CC2 - Week 10 - Interface Design

two offset windows for the multislider bpatcher, and the ramp value bpatcher..

note the blue slider...


With the variable size MultiSliders it can be hard to tell where in the cycle it is, so now the slider that is being called will change colour. This limits the variability size to 8 as that is the definable colours for candycane sliders. I could use mulitple Multisliders to get more than 8 sliders - but that is a programming challenge for the future.

I put a mulitslider in a bpatcher, with the use of offset to display additional settings - very cool, and space saving !!

However I discovered that I was unable to save presets in the bpatcher window.. I can save the presets in the original patch, but this is quite limiting but good for pre-loading. This caused me to leave the duration multislider as it was, as it uses a range of 0 - 5 for the sliders.

Also bpatching the ramp to controllers, making it neat, but again harder to use re. presets.

I dig the bpatcher, I really did what I did with the multisliders "other settings" button.

link to zip..
http://www.box.net/shared/i93c885voo

UPDATE:
have worked out preset dilemna !! so have added more bpatchers..

References

Haines, Christain. 2008. CC2 - Week 10 - Interface Design - Planner.pdf

Cycling'74 2006, Max Tutorial, 11/1/2007,
http://www.cycling74.com/twiki/bin/view/ProductDocumentation

aa2 - week 10 - mixing 03

For mixing down this week I've chosen an electronic piece I sort of finished several months ago, and dug out for a new perspective.

It features an interesting array of drum sounds, with most of the track having a "click" rather than a kick. And pretty much most of the bass spectrum actually lives in the bass line, with other sounds rarely touching the low end.

It turns out however that the first sample is from a section featuring another kick. It is in other respects quite a sparse section.
tiny tiny bits 01.mp3 (http://www.box.net/shared/tcxtrlx2cc)

The second sample is the first with a HPF and compression on the stereo mix.
tiny tiny bits 02 hpf+cmp.mp3 (http://www.box.net/shared/ozi60gbkkg)

Third sample is a different section and features the HPF and compression on the stereo mix.
tiny tiny bits 03 hpf+cmp.mp3 (http://www.box.net/shared/rfr7ru5a8c)


All files are at
http://www.box.net/files#0:f:15566470



REFERENCES
White, Paul. 2006. Mixing Essentials. Sound On Sound magazine.

Stavrou, Paul. More Salvage Mix Techniques. Audio Arts 2 Readings.

forum - week 09 - of electronics and harmonics

.. these different musical styles ... affected the evaporation rate of distilled water...
From full beakers, 14 to 17 ml evaporated.. in the silent chambers, 20 to 25 ml..under the inflene of Bach, Shankar and jazz; but, with rock... 55 to 59 ml.
[142: Tompkins and Bird]

George E. Smith.... planted maize and soyabeans ... in two identical greenhouses, both kept precisely at the same level of temperature and humidity. In one...Gershwin's 'Rhapsody in Blue' 24 hours a day....in that greenhouse sprouted earlier than those given the silent treatment.... their stems were thicker, tougher and greener.
[137: Tompkins and Bird]


In the early 1950’s, Dr T. C. N. Singh of the Department of Botany at Annamalai University, Madras, India, discovered under microscope that plant protoplasm was moving faster in the cell as a result of the sound produced by an electric tuning fork. This discovery led to his conclusion that sound must have some effect on the metabolic activities of the plant cell.
[Singh]




REFERENCES
Tompkins, Peter and Bird, Christopher. 1974. Secret Life of Plants. Blackburn, Victoria: Penguin Press.

SINGH, T. C. N., On the Effect of Music and Dance on Plants, Bihar Agricultural College Magazine, Volume 13, no. 1, 1962–1963:

CC2 - Week 9 - Data Management and Application Contro

This week's problems were.

Upon the patch loading - the probability sequencer looked like it was loaded with note, but it wasn't.

Attempting to get the note recorder to record time between notes (as well as of notes), and play back sequence with this info. The major problem being metro won't change time between bangs. and I couldn't get the coll object to succesfully spit out appropriate address' eg 12 13 10 11 8 9 6 7

SO the recorder will play notes back in the same order as played, and has the option of either using the time recorded (for the previous note) or triggered by main sequencer or modifiers.

Other problems were with the layout, my patches just seem messy, but I don't know what to do about it... also there may be a better way of laying out the sections and relating them to each other.
I think I need to look at other peoples well developed patches..

IMPORTANT note, the record section can be sent to any channel (Prob Seq = 1). Giving more variety.
Getting Reason to work with two incoming MIDI channels is bloody annoying !!!

http://ed.growerscollective.com/uni/cc2/week09/edwardkelly_week09_cc2.zip
http://ed.growerscollective.com/uni/cc2/week09/WEEK09_EDWARDkeLLY.mp3

References

Haines, Christain. 2008. CC2 - Week 9 - Data Management and Application Control - Planner.pdf

Cycling'74 2006, Max Tutorial, 11/1/2007,
http://www.cycling74.com/twiki/bin/view/ProductDocumentation

aa2 - week 09 - mixing 02

This week I've mixed down sections of a recording I did last year of Tristan Louth-Robins.

It features numerous guitar tracks, vocals, backing vocals and melodica.

I've pretty much maintained eq settings on instruments, just varied levels and effects between mixes.

I'm quite enjoying the fairly dry vocal sounds, and the varying levels of backing vocals and melodica.
That said I think mix01 works the least with the vocals being too forward and dry.
And mix03 is my favourite with much a much wetter mix than the other two.

http://ed.growerscollective.com/uni/aa2/week09/edwarKelly_Tmix01.mp3

http://ed.growerscollective.com/uni/aa2/week09/edwarKelly_Tmix02.mp3

http://ed.growerscollective.com/uni/aa2/week09/edwarKelly_Tmix03.mp3



This weeks lesson to be learnt was what happens when you use plug-ins on one computer that aren't available on another computer :P




REFERENCES
Grice, David. 2008. “AA2 – Mixing.” Seminar presented at the University of Adelaide 13th May.

cc2 - Week 8 - MIDI and Virtual Instrumentation

Since last week I have modified the phrase slider/tables to be more flexible (theoretically up to 128 sliders and including a random selector - non weighted, just random selection).

I added one of these to be a controller modifier, and three line objects for triggered changing values (the bottom one is half speed).

I also found the preset object as a way to load the patch with number boxes with a useful value (with loadmess).

Bugs -
the ramp subjects, are only triggered by a change in the max value OR by the sequencer running.

zip of files
http://www.box.net/shared/3lrkz4ls84

mp3
http://www.box.net/shared/9fqe4bp1c8

EDIT: have neatened the patch a little and updated the preset so it loads better. 160508.

References

Haines, Christain. 2008. CC2 - Week - MIDI and Virtual Instrumentation - Planner.pdf

Cycling'74 2006, Max Tutorial, 11/1/2007,
http://www.cycling74.com/twiki/bin/view/ProductDocumentation

mtf - week 08 - industry nerd jabbering on

In this case, not the parish priest, Peter Dowdall...

Peter Dowdall gave a rather interesting talk on both recording a large ensemble in the EMU space, and working for such multi-nationals as PEPSI. (mmmm, it makes me wonder what pepsi tastes like ?)

His use of organisational skills in the preparatory process of recording gives a good sense of necessities when approaching a recording with such a big set up, and in a space which is not something one is totally familiar with. Hence spending an amount of time prior to the actual session running through the process proves itself invaluable. For example I myself am curious as to exactly how many mic leads there are at EMU, and to hear Peter saying he had to outsource comes as no surprise.

His over the top photographic journal of the experience was also amazing !! Just recently I have had cause to bemoan my own lack of note taking when I was attempting to document some of my past works (like 6 or 7 years ago), and my own experience in the mixing world also brings home to me how bloody good it is to know what's going on now, and what was going on yesterday.


I was also very amused by his description of editing to a grid. Cutting of the end of phrases because fall outside the appropriate length.. I am looking forward to trying it at the appropriate juncture :P It's a bit like slow motion glitch.


REFERENCE
Dowdall, Peter. Forum presentation at EMU space, University of Adelaide. 8th of May 2008.

aa2 - week 8 - mixing basics

I went into uni twice to mix down a recording session I did last year. First time the DVD case was labeled, but the DVD was blank :? Second time, I had found the correct DVD, but left it at home :(

So perusing the EMU storage I found 20 .wav files which made up a track by Brian Eno and David Byrne.

I put them into ProTools, and to continue my clown action, forgot to get a snapshot of anything..

Anyway, here are three different mixes.
http://ed.growerscollective.com/uni/aa2/week08/mix%20down%2001.mp3
http://ed.growerscollective.com/uni/aa2/week08/mix%20down%2002.mp3
http://ed.growerscollective.com/uni/aa2/week08/mix%20down%2003.mp3

Some of the tracks are very noisy, with lots of hiss - enter the LPF.
And the vocal tracks are very nicely badly recorded, sounds like tape distortion and just dodgy tape action in general.
But given that they worked quite a lot together in late '70s early '80s, its quite possible that these tracks are
from those times :0

Generally used EQ to get rid of hiss and fit some sounds together, a bit of reverb, and some compression on the overall mix.





REFERENCES
Grice, David. 06 May 2008. Mxing Basics Lecture. Adelaide University.

mtf - week 07 - tristram carey

I was absent for this forum on the life of Tristram Carey.

His name brings back thoughts of Dr Who. Jon Pertwee (also Worzel Gummidge) and Tom Baker whom were my favourites :)

Watching recent series makes me yearn for the simple (yet rich) audio accompaniment that was the then Dr Who.

Also the "impossible piano" which features some very fine pieces of midi piano mayhem.

A shame I missed finding out more about him :(

cc2 - week 07 - Messaging and Analysis

Missing the lecture for last week left me pondering a bit, but I think what I've done should be more than adequate :)

I've created a 12 tone sequencer, where each tone is given a probability between 0-100 as to whether it will be played. Given that it's output is 1 - 12 that was easily associated with the notes 1 - 12, then an octave chooser was added to give a range.

I thought about adding individual choices for each of the 12 pitches but spent all my time on the other sections.

The phrase length gives a number of possible individual note durations and velocities. I had an amount of fun trying to get the multislider to change size AND remember its settings.

The lists of duration/velocities includes all 8 no matter what size the 'multislider' because it was easier !!

Patch (in text format)

http://ed.growerscollective.com/uni/cc2/week07/edwardKelly_week07_12step.txt

REFERENCES

Haines, Christian. 2008. CC2 - Week 7 - Messaging and Analysis - Planner.pdf.

Cycling'74. 2006. Max45ReferenceManual.pdf.

Cycling'74. 2006. Max Tutorials 30 -33.

aa2 - week 07 - piano goodness

It's a picture of a mic technique !!

This week to record the grand piano in the EMU space we used a selection of 5 microphones,
a Neumnn u-87 and 89 as a M-S stereo pair, two Rhode NT-5's as spaced pair, and a realistic PZM.



First features the MS with a bit of the PZM thrown in . The MS was placed halfway along inside the lid with the figure 8 along the length of the strings, and the PZM was sitting on a music stand a few feet away from the end of the piano.
http://ed.growerscollective.com/uni/aa2/week07/piano_MS_pzm_01.mp3


This second example features the NT-5's and the figure 8 from the M-S pair. The NT-5's were placed about 12 feet apart on the open side pointing at the raised lid.
http://ed.growerscollective.com/uni/aa2/week07/piano_nt5_side_02.mp3


third : NT-5's but this time with the middle from the M-S, and the NT-5's were placed on either side of the players head about ear level. A lot of extraneous noises (such as fingernails clicking) but it gives a closeness that the others lacked.
http://ed.growerscollective.com/uni/aa2/week07/piano_nt5_middle_03.mp3


fourth : for this one just the NT-5's still at head level.
http://ed.growerscollective.com/uni/aa2/week07/piano_nt5_04.mp3

The last two captured a closeness that was lacking in the other mic's. It seemed that all the other recordings had more space, and sounded from a listeners perspective rather than a performers perspective.


Other comments, this is such a dynamic instrument - recording levels are very important !!



REFERENCES
Grice, David. 29 April 2008. Recording Piano Lecture. Adelaide University.