Week 8 CC

This was good fun. But, I could have saved myself a lot of time if I had prepared some loops before hand. Most of my samples are from a recording I made of some harp sounds. I used 8 samples in impulse for my foundation (unfortunately paying very little attention to BPM). Impulse provided wonderful facilities for making samples unrecognisable, in particular the pitch shift and stretch functions. The rest of the samples were used in audio tracks same ala the nine inch nails samples. However, they were mostly very short making them hard to cue effectively. Also. I found the warp feature difficult to master and have yet to establish how I am supposed to tweak my audio prior to sequencing (for use in a live setting). Once again, have found the restrictions to be neither here nor there, just inconvenient when the computer crashes (once again, no screenshot). I do like the way live allows me to convert melodic sounds into percussive ones and percussive sounds into melody, very handy for meeting the demands of the avant garde. Would you believe it, that cello/bowed double bass sound is nothing more than downtuned harp sounds. Ya do harp on a bit

Week 7 CC

It’s hard to make an informed comparison on restrictions versus no restrictions without using the full-blown system, I would not say that the restrictions hampered me (except when my system crashed and I had to load all that stuff in and manipulate it again, which is why there is no picture). The main thing I found with this exercise was that my real time jam would have been closer to how I imagine it if I had spent more time organising my samples (I tended to find that samples that I would have liked to have layered over each other were on the same track and so I would have to choose). The live system seems like it holds a lot of potential for ‘playing a computer’ providing some care and thought has gone into sample collection. I guess it’s a lot like turtablism (minus the scratching) except you can get control down to a much finer level. What ever would Varese think? Bite the Remix

Week 6 CC

Lots of cool things I couldn’t try because I couldn’t divine from the tutorials (or my memory) how to operate them. The Environment is just going to have to wait for another day for me I am afraid. Things I did master…. Using the transform window to humanise things, drum beats, duplicate melodies (looking quite intrigued at that reverse option heh heh), The envelope plugin. In this instance, I really don’t thing it made a lot of a difference, come to think of it, should have tried it on some of the guitar tracks, that could have been cool, or the bass. Used quantisation to try and fix up the kick but it was too out of sync, had to go in manually. Had reverb on the snare, distortion on the guitar, felt no need for EQ, envelope on the drums and I automated fade in/outs to make the beginning and end less abrupt. Improved riffage Here's an old thought from last week making things sound real, I do think my guitar efforts effectively convey the impression of the pick on the strings. yeah, the lead guitar line needs work, more of, it sounds pretty cheesey. Although, that was kinda the sound I was trying to parody.

Week 5 CC

Authentic MIDI mission went as follows Guitar (the best achievement): Created a duplicate of my riff for muted guitar (with edited velocities and staggered chords) in accordance with a suggestion from the article. Borrowed a studio trick and replicated riff on an acoustic as well. The acoustic ended up very low as the steal string sample sounds a bit too electronic). Played Riff through an OK electric guitar sample, still needed cohesiveness. Bussed all guitar tracks to an auxillary and applied distortion, this tightened everything up and made it sound pretty nice, sounded a bit like QOTSA. I could probably do to lower the velocity on the melodic notes in the muted guitar part but other than that is good. Bass, didn’t really take any advice, it sounded good how it is, it is in the key of A though which could add to realism, and, I made the lowest notes a bit sharp using pitch bend for, to make a bass that low, you have to downtune and that makes the strings very susceptible to being played sharp (too much pressure you see). Drums: Separated Snare from rest of kit so it could be reverbed a bit and potential pitch bent on the harder hits. Should have spent more time lining up kick, hats and snare, they are still a bit out. Recording drum lines makes for the quickest route to realism, when having to rectify velocity and such, I thought back to how I would play it. riffage

Audio Arts week 9

The gruelling torture continues. FM synthesis I still don't know how to modify these patches, so, my modifications continue to consist solely of elaborate modulations, check it out: So, this, in a slightly less elaborate form, this patch yielded BUBBLES. Then I added some more obscure modulatory values, grouped it all, customised the parametres and started randoming away, came up with sounds including a mossie sounds, swarm sound, some toilet humour (cavalcade of laffs anyone?) some sort of industrial sound, a fairly convincing simulation of a highschool band practice (tuning to concert c as they say) and some cool sounding sound effect that I simply couldn't leave out. I'm starting to get frustrated, I've toyed with analogue, AM, RM and FM synthesis now and I still couldn't tell you what parametres to tweak for what sound. In short, I have achieved nothing! Oh how I dream of complex envelopes. Sonic Events don't bother trying to intellectualise it, just hit random a lot and enjoy the produce

AM and RM, they do not fill me with joy. Devoid of ideas to complicate the basic patches offered us, i simply complicated the level of modulation by adding more modulatory units. Yep, sound gets more complex, fecked if I know how you find real sounds in that mess though, I grouped the monster together, added the values and wave types to the parametres box and hit random a whole lot (occasionally deviating and altering values manually, half the faders did not seem to affect the sound at all). Some vague hints of real sounds revealed themselves, a wave that could be a blowfly buzzing if it were a little less white noise like, i tried. The airplane sound reminds me of the sound of the airplane in sonic three, run sonic run. Using the RM patch (similarly modified with a heap of extra modulator units) I stumbled across this swell which could almost be the sea, if I just could have slowed it down a smidge more and gotten rid of the thump. In the interests of creating spaces, I ran this signal through to independent delays and panned the results hard left and right, with more patience and tweaking, I probably could have made something of this. The other two sounds are nothing narural, the second to last sounds like a living machine, the last thing just sounds cool. The plogue patch Music to your ears, I promise

Audio Arts week 7

Roland synth SH-5 superior to the Juno 6 and Jupitor four in terms of sound composition yet still infuriating. This synth leant itself to the composition of sound a little more readily than its brethren by means of a built in mixer that allows users to kill of various components (allowing me to hear what individual things are doing....as to if this is really helpful, I don't know). Trial and error of knob twiddling, fader pushing and switch flicking helped me arrive at a point of malleable noise that could be construed as the sound of the ocean. But, I could not for the life of me get rid of the percussive thud at the sound of each cycle, nor could I make the sound oscillate up and down (just up, or down). One can't help but day dream of the custom built software synth and its adaptability. Some more twiddling yielded wind sounds (albeit vary imperfect) and and almost convincing bird chirp, then another, more convincing, ambient sort of wind sound. As to the great scope of other real world sounds, I do not think I even came close. But I am sure that has more to do with my inability to control the synth than the synth's short comings. I await digital simulations. My sounds Ok, these sounds are not 100%, I suppose with a little automation in the post production, maybe the odd fade in or envelope, they could suffice (imagines getting rid of the thump in the wave simulation with a fade in)

Audio Arts week 6

Not as fancy as a video game or a furby but i think this is a product that has benefited from interaction design. The singing washing machine: What - washing machine Where – the household when – when ever you want to wash your clothes who – is the man in the yellow cape? A sound map of the interactive response of the washing machine when commanded to complete a full cycle on a small load using cold water. The washing machine responds with a variety of beeps when it is being set to wash. Pressing the button to select the water level will prompt beeps pitched in correspondence with, a higher beep equals more water. A similar correspondence occurs in relation to water temperature (though there is no way really to create a response sound reflective of water temperature in the same way that one can reflect quantity). Pressing the 'go' button provokes a conclusive downward run of 5 semitones (somehow landing on a perceivable tonic tone). The process of putting on the washing has effectively yielded a short, simple ditty thanks to the innovation/sense of humour of the company's sound designer, through clever sound design, a household chore has been made slightly less mundane. Needless to say, when the machine is finished, it emits a call consisting of 2 notes a third apart (from low to high) incessantly until you relieve it of its contents.

Audio Arts week 5

Ed Osborn, of Finish origin, his childhood included activities such as smuggling art out of the soviet and participating in Quaker religious ceremonies involving prolonged silence. Having learnt to listen to tiny sounds during these, Ed studied composition, taught electronic music, played in an all ski band and raced motor cars before full time dedicating himself to audio art. More info including short movies of a whole bunch of his installations go here: Ed Osborn This installation combines two elements, audio and visual. The visual element consists of specially designed metal speakers (each shaped a little different from the last), the audio element consists of music composed using translations of the shapes from image to tone. The varied shapes and subsequent composition seeks to explore subtle variations in image and sound. This piece relates to sound design in the way that it creates an immersive space which will subject its occupants to a premeditated experience intended to explore a physical aspect of the world, (the name for this piece comes from “a biological term that refers to the graded sequence of differences within a species”1)