolute minimum, and thus done away with the profile crap. Previous blog entries can be accessed at the bottom of the page- I might move this to the top at Christian's request.

I don't know about y'all, but I had totally radical holidays. That's right, radical.