Forum - Week 6 - Vicki Bennett and the Art of Sound Collage

I found Vicki's work quite engaging. Mash-ups are a little old hat nowadays, but her development of the genre shows how no horse should be left unflogged. Despite the length of the piece played, the class remained fixated on the musical progression, listening for a recognisable song, melody of voice. In particular I spotted Marylin Manson's voice, which was somewhat difficult to discern considering it was just a raw recording of his voice with no effects, unlike the majority of his recordings.

It was also good to have David Harris back in the mix (so to speak), and I hope we get some more subjugation to Harrisian values throughout the year.


Forum, Week 6, “Vicki Bennett and the Art of Sound Collage.” Workshop presented at EMU Space, Level 5 Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 10th of April 2008.

CC3 - Week 6 - Something or other.

Interesting that we find out the blog is now worth 40% of our overall grade, 6 weeks into the the semester. Sure, it's extra incentive - next semester. I've got a funny feeling week 2 of these holidays will be jam packed with SuperfunhappyColliding.

AA3 - Week 6 - Production "Outside The Square" (3)

Sidechaining is not something I have had a use for, perhaps because I never really knew what context to use it in. For this week's exercises, I used some samples from the Mac library. Each MP3 has an untouched sample followed by the... touched... sample...

1. I tested out sidechaining a gate, so I used a percussive sound (trumpet honks) to control the gate on a continuous sound (a bass synth). After boosting the Threshold and extending the Hold time, I had added a pseudo-bassline to the trumpets.

2. I extended this idea to an actual percussion sound (a drum loop) and used the same bass as before. I used the low pass filter on the sidechain controls so only the lower sounds of the drum loop would open the gate for the bass. While this worked, it sounded a bit dodgy.

3. I then used a (good sounding) drum loop to control the gate on a didgeridoo sound. Only sounds below 89Hz opened the gate, meaning only the kick drum had any effect. I had to play around with the ratio, release and threshold, but I eventually made it sound like someone was actually playing the didgeridoo rhythmically. Finally, I swapped the gate for a compressor, and made the didgeridoo turn down dramatically on each kick drum hit. The result is very Daft Punk, and I can't wait to find a use for it.

BenAAwk6.ZIP 712KB

CC3 - Week 5 - Sound Generation (0)

This is not a markable entry. This week has thrown me about quite a bit, so I guess I'll have to take another 0. I had spent a while creating ambience codes that "demonstrate (my) understanding of unit generators", then reread the planner only to spot that every patch must use either mouse or envelope. This might have been okay for retrospective implementation if MouseX/Y actually worked in PsyCollider. I doubt I'll have the time to use the Macs until Friday afternoon (MusEd and cello work due Thursday, working Thursday night, MusEd due Friday).

I guess planning and prioritising are the two main skills that one must possess to be successful at University, so I don't doubt it's my own fault. I may have to scale back the amount of (paid) work I'm doing, as I have been working all Saturday, Sunday and Monday, then Thursday nights as well. Also I've been falling asleep around 5-6pm while I'm trying to do homework, which tends to wreck my study time. Right now I'm writing this at 2am after waking up on the couch with PsyCollider still running. Maybe it was the ocean sound I was creating...
<
// Ocean Breeze

(
{ // Main controller
a = LFTri.kr( freq: 0.2,
iphase: 3,
mul: (LFNoise1.kr(0.3, 0.3, 0.4)),
add: 1
);

// Create noise and stereoise
b = PinkNoise.ar( [ a, a ] );

// Change bandwidth according to "a"
c = Resonz.ar(b, a*150+250, 0.8);

}.play
)
>

AA3 - Week 5 - Production Outside the Square (2)

This week Luke and I teamed up to experiment with the Antares Auto-tune plugin. I have used this quite extensively in the past, so we tried to use it out of its intended context. Note - my MP3s are the same as Luke's.

For this first example I sung a glissando line from low to high, then used auto-tune set to C minor with the retune speed set to fastest. The result is more humorous than it is useful.
OverTune MP3

The next example took the previous concept a step further. I sung a guitar solo, then we added auto-tune with the same settings as before and ran it through Amplitube to add distortion. The result is a fairly believable-sounding guitar solo.
Lead Vocals MP3

Finally we tested out auto-tune on my cello. I purposefully did not tune it beforehand, so the results would be more obvious. Auto-tune was set to D minor with medium retune speed. Pitch-correction can be heard on the second note, which means the G string was probably out of tune.
Celloooo MP3

Grice, David. “Production Outside the Square." Lecture presented at Studio One, Level 5, Schultz Building, University of Adelaide, 1st of April 2008.

I See Dead People...