AA wk 4

Of advertising trickery: this week required the investigation of two separate ads in terms of visual and audio content (and the connection between the two). Ad number one - Pro Barack Obama anti John Mccain election ad. barack obama speaking - pan over a black and white still of obama 'thoughtful' background music and narrative over shots of family house for sale, mccain on a talk show, another show with subtitle of key information then black screen with more key info followed by a shot of the white house with the final message of keeping mccain out of it coninciding with V I resolution of sound track. Seven houses This ad was quite simple in construction, minimal music and images required to back the key message that McCain is out of touch with the average American. Ad number two - condom ad father and son in super market ambient noise sound effects of sweets packet, shopping trolleys dialogue of kids temper tantrum and dad going shoosh more sound effects of kid shaking trolley, throwing things on the ground still screaming subtitle “use condoms” voice over naming condom brand and listing a couple of selling points Condom ad This ad uses standard techniques for realism in video, sound effects are logical and synced to actions. Note, the ambient noise dies down when the kid throws his temper tantrum making the screaming the centrepoint and all noise dies away for the voice over which provides some calm after being forced to listen to screaming kid (thusly subliminally reinforcing the saving graces of condoms ha ha). The sound map is coming, I need some sort of paint like software first. "Curse you mac and your lack of paint"!

Forum wk 3 1st year presentations

Well, most first years just presented their music concrete pieces. I'm baffled, there is no way every single first year is an ambitious young electronic art music composer, is this just another demonstration of the skew of favour within the EMU to this archaic monster? There are a multitude of aspects to 'music technology' most of them more profitable than the composition of (often) obscure music that (potentially) alienates the listener... Having said this, some of the compositions actually sounded cool, way to cool to be titled 'art' it's like serialist music all over again. Yay for Webern, the element of compromise! I think it is a credit to the technician when a concrete piece sounds like something you might hear and enjoy on 3D :-D. While it was a little rough still, I liked Scott H's intro for his song. There were some innovative foley sources and I liked that his composition had a purpose upon completion and was not just a composition for composition's sake. Non CC presentations included the audio track for a short animation (which seemed like a pretty seamless effort to me, well done), demonstrations of some video game music which Josh has composed (please note, in his enthusiasm to break into the industry, he is working for free. Something maybe justifiable if the video game company is not actually making any income at this time but none the less worrying. I wonder what sort of royalty scheme is in place fr the composition of video game music and sound effects) and Alex's AA. General consensus was that Alex had pulled a pretty good mix. He informed us that he had gone easy on the post production (the exact opposite of my current mind set). This has set me wondering, critique of a mix being the wholly subjective activity it is, can we even ascertain a 'good mix' without a reference. And then, are you convinced your reference is perfect, or are you just using it because you like it? Why is it I am forced to process my kick drum to fit into a certain mold? A kick drum in a room sounds nothing like a kick drum through a PA or recorded, who decided that the sound needed altering? Puzzling, maybe. Personally, I think that once I have nailed imitation, I shall try and reinvent everything :-D

CC wk 3

For some reason, I find working through these tutorials amazingly time consuming, possibly because I desperately want to understand why I am doing what I am doing before I do it... going on from my simple synth I made last week, I have worked through tutorial two in full and listened to my synth progressively sound more authentic. I added the filter and envelope functions as instructed, added the sub osc and noise osc, combined various things into groups. I found when I stopped to tidy that a lot of cables should have been disconnected during the course of construction and had to go through and intuit what they were. I was also missing the fancy oscillator so I constructed my own based on the information and diagram given. I still have sound so if nothing else, the circuit is still complete. I began tute 3 and got stuck on the first instruction about the variable, it doesn't say what it is supposed to be patched into. I wish I had a keyboard to truly appreciate the products of pressing random (for now I just have my little ditty programmed into the step sequencer demonstrating the many shades of 8 bit sound). I would like to post some audio but I have yet to figure out how to extrapolate sound from plogue and into a recording program, a mission for another day.

AA wk 3

I shall do this, tomorrow or the next day

Forum wk 2

I was sick

CC wk 2

with a virus

AA wk 2

I stayed home it was warm thank you gas heater