cc2 - week 10 - delay

Made a fairly basic delay with feedback, wet/dry, delay time and buffer size settings.

Incorporated an input for modulation which adds incoming signal to internal settings.. works quite well.

I played with using the poly~, got it to have a user input number of taps with the number as a multiplier for delay time. Each tap was full level or again dependant on number of taps, nothing that the other delay didn't acheive.

Couldn't quite think of a useful way to use it. I would like to set individual tap time (which seems to necessitate having a pre-determined number of input variables hence taps) which doesn't seem that much more useful than not using poly~ except maybe a slight reduction in used objects if you turn unused taps off..

Curiousity of the week.
running a float through a [-~ 1] object and getting the output to wrap around zero.


zip
http://www.box.net/shared/c6lxeuexyc





REFERENCES
Haines, Christian. 10. Processing - Delay - CC2 - Music and Signal Processing.pdf

Cycling'74 2006, MSP Tutorials and Topics,
(http://www.cycling74.com/twiki/bin/view/ProductDocumentation).

aa2 - week 11 - game music

Creating game music was quite fun. The main challenge was to ensure repetition maintained interest (although this is relative to the amount of time one does spend on the same level !!).

I created two seperate tracks, one fast and one slow for comparitive consideration. Both work reasonable well on the level I tested with - although individual instrument levels could be slightly modified for transparency of game sounds.

Other thoughts ; the music shipped with the game is incredibly lo-fi (8 bit, 22kHz mono), and while I added various forms of retro techniques the new sounds are a bit nice. Whether this will matter to someone with no relative distinction is a potential question. I'm thinking that using low bit rate contemporary style music compression (ie mp3) may add an interesting sheen but this will be explored later (the mp3 as linked at 128kbps may be appropriate).

Upon reconsideration of the task set, I tried to extend the slow piece beyond a 9 second loop but found it purposeless. Because of the shortness I have included the two tracks, each with 2 loopings.

zip file at;

http://www.box.net/shared/l119of271i

REFERENCES

Haines, Christian. 2008. AA2 - Week 11 - Game Audio Design - Music - Planner.pdf

Hannigan, James. 2004, "Changing Our Tune", 2007,
(http://www.jameshannigan.co.uk/changing.htm).

"Chapter 7 - Ideal Production". Brandon, Alexander. 2005, Audio for games: planning,
process, and production, New Riders Games, Berkeley, Calif.

Pp149 - 152. Childs, G. W. 2006, Creating Music and Sound for Games, Thomson
Course Technology.

pp246 - 252. Irish, Dan. 2005, The Game Producer's Handbook, Course Technology
PTR.

mtf - week 11 - composition

audio-visual presetations of collaborations between sound and video artist.

....


mmmm, not a lot to say really.

...




Whittinton, Steven. Steven Whittington plays various sections of a DVD Workshop. presented at EMU space, level 5 Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 23 October 2008.

cc2 - week09 - processing - FFT

This week I extended the fft crossover to encompass 5 bands.

I was interested in extracting frequency specific information for use as a controller but don't quite understand what information the fft process actually creates.

I found it interesting that you can create dead spots in the crossover by setting them in the middle of the same bin, so I have done a fix on this - although it does require the DSP to be switched on as it uses the FFT fundamental frequency.

zip at
http://www.box.net/shared/fvj33j0lob



___
references
Haines, Christian. 2008. 9. Processing - FFT - CC2 - Music and Signal Processing.pdf

Cycling'74. 2006. MSP Tutorials and Topics.
(http://www.cycling74.com/twiki/bin/view/ProductDocumentation).

aa2 - week 10 - game audio design - ambience

This week's assignment relates to creating in game ambience.

Again sequencing in Ableton Live and setting up the Analog synthesiser with some slight automation to create a spooky windy castle setting, and a deserted computer room with plaintive alarm signal.

This weeks challenge was to make sure they were loopable, which meant going back into Live and adjusting one of the LFO's on the computer room.

The pieces have both been normalised to -1 dB, but both would play back at significantly lower than other sounds. They may also require some equalisation/compression but I feel they need proper contextualising before finalising these.

This final mixdown features one loop of each piece. Computer room at about 12 seconds and the windyness about 20 seconds.

link to files
http://www.box.net/shared/nh0e5c6pto



references____

Haines, Christian. 2008. AA2 - Week 10 - Game Audio Design - Ambience - Presentation.pdf

Bernstein, Daniel. 1997, Creating an Interactive Audio Environment, Gamasutra, 2006,
(http://www.gamasutra.com/features/19971114/bernstein_01.htm). (Available Online)

Sonnenschein, David. 2001, Sound design: the expressive power
of music, voice, and sound effects in cinema. pp173-174, 182-189. Michael Wiese Productions. Seattle, Washington.


__________________________________________________________________

forum - week 10 - honours presentation

once again the images are tenuously related to textual content.

this weeks award for most exciting presentation goes to Martin Victory for his sonification of network packets !!!

whilst the presentation itself lacked any excitement and razzle dazzle (where were the dancing bears ?), it was the choice of material to sonify that won the day.

i am not particularly au fait with network information, but am aware that computers love chatting to each other and do so within a regular framework. The variety of networking possibilities offer such a myriad of diversity and hence a diverstiy of sonic outcome (insert comparison of University ethernet vs. LAN party gaming mayhem !!).

I would quite like to read the section on sonification which will apparently take up half of his thesis. It is the implementation of sonification that really seperates the wheat from the chaff, the meat from the poison, the tea from the biscuits.

All music comes from the arbitary delineation that is choice (shall I modulate to Eb minor here... or... G# Major ?????), hence the particular application of process (subconscious or conscious) proves the artistic merit. From the limited display of Martin's application, I thought it most definitely supplied the necessary cheese for my biscuit !!





_______________________________
Victory, Martin. "Honours Presentation". Workshop presented at EMU space, level 5 Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 16^th of October 2008.

forum - week ? (i'm confused with all my subjects being skweiffed

Student Presentations = 3rd year goodness..

favourite this week was Mr Ben Proberts Max patch Fantastical Metal. I enjoyed it immensely for it's potential !! The only bad thing, is the patch doesn't work on my computer :(

i think in particular i liked the arpeggiator function which gave slightly jerky but consistent rhythym.
i just don't know what else to say it - was just nice !!!

That said everyone else was boring and tedious and i can't be bothered with even remembering what went on !!!

OK, that last bit was a joke :) Luke made nice timbre's, and the sequencing element showed potential if he gets it finalised. Will's game sound made me really want to play Half Life 2 as I was a big fan of Half Life and Counter Strike !!! David weirded me out with his sampled General Midi sounds, although the timbre of the melodic instrument was very pleasant - and he seemed to have done far too much programming on his patch !!!

This takes me to wax briefly on the imbalance that is Music Technology.
Why is it that 1/3 of a core subject can take more time than 2 other subjects in their entirety ???

Hmmmm, I'm looking forward to our consumer response surveys this year.






Music Technology Forum - Semester 2, Week 9 - Third Year presentations. University of Adelaide, South Australia, 18/09/2008.

AA2 - week 09 - game audio design assets

I created these four sounds in Ableton Live using the in-program synthesisers. Shaping the internal synth envelopes, mixer envelopes and using equalisation and bit/sample rate reduction.
Die features a sequence of notes, whereas the others are single notes.


I went in with the idea of making reasonably high fidelity sounding assets, but found myself with fairly dirty(ish) sounds. Perhaps more in tune with my subconscious aesthetic of the game.

The sounds are ; acid_drip (acid dripping), die (player dying), nut_break (breaking a nut), nut_push (pushing a nut).


zip of sound file and asset list :
http://www.box.net/shared/a0mfrn9akg


references

Haines, Christian. AA2 - Week 9 - Game Audio Design - Assets - Planner.pdf

"Chapter 5 - Sound Design: Basic Tools and Techniques" and "Chapter 6 - Advanced
Tools and Techniques". Childs, G. W. 2006, Creating Music and Sound for Games,
Thomson Course Technology.

Kelleghan, Fiona. 1996, Sound Effects in SF and Horror Films, 2006,
(http://www.lysator.liu.se/lsff/confuse96/Sound_Effects_in_SF_and_Horror_Films.html).

CC2 week 08 _ Midi and MSP

This week's assignment was a bit of a mental challenge. I had to overcome the resistance I had to putting 128 connections, objects etc in an object and all the associated joins.

My first attempt was not appropriate but very simple and had only one output. It was wrong.

My last attempt had 128 outputs, Hurrah !!!

Prior to utilising a poly~ in which to put the ctlin object (thanks to Christians Hint of the Day !!),
I was enjoying my Xenakis looking patches. So much that I'd like to make a patch with so many lines in it you can see zoo animals !!

One other thing I enjoyed from this week was editing the patch.txt file. I did this to name the objects and outputs. It was much easier than naming each object in Max.

http://www.box.net/shared/xjxpr224sq


references
Haines, Christian. 8. MIDI and MSP - CC2 - Music and Signal Processing.pdf

cc2 - week 07 - sampling (2) Music and Signal Processing

After reviewing the tutorials and beginning my own patches, I quickly dismissed the sfrecord~ for something a bit more flexible, and as keen as I was to use poke~ I instead utilised the record~. My main wish was to be able to record to buffer so as to be able to review recordings before optional saving.

A recording light was necessary, also pre-faders, and also post monitoring. The self refreshing buffer~ view is just plain nifty !!

For the playback I used the play~ object, I can't see much difference between the various objects (wave~, play~, peek~....) but used play~ as an opposite to record~.

Fun times were to be had in the implementing of playing back selected areas in the waveform~ object at recorded speed. Again Max proved itself an interesting tool when it continued to play at double speed, so I put a fix in... then upon a reload spontaneously playing at half speed, so I took the fix out.

Also Max weirdness when routing signals through several graphic switches, I resolved this issue by having simultaneous rails which were then mulitplied by 0/1 as a switch.

Possibly it might have been easier using the groove~ object but I stuck with play~.

zip file at _______http://www.box.net/shared/ixn8n2pdpj




Haines, Christian. 2008. 7. Sampling (2) - CC2 - Music and Signal Processing.pdf

Cycling'74 2006, MSP Tutorials and Topics,
(http://www.cycling74.com/twiki/bin/view/ProductDocumentation).

aa2 - week 08 - Rocks'n'Diamonds game audio

Rocks'n'Diamonds is a game styllistically based on the 1984 personal computer game Boulderdash.

To complete this project I will have to create about 36 sounds. Including background music, level completed (Hall of Fame), and play action sounds.

Given the era of Boulderdash, the sound Fx for Rocks'n'Diamonds are based on the aesthetic of 1980 computing. The original music with the game were excerpts from music from the period (Tangerine Dream, Propaganda, Alan Parsons Project) and were very low sound quality samples (8 bit 8kHz mono). The current version has these excerpts at a much higher 22khz.

The game action sound features play driven sounds (digging, collecting treasure...) and feature sounds (creatures, dripping...). These sounds are all generally short (generally less than 200 ms). With the repeated sounds (eg monsters), I would like to experiment with longer loops which will give more variety rather than rapidly repeated clicks.

With the obvious visual styling of the game I will keep with the simple sounds reminiscent of 1980's computing. As such I imagine I will use analogue style synthesis, a bit of foley, and low quality samples. In light of the advance in computing power since the game inception, I will not be so concerned with keeping the sounds small but will be able to focus more on higher quality settings with a retro sound.

The game engine does feature the ability to play .mod files. Unfortunately these are not accurately represented on my Windows system so I will not be using this format.

Pre-production form is at:
http://www.box.net/shared/hoqrm8s4jq




references__
Haines, Christian. 2008. AA2 - Sound Design Project - Game Audio.pdf

2008. Rocks'n'Diamonds news.
http://www.artsoft.org/rocksndiamonds/ (viewed 060october 2008)

aa2 - week 07 - game audio aesthetics

I did the voice over's for this weeks project.

Basically a wee tiny bit of script writing, recording the voices, processing (major eq, compression) running it with the video, editing the audio to fit as I imagined it(time compression and cutting). then shipping it off to Freddy.

As I was only responsible for one small section. The finished product was a reasonable surprise. With the final placement of the voice's I could have left my original audio as it was. I feel that there is a major gap in plot development after the voice over's but this was not my area :)
I guess I could have shipped either the longer version, or both versions, but this did not occur to me.

I imagine that if this were not done during holidays, and were done with cash flow then there would have been better communication ( I spent a lot of time away ), and more interaction with the final flow of events.


Here is the finished product as it appears on Freddies blog.
http://lninio001001.blogspot.com/2008/09/aa2-game-sound-week-7_30.html



references
Haines, Christian. 2008. AA2 - Week 7 - Game Audio Aesthetics - Planner.pdf