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.


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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

mtf - week 08 - my favourite erasehead

my favourite part of the film was the few minutes directly after - there was general silence. i think that i was not the only one slightly bemused by the experience.

one of my favourite movie watching techniques is to miss the opening section. by missing out on the character development and even major plot developments, you can then get a sense of wonder as nothing makes sense.

without missing the opening section, eraserhead gave me a similar situation. the movie, whilst never being clear, at least began to take recognisable form over time. but still there were incessantly weird bits i had no idea what was happening or what there relevance was..... eg it was not til after reading the blerb at wikipedia, i realised that the funny cheeked woman was "the woman in the radiator", also other symbolic imagery such as the cloud of eraser dust surrounding the hero as featured in the cover image...
mmmm..

i found myself walking outside soon after, and i felt most appreciative of the beautiful day that was revealed to my then current mind space.




__________________________________
Eraserhead. Dir. David Lynch. DVD. Libra Films.

David Harris. Music Technology Forum - Semester 2, Week 8 - My Favourite Things Lecture. University of Adelaide, South Australia, 18/09/2008.

Eraserhead. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eraserhead (viewed 20/09/2008)

__________________________________

forum - week 7 - presentations and sine tones

I didnt mean to spend so much time playing with the graphics,,, honest !!

This week featured a number of student presentations, and I presented my work from 1st semester with the amazing and descriptive title, Parabolic function as iterated through colour and melodic transforms. This featured as a sound component, 12 simultaneous melodic lines using sine tones generated from an iterative function describing the shape of a parabola.

Here follows a somewhat lengthy discourse (for a blog) on sine tones and their use in this particular piece. The quintessential element has been paraphrased in the linked comment which you could peruse instead and save yourself possible minutes of life. Otherwise, you could continue reading ....

After the playing of my piece there was a comment from David Dowling afterwards something along the line of "Did you think of putting some sort of modulation on ? Sine waves get a bit old after a couple of minutes !". This has gotten me thinking ....

why do i like sine tones ? This has two aspects. (1) from a melodic aspect, I like their timbre (or lack of :), the way they actually sound when used in a melodic context. (2) From a harmonic aspect, they can be used in such a variety of ways with little concern for clash of timbral colours - their lack of overtones gives them such ease of combination.

More widely speaking when dealing with wide frequency/ pitch choices, the choice of timbre becomes very important. Generally speaking, a timbre that sounds good at one pitch will not sound good 3 octaves above or 3 octaves below - this requires then a pitch based modulation upon the timbre to shape the sound as appropriate. Or, one could treat frequency along a similiar line to which John Delaney has in his piece BinHex_25-06. Here there was distinct frequency based timbral delineation - not unlike an ensemble of actual instruments, where there own unique characteristics create possible frequency/pitch bands. Hence one could create a number of timbres with attached frequency limits, and divide a broad frequency output into its appropriate voice.

Or, use a sine tone.

The harmonic aspect has particular importance when considered in the light of "computer music" (I use the term here to denote the style of music associated with both computer aided composition and creation - an obvious example is using a mathematical equation to describe the entire melodic and harmonic output). I feel that in this aspect, my use of formulaeic derived methodology to replace the overt human aesthetics (eg pitch/rhythmic choices), requires the use of simpler, purer tonality to represent the audio output. The inclusion of richer timbres creates denser levels of complexity through the interaction of their extended harmonic components - this is what I consider undesirable (although not necessarily strictly so - indeed these denser complexities have their own desirability). In my particular work, I desired the purity of sine tones to help reveal the inner working of the mathematical process, their interactions were desired as a particular mental abstraction overlayed onto what I conceived as a continually morphing spatial panorama where overtones would only create muddy patterns.

That said, with the retrospective awareness of my piece and the cogitation/analysis engendered by its presentation. I feel I could extend it further -

At the present, the patch generates 12 independent tones. These tones are given a duration, constant amplitude and pitch (the pitch is given a start and end value with a constant rate of change).
In the simplest way the shape of these generated tones needs to be modified along the lines of the following ; duration (the minimum possible could be shortened), amplitude (an envelope over time - rather than constant amplitude), pitch (an envelope of changing pitch inclinations, rather than constant change).
The tones are also given a stereo value, where one of the stereo channels is delayed by an amount. This could be modified with with the delay being also based on phase position, hence more importance on the frequency value related to stereo.

hmmmm, apart from that SINE TONES ROCK !!!!

or something :P

Various students. Student presentations. Level 5 Schulz building, Adelaide University. 11 September 2008

cc2 - week 06 - music and signal processing

i thought it would be fun to create a melodic synth using variable length buffer playback.

so using the groove~ object, and converting midi pitch to milli seconds to control loop end point, bob's your uncle.

issues this time were, needint to set up the groove~ to loop continuously. and setting up the modulation via the receive~ #2, it took a bit of magic to get max to recognise. I actually had to create a second receive~ with the real name, before the argumentative one would work... the first time I've actually caught Max out with such a blatant suddenly it works manouevure !!

i would have liked to use the note on to trigger the loop from the start, this would have made longer loops potentially more interesting, however it did not eventuate.

zip file at:
http://www.box.net/shared/5udpcfgxuf



____________________________________________________________
Haines, Christian. 2008. 6. Sampling (1) - CC2 - Music and Signal Processing.pdf

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


____________________________________________________________

mtf - w33k 05 - negativland sez favourite things

rationale of satire.

sometimes people are so wrapped in their own truths their is no point in mentioning your perspective of the inadequecies of their argument (should you be of the mind to do so).

one way to respond is to take the piss.___

is this offensive ? possibly.
is this funny ? possibly.
is this worthwhile ? possibly.
is this dangerous ? possibly.

usefullness of satire.

we live in a world of abstractions. these abstractions are defined by ourselves. we make these definitions based on our current state of ego. our ego is attached to the world and is influenced by the world. the world may influence us through many ways.

education is the process of deliberate enlightenment. the external use of education requires that you have control over the times of others. school is one example, television is another.

satire must be a form of education, otherwise it is acting superior and laughing at others - this is potentially opening yourself to claims of ethical inappropriateness.

aside.

according to the wikipedia article "negativland", the band themselves created the link between "religion is stupid" and the axe murder. They apparently did this to get out of touring.

"negativland". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativland. viewed 30 August 2008.

Whittington, Stephen. Forum presenting Negativland's Our Favourite Things. University of Adelaide 28 August 2008.

aa2 - week 05 - fmod designer

It is a tad disconcerting at first using something that doesnt quite behave as it looks ie an audio editor like audacity. And auditioning, where the file playpack position has nothing to do with where the cursor bar is, it takes a slight paradigm shift.

Apart from that, taking several hours to create a multi-channel audio file was the only annoyance.

The basic ideas behind FMOD are nothing new, they seem a new setting for automated envelopes really. I look forward to attempt some serious use of this as other manifestations of automated envelopes can be a bit annoying, and this has nice curve shaping :)

Oh, and there is a typo on page 126, that says to put the reverb setting at 0 (for point 4 on the SimDistance), with the picture that shows value 1. I used value 1.


zip with FMOD file and multichannel audio file are...http://www.box.net/shared/aqvnrc8dx9

Haines, Christian. 2008. AA2 - Week 5 - Audio Engine Overview - Planner.pdf

pp 113 - 132. "Chapter 5 - Tutorial Projects". Creative 2007, FMOD DESIGNER:
USER MANUAL, Creative Labs, 2007, (http://www.fmod.org/index.php/download)

cc2 - week 05 - synthesis (02)

I am slowly getting the hang of this poly~ object. This week, I found the need to send all the note information in a single moment more relavent than previously. Once I put the line~ object (for envelopes) inside the poly~ things went smooth.

I also put a slight line~ as a quick ramp up for each note, this gets rid of last weeks annoyance in note clicks.

The application of a real time modulator was slightly problematic, but the solution came in the form of the send/recieve objects. This does make it an overall modulator rather than for individual voices.

As my MIDI controller does not send aftertouch, I made available use of the data slider (CC 07) as an alternative.

zip at: http://www.box.net/shared/msl7k4pcra

REFERENCES

Haines, Christian. 2008. 5. Synthesis (2) - CC2 - Music and Signal Processing.pdf

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

forum - week 04 - h3llo

what happened,
why do i have a list of the 9 basic emotions, and the 4 temperaments ???

OMG what have i missed :?

cc2 - week 04 - synthesis (1)

This weeks excitement was to create an additive synth.

The basics of what I created are ;
12 voice polyphonic additive synth with 6 independent sine wave partials.
Multiplier to give relationship to frequency in, amplitude envelope with adjustable time setting, pan, phase, and output level.

This is given a GUI, and utilised in a bpatcher for the demo patch.

This version utitilises 6 seperate poly.partial~ objects ( 1 for each partial), but am in the process of exploring the potential of a single poly~ object with 72 voices (6 partials * 12 voices). This involves what is currently looking like a convoluted mangle of triggers (having to retrigger each parameter for each voice), but with the just excitement idea of placing poly~ objects inside poly~ objects may be easier ... but I'll wait until I get it working before I get too excited.

This additive synth as it is still gives clicks with voice play back ??? The only thing I can think of is the phase position of the cycle~ when playback starts, but I would assume the function~ acting as an envelope would fix this...

Zip folder = http://ed.growerscollective.com/uni/cc2/week04_02/ek.week04_cc2_additivedemo.zip

EDIT: box.net did something funny with original upload. now i can't even upload with them :?
uploaded somewhere else, fixed link... now should work = ideal !!

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

aa2 - week 04 - game engine overview

Grand Theft Auto III: Vice City (GTA III) uses the Renderware game engine.

Renderware is highly customisable with ease of transition between middleware options, hence it is difficult to determine exactly what middleware may have been used in any manifestation.

GTA III does use the Miles Sound System for audio, with extensability through Creative EAX HD.

Whilst the engine itself is compatible with numerous machine/OS (Microsoft Windows, Gamecube, Wii, Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable) GTA III appears on the PlayStation, Xbox, and Windows PC's.

The audio of the game is spatially realistic, with noises happening in appropriate locations and movement portrayed with doppler effect and volume transitions. Pedestrian voice overs are abnormally loud and constant considering the speed you drive past but this is obviously a programming choice, and there are occasional glitches where sounds drop out whilst moving spatially.

REFERENCES

RenderWare. 2008.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RenderWare (viewed 22/08/08)

The Miles Sound System,
http://www.radgametools.com/miles.htm (viewed 22/08/08)

cc2 - week 03 - polyphony and instancing.

The poly~ object had some mystery. Or perhaps again it was Max/MSP exhibiting its inscrutable behaviour. It took several patches of attempts, and suddenly it worked !! Another of those unrepeatable moments when one repeats a similar process again but now it works.

Also more inscrutable behaviour by reading an earlier generation object from a portable hard drive with no relation to the patch, nor mentioned in the preferences... highly inscrutable. I would like to know how to find the source path of objects inside patcher windows, perhaps the filepath command would be useful but I have as yet to master it. The ability to find the source path would make debugging so much easier as Max has tendencies to be able to put things in one folder and take from another with not even a wink.

Again I have been forced to take a step back and be aware of the software's simplicity. "Target" exists to enhance useability and flexibility, the ability for user defined voice stealing (polyphony) is a fine and glorious thing.

zip file is at : http://www.box.net/shared/ye6dlrcpbk

References

Haines, Christian. 2008. 3. Polyphony and Instancing - CC2 - Music and Signal Processing.pdf

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

Grosse, Darwin. 2006, The Poly Papers (part 1), 2007,
(http://www.cycling74.com/story/2005/5/3/135756/4001).

note... blogger seems to be treating anything within <> style as not for common observance, hence I've used ( ) instead

aa2 - week 03 - process and planning

Grand Theft Auto III - Vice City.

Please excuse poor quality of video, I havent quite worked out how to capture good quality gaming video but it does feature the sounds as listed below.

Perusing the folder of "audio" in the GTA install folder gives mainly voice samples from the game - storylines and general asides from people. Also ambience in 9-11 minute blocks (eg. beach, city).
The files vary in quality from 112kbps 32kHz mp3 to 128kbps 32kHz mp3, and also occasional wav format of short sounds.

background noises -
quiet city hubub
quiet background ocean
police radio - eg "suspect on foot"
enviroment being interacted with eg. cars hitting poles

guns-
bullets hitting car
bullets whizzing by
bullets hitting person
shells hitting ground

cars -
engine starting
engine noises - stationary and passing
car doors - open and close
police sirens
horns
cars interacting with enviroment - eg trying to drive through poles

helicopter -
flying above

game noises -
mission started sound

people -
player footsteps
pedestrian voices - including scream

References
Haines, Christian. 2008. AA2 - Week 3 - Planning and Process - Planner.

Lampert, Mark. 2006, IT’S QUIET … ALMOST TOO QUIET, Bethesda Softworks, 2006,
.

"Chapter 2 - Sound Database". Childs, G. W. 2006, Creating Music and Sound for
Games, Thomson Course Technology.

pp 2 – 24. "Chapter 1 - A Development Process Map of Game-Audio Implementation".

Brandon, Alexander. 2005, Audio for games: planning, process, and production, New
Riders Games, Berkeley, Calif.

forum - week 03 - presentations la noobs and old concrete guys.

It is interesting getting a perspective on the aesthetics of the (relatively) new faces that have been haunting forum for several months now.

It occurs to me to wonder what might be made of listening to multiple (think 20 or so ) years worth of first year student work in one sitting. What sort of overall impressions, or observations one could make. Of course this is unlikely given the current rate of software development and hence possible techniques that one may encounter. Material from 20 years ago would be possibly tape manipulations, midi based sequences of samples and synthesised voices - possibly presented on tape, or floppy disk. Where would one get access to that sort of hardware now ?

I was hoping to hear the current versions of paper ripping masterpieces, but was disappointed in this. I was also curious to see such a breadth of content when our similar assignment seemed much more focused ie on using our edited paper sounds.
Perhaps this is down to Christian's ability to evolve class material dependant on the actual class, or perhaps it is just down to steady evolution of class material......


references
all sorts of first year students presenting their work. "Forum: 1st Year Presentations” Seminar presented at the University of Adelaide, 14th August 2008.