Forum | Week 5 | My Favourite Things II

This week Stephen Whittington (1) played us a selection of works from Negative Land. Since 1980, Negativland have been creating records, CDs, video, books, radio and live performance using 'appropriated' sound, image and text. Mixing original materials and original music with things taken from corporately owned mass culture and the world around them, Negativland re-arranges these found bits and pieces to make them say and suggest things that they never intended to.(2) The outcome of this seems far too 80s for my liking, and also has a little too much of a 'cool to hate' vibe. While I can tell a lot of effort went into the creation of their new DVD Our Favourite Things, ultimately I did not enjoy it. Perhaps this is due to my inability to accept pop art as a respectable creative field, but in the end I just did not enjoy the sound or the visuals or the combination of the two.

1. Stephen Whittington. "Music Technology Forum - Week 5 - My Favourite Things II." Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 28/08/2008.

2. Negativland biography, http://www.negativland.com/index.php?opt=bio&subopt=neglandbio

Forum | Week 4 | Classical Indian Aesthetics

Here are some of my interpretations of Indian Emotions in a musical/auditory context.
HASYA (HAPPINESS/JOY/COMIC)
Major tonality
Consonance
Bouncy rhythm
Laughter

ADBHUTA (WONDER/REVERENCE)
Augmented chords
Elongated notes
High pitched notes

VEERA (COURAGE/HEROIC)
Resolution
Major tonality
Loud
Trumpets/horns

KARUNA (COMPASSION/LOVE/EROTIC)
Slow tempo
Saxophone
Sparse instrumentation
Kiss sound (etc.)
 
KRODHA (ANGER/FURIOUS)
Loud volume
Clustered pitches
Dissonance
Short note length
Yelling/shouting

BHIBASTA (DISGUST/LOATHING)
Uneven rhythmic patterns
Minor tonality

BHAYANAKA (FEAR/TERROR)
Fast/accelerating tempo
Quick succession of notes
Dissonance
Screaming

SHOKA (SORROW)
Minor tonality
Slow tempo
Melodic
Elongated notes
Crying

SHANTA (SERENITY/TRANQUILITY)
Erhu
Sparse notation
Minimal rhythm

Forum | Week 3 | Student Presentations 1

This week some of the 1st Year students presented whatever they wanted.

The first couple students played their Musique Concrete piece from last semester, which was all kind of the same.

Another guy presented the music he created for a video game. It was a little clichéd, but there was good use of Taiko-style drumming. It would have greatly benefited from a better sound bank, as it was a little General MIDI sounding.

Another one played a recording he mixed and mastered. This was quite impressive, particularly with the recording of violin and sax, which I know from experience are difficult to get sounding good.

The following guy presented his Musique Concrete, which used found sounds from his house. The result was quite good, particularly the 'thunder' from the shed door.

Forum | Week 2 | David Harris and His Contrabulous Fabtraption

David Harris presented all the things that make him warm inside- Terra Rapture (his own composition) and a Schubert work for strings. His own piece made great use of sul ponticello, which requires the player to bow the string very close to the bridge. The sound is scratchy and airy, and is very effective when done by a quartet. I enjoyed Terra Rapture more then the Schubert, as is was more unpredictable and less contrived. This class made me pine for the Forums of old, where DH would play us music from his eclectic collection of LPs.

Stay tuned for a real Photoshoppery.

CC | Week 2 | GUI (2)

All I wanted is to get some array-built SCSliders to control some things in a Pbind. Sounds easy enough, but none of the examples used SCsliders. It was either EZSlider or SCRangeSlider. Considering how whole-heartedly the EZSlider was disapproved of, I found it irritating that there was no explanation of how to implement the SCSlider into an array-built interface. I tried for ages just to get the example patches to work with SCsliders, but it wouldn't work. The SCSlider Help just uses the copypaste method. I'm sure there is some tiny syntax thing I have to do to make it work, but if I haven't been shown it and it isn't in the Help file then I can't know what it is.

I ended up having to use the EZSlider, which I (eventually) got working for controlling the speed of the Pbind. Then when I tried to control another part of the Pbind (\octave), the speed was reset to a value not even in my code. And now when I change the speed, the octave gets reset. And none of this actually appears on the interface, you can only hear it.

I have to say that MaxMSP sh!ts on SuperCollider for GUI. If making a crap-looking interface takes this long, I don't even want to think about making a good-looking one. Needless to say, I spent no time at all on the prettiness.

80sBass.RTF

80sBass.MP3 1.7MB

Only took a couple minutes...

Audio Arts | Week 2 | Matrix Lobby Scene

The Matrix has been one of the most influential action movies ever made, most notably with its pioneering use of 'bullet-time'. I have probably watched it over 50 times in my life, and the famed lobby scene will always be one of my favourite moments in any film.

The lobby scene begins with the pile driver sound that started in the previous scene with Agent Smith and Morpheus. The presence of this sound in the previous scene seems to pre-empt the impending character Neo entering the building. The sound is linked to Neo's feet, giving a great weight to his footsteps. This is then joined by a fast hihat rhythm, increasing the tension of the scene as soon as you see the high-level security. There is a strange 'zip' sound as Neo puts his bag on the x-ray conveyor belt, which does not seem to fit the on-screen action.

When Neo opens his coat to expose his personal artillery to a security guard, a large whooshing sound enhances the significance of such a simple action. At this moment a pile driver hit echoes and the hihat stops, mimicking the shock of the security guard. Word count reached. Holy shit!

Creative Computing | Week 1 | Graphical User Interface (1)

Oh how I miss MaxMSP. I just want to add a picture for the background! Whatever. This week I attempted to create a GUI that could be used for sound file playback, looping and surround panning. I decided that rather than copypasting the same code several times for each instance, I placed one set of code into a do function and let it populate the window itself. This also allowed for quick customisation of the interface- you can choose how many instances you want with just a single number change. The window automatically resizes to fit the number of instances. This also led to a whole bag of troubles regarding GUI object output, but whatever.

I also ripped off Dave's background code to replace the metal one, but I couldn't get a good mix of colours, and the metal looks so cool anyway.



Considering how much effort is required, the outcome is quite lame.
Surrounder.RTF


Haines, Christian. "Creative Computing - Week 1 - Semester 2, 2008: Graphical User Interface (1)." Lecture presented at Tutorial room 408, level 4, Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 31st of July 2008.

Audio Arts | Week 1 | Nosferatu

Film sound is not an interest of mine, partly due to the 'Sans Video' we had to do in 1st year *shudder*. I understand it takes a great amount of experience to successfully produce the sound for a movie, and I am curious as to where this experience should be coming from for our projects. I have not done the Sound and Media elective or studied composition, so I am hinging on the weekly classes having some digestible/regurgitatible content. I am also bemused about what we exactly have to do, as there is no project documentation yet. It is strange that we have to choose the clip this early on, when we don't know the project requirements. For example, I would like to produce the sound for clip 3, however if we have produce all the foley with found sounds AND produce our own musical compositions then this clip would be ridiculously complex to produce.

Regardless, an idea I have had is to produce the sound as if it were recorded with the archaic sound recording equipment available around the time of the movie. I feel that this 'lo-fi' approach would better suit the film than some grandiose Bourne Identity style production.

Again, I don't know if this would be allowed, so it's really just all speculation.

Also, I haven't ever seen Nosferatu before.

Harrald, Luke. “Audio Arts – Week 1 – Semester 2, 2008.” Lecture presented at the Audio Lab, Level 4, Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 29th of July 2008.

Forum | Week 1 | Music and Society

Just like old times. Our first forum for this last-for-some-but-not-for-me semester somewhat centred around the role music plays in our society. Personally, music is generally used as a tool for boredom alleviation or experience augmentation. For example, today I spent 2 hours catching buses and trains from Modbury to Gawler, during which I listened to some 80's classics, such as:

Hall & Oates: Out Of Touch
Wang Chung: Dance Hall Days
Michael Jackson: Billie Jean
Go West: Call Me
INXS: Kiss the Dirt
Yes: Owner of a Lonely Heart
Aneka: Japanese Boy
Talk Talk: Life's What You Make It
Joe Jackson: Stepping Out
The Fixx: One Thing Leads to Another

I know what you're thinking: "What are you, gay?", but no, these songs were in fact a part of an hour-long MP3 which I ripped from the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City game disc. You may know it as "Flash FM", and it even features all the adverts and DJ banter. In this instance I was listening to music to alleviate boredom (and it should be noted that this music could not be used for much else). As for 'experience augmentation', this often occurs when in a moving vehicle (eg. RATM), walking (recently Earth, Wind and Fire for some reason) or dancing (Parliament or funk in general). Word count w00t!

1. Stephen Whittington. Music Technology Forum, Semester 2, Week 1. "Technology Theory & Culture." Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 31/07/2008.