CC - week 04 - more midi keys

To further extend the functionality of last weeks assignment.

Fairly straight forward, although I did come across an issue with the 'midiinfo' object again. In this case the patch would route an incoming midi signal to the output OK, until I initialised it :?

Basically,now it seems to behave in an appropriate manner, but I have doubts about why it is doing this .. but then again maybe I'm being paranoid :P

Moments of this I did enjoy; further going through the help clicks - window after window getting a bit lost at the potential, and the hope I could remember all this. And the random colour scheme button (the background colour of the screen shot is in fact, a random colour scheme).

I was thinking of putting a 'loadbang' object in (to replace the initialise button), but for some reason things worked before I pressed button, then not after !! So I left just in case.....

I had problems loading the patch, so here's the .txt file of it.
http://ed.growerscollective.com/uni/cc2/week04/week04 final.txt


Oh, and I did notice that 'flush' doesn't work so well if you change channels during a note duration.

Oh Oh, and getting the note durations. Couldn't wangle getting it to pass through appropriately so used 'makenote 100 2200'.





REFERENCES
Haines, Christain. 2008. CC2 - Week 4 - MIDI Information and Control - Planner.pdf

Cycling'74 2006, Max Tutorial, 11/1/2007,
.

AA2 - week 04 - recording percussion

This week I went into the studio with Freddie May, and did some recordings of Vinnie Bhagat and a selection of percussion instruments.

We used an array of 4 microphones to create two stereo setups.

A Neumann U-87 and U-89 for a middle-side setup, and two Rhode NT-5's for a stereo spread.

This first example features the two NT-5's recording a percussion tree - the two mic's were place about 7 1/2 feet up pointing down.
http://ed.growerscollective.com/uni/aa2/week04/nt5_percTree.mp3

This second example, again of the percussion tree, features all the mic's at various levels.
http://ed.growerscollective.com/uni/aa2/week04/all_percTree.mp3

And the third, the middle-side setup on a large aluminium plate gong
http://ed.growerscollective.com/uni/aa2/week04/ms_gong.mp3

___________________________________________________________________

REFERENCES
Robjohns, Hugh. Rhythm Method, recording real drums. 1999. Sound on Sound Magazine. Viewed 30 March 2008.
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul99/articles/recordingdrums.htm.

Davies, Dan. Recording Latin Percussion. 2005. Sound on Sound Magazine. Viewed 30 March 2008.
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec06/articles/latin.htm.

Jackson, Blair. The Big Beat. 2004. Mix on line. Viewed 30 March 2008.
http://mixguides.com/microphones/product_features/big-beat-audio-704/.

Grice, David. Recording Percussion Lecture. Adelaide University. 25 March 2008.

___________________________________________________________________

MTF - week 04 - more presentations

This weeks extravaganza of presentations was once again an inspiring leap into the world of watching people talk about ....... "stuff".

Ben Probert's presentation was the funnest/most entertaining with his hiding behind an array of baffles at the back (for sound isolation apparently) and showing his Max project and his effected face on the screen for everyone to watch. Thinking of the presentations the real time manipulation of his patch (and David Dowling's last week), were much more interesting than just listening to pre-recorded examples.

Although, perhaps this was because their sonic outcomes had more interest for me than Matt Mazone and Khaled Sanadzadeh's examples. But again preparing myself for a step backward, John Delaney presented a pre-prepared piece that used an interesting technique (ie stochastic choice of prepared loops), and was a nice piece in itself......mmmm, this leads me to the conclusion that I'm glad I'm not studying psychology or philosophy when these observations would themselves be worthy of several pages of study.

Freddie May's presentations was the most lacking in multimedia. The cloud background from the media player just didn't cut when compare to the still's from Luke Digance's collaboration art show (let alone the getting down silent performance with flashing background), and Doug Loudon's home movie of mouse clicks and software jumping around.

Although again Freddie's sonic outcome was quite interesting which adds another layer of perspective :)



BONUS LINKS:
http://www.infinitecat.com/ http://www.stuffonmycat.com/

references
Music Technology Forum, presented at the EMU recording space, Adelaide University. 27 March 2008

CC2 - WEEK 03 - MIDI KEYS la MAX

Well the predictions have proved correct - too much time can be spent on this Max !!

I spent far too long trying to work out how to use the modulo (%) to actually spit out a letter name... I figure I should be able to create a list (C,C#,D,D#...) then choose which item in the list to output but couldn't work it out, but figured another way which involved not quite as much typing as I could have done!!

I also discovered how to make things invisible in the lock mode, and how to draw striking boxes !!!
I spent a while also on the midiinfo object. I had a problem getting the MIDI output mode, but only just discovered putting the "1" into the left input halfway through writing this sentence !!!

Patch is at
http://ed.growerscollective.com/uni/cc2/week03/midi2.pat

I have also just added a panic button for extra goodness (not included on above picture).


EDIT :
just noticed a problem with opening a different patch in Max at Uni, so to be safe, here be the .txt version
http://ed.growerscollective.com/uni/cc2/week03/midi2.txt





Haines, Christain. 2008. CC2 - Week 3 - Program Structure - Planner.pdf

Winkler, Todd 2001. "Chapter 4 - Program Structure and Design". P71-78. Composing
Interactive Music: Techniques and Ideas Using Max, The MIT Press.

Cycling'74 2006, Max Tutorial, 11/1/2007,
.

MTF - WEEK 03 - PRESENTATIONS

I was just saying how much I enjoyed last years efforts to give presentations - by myself that is - generally I found most others uninteresting and poorly delivered... that is why I put so many man hours into Plogue, and so little into my actual presentation.

I just hope someone got something out of it :P

Since the forum I have spent another selection of man hours into the patch which I did show on screen, making it more sexy/smooth/glamorous and highlighting each individual hairy moment !!!

this is a stylish end product, with fake graphical stimuli !!!

this is the real end product, luffly simple !!!

That said about my own work, I enjoyed seeing the two variations on the Max patches. Graphical styling is key to all obvious Max endeavours !!!!
Now, how do I do it.. that is obviously the question I should have asked at the time >.<

BRING ON THE ROBOT DOGS !!!
mmmm, http://thisismycomputerblog.blogspot.com/, that someonelse mentioned in their blog ?
Just don't read the comments !!!!



REFERENCES
Everyone. 2008. All the things anyone ever said or wrote or thought this year.

AA2 - week 03 - recording the electric guitar

I set up the guitar with three microphones, the Shure SM57, Sennheiser MD-421, AKG C-414. These were adjusted for different takes.

First example is with the SM57 and MD-421 close to the speaker pointing across at the other side, the C-414 on hyper cardioid about 3-4' in front of the amp.
There is a mixture of each mic in this, giving quite a big pub rock sound - would be good as intro to a song. The C-414 in this case gives a good sense of depth/size to the sound.
http://ed.growerscollective.com/uni/aa2/week03/monoRockk.mp3


Second is a little doom. Mixing the SM57 and the MD-421 together giving that slightly phased metal sound, lacking in mids.
http://ed.growerscollective.com/uni/aa2/week03/powerDoomm.mp3


Third example, undistorted picked guitar, a bit indie.. in this case the 57 and 421 are pointing more directly in at the edge, and the C-414 moved out to about 6'.
I created a stereo effect with panning the 5SM7 and MD-421 slightly out, and adding a little C-414 for roominess - it seems that a little of the reverb I was playing with also slipped in on the C-414.
http://ed.growerscollective.com/uni/aa2/week03/indieStereo.mp3

There is also compression on each of the finalised mixes.




references.
White, Paul. "STRINGFEST!", Sound on Sound, viewed 22 March 2008.
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1996_articles/nov96/recordingguitars.html

Crisp, Pete. "nu-metal guitar tracks", MusicTech magazine, August 2004.

aa2- week 02- vocal recording

This first example highlighted a few things for me -
it was the second of my deliveries and i did so with added volume/excitement, this had the effect of making the room sound much more noticeable - especially when compressing as I did with a total gain reduction of 10dB. There is also slight side chain compression on the "f" sound which seemed a bit strong. I also noticed it was very important when editing that the initial "th" sound of the first word was represented adequately to make it sound good.
Also familiarity with the script, as I noticed a mispronounced word that wasn't picked up on the day.
http://ed.growerscollective.com/uni/aa2/week02/01EdLoud.mp3

This second example, recorded by Freddie, retains an amount of the dynamics of the delivery, but not as much as the original. This highlighted how the excitement of the actual recording could give new volume levels in the delivery.
http://ed.growerscollective.com/uni/aa2/week02/02freddieDynamic.mp3

This third example was a quieter more relaxed delivery from myself, I tried to maintain the relaxedness with a bit of evening out.
http://ed.growerscollective.com/uni/aa2/week02/03EdNotSoLoud.mp3



There is also a slight amount of eq on each, to help remove room boxiness. The above picture is of example 3.

The vocals were recorded with a Neumann U87, with a pop filter placed about 2 inches away, and the voice over person at various distances.





References
Haines, Christian. "AA2 - Planner - Week 2 - Voice Recording.pdf"

Anon. 2004, Recording Background Vocals, viewed 05/19/2006
http://www.eqmag.com/story.asp?sectioncode=41&storycode=4716.

White, Paul 1998, 20 TIPS ON.. Recording Vocals, Sound on Sound, viewed 12/1 2007,
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/oct98/articles/20tips.html?print=yes.

White, Paul 1994, WORD UP: Recording the spoken word, Sound on Sound, viewed 12/1 2007,
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1994_articles/jun94/spokenword.html?print=yes.

cc2 - week 02 - intro to max

Print a descending Pythagorean chromatic scale given a starting note.


Had a few problems with this, I couldn't see any way to complete this within the lesson content and tutorials - so looked at last years blogs for help. This exposed me to a few new objects which I integrated (looking at the readings helped as well).

However, I could only get it to print numeric output - but I did manage an object to show note names as they descended.

Also, by selecting starting note, this prints the selected note number- to make the scale clear, I added an effective information break (.:___) at the beginning and end of the output (I needed the delay otherwise the end break was inside the notelist).
I also thought it might be nice to include a clear window command but couldn't fine one.

The patch file is here,
http://ed.growerscollective.com/uni/cc2/week02/DescendingChromaticScale.pat




references:
"CC2 - Week 2 - Introduction to Max - Planner.pdf". Haines, Christian. 13/03/2008.

"Chapter 3 - Graphic Programming with Max". Winkler, Todd 2001, Composing
Interactive Music: Techniques and Ideas Using Max, The MIT Press.

mtf - week 02 - blogging, what is it good for ?

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

CC - Week 01 - pseudo programming

This weeks task : to transform input from a drum kit into a note on a 'musical device'.

I suppose I probably don't need to worry too much about certain assumptions, but am not entirely confident so will make a couple.

There is a drum kit, when one of the components is struck, this becomes the input.
The output is directed to a musical device with input mechanism undefined (could be midi, could be physical direct manipulation).
The program will stop running at the end.

So, the code (as expected the formatting was lost so I am effectively using 2 complementary images).






I was struck by the number of ways this exercise was possible, but mostly i was struck by 'CASE' hence my using this method.




REFERENCES.

Haines, Christian. CC2 - Planner - Week 1 - Programming & Pseudocoding.pdf

Dalbey, Dr John 2006, Pseudocode Standard, 11/1/2007, http://www.csc.calpoly.edu/~jdalbey/SWE/pdl_std.html


Dalbey, Dr John 2006, Vague Pseudocode examples, 11/1/2007, http://www.csc.calpoly.edu/~jdalbey/SWE/pdl_vague.html

Edwards, Peter 2000, A Pseudocode "Standard", 11/1/2007,
http://www.csd.abdn.ac.uk/~pedwards/teaching/CS3007/requirements/pseudocode.html

aa2 - week 01 - session planning

BLACK SABBATH - original line up, going for 70's style.

4 piece band - guitar, bass guitar, drums, vocals. from past recordings their is also potential for other instruments such as harmonica.

I imagine going for a live performance/recording. So using baffles/or separate recording rooms for the acoustic isolation of instruments (guitar/bass/drums) and separate room for vocals.

Running separate headphone mixes for each performer with their preferred levels of each mic/instrument will maintain their connection as a band, with eye contact also important between members.

Overdubs will also be happening so they'll be recorded after, either for replacing takes or adding extra layers for dimension.




references :
Leadley, Simon 2004, 'Digital Etiquette - Session Documentation', Audio Technology,

AA - sem 02 - sonic environment

for the Sonic Environment I recreated, I did an outdoor setting with birds cars and sawing of tree branches...see the above image for a pretty visual satellite style re-creation of the area. There is also a time line at the bottom of this entry

As for aural replication - mp3 version of the draft mix;

http://www.esnips.com/doc/8a8133d9-9ece-408e-afee-79cb7cc2ffe9/sonic_environment_final

final mix;

http://www.esnips.com/doc/8a8133d9-9ece-408e-afee-79cb7cc2ffe9/sonic_environment_final

and associated written documentation :
PreProduction.pdf
http://www.esnips.com/doc/02ab4150-f18f-4843-854b-68552d904b29/preproduction

Process.pdf
http://www.esnips.com/doc/d6c2d1e7-96c7-47fb-b872-73fc51477deb/Process


Assets.pdf
http://www.esnips.com/doc/98c5deb3-3a5c-434a-a75a-50fb9d3b2601/assets

Haines, Christian. AA1 Sound Design Project - Sonic Environment.pdf. 11/09/2007

cc - sem 02 - Electroacoustic performance

The final version of connecting the Yamaha Disklavier to Plogue Bidule.

Cut to the chase. The recorded performance was 16 minutes long, so..
Plan B_excerpt_excerpt - this is a two minute excerpt of the below excerpt :)




Plan B _excerpt - this is a seven minute excerpt.




Here are links to a composite pdf of the Analysis, Program Note, initial Project Plan and Research documents.
and also a pdf of the score (as you can see above in the introductory gif).




Haines, Christian. CC1 - ElectroAcoustic Performance.pdf. 14/09/2007.

aa - week 12 - spatialisation

right to left - two copies panned left+right. each had sweeping eq (freq of high shelf) and sweeping volume. also slight delays - when sound was too the left, the RH sound was delayed a few ms. then as sound moved to the right, each file was adjusted to give more distant sound a delay.

back - two copies. HPF on one, LPF on other. HPF lower in level panned to 9.30 oclock, slight delay. LPF relatively higher volume panned to 11 oclock, slight reverb.

then combined the two concepts to get a sound that moves from left forward to center(ish) and then back to the right. using three copies, with the third having a BPF and phase inverted (just for good times) - using all above techniques.
the picture is of this one - you can see also a bit of reverb mix automation, as the sound gets closer the mix gets less reverb.

the fourth is slightly to the right. I used 3 copies, each with a stereo eq setting and some phae inversion, and also slight delay. i like this with no reverb.

spatialAM.mp3

http://www.esnips.com/doc/392942f5-8efb-4853-99a8-69fd5144db22/spatialAM




Haines, Christian. Audio Arts week 12 lecture. University of Adelaide, 23 October 2007.

pp 159 - 164. Sonnenschein, David. 2001, Sound design : the expressive power of
music, voice, and sound effects in cinema, Michael Wiese Productions, Seattle, Wash.

White, Paul. 1994, 3D Mixing: Giving your mixes more space, SOS Publishing, 2004,
.

White, Paul . Robjohns, Hugh. Bell , Matt. 2002, You are Surrounded: Surround Sound
Explained - Part 7, SOS Publishing, 2006,
.

CC - Week 11 - integrated setup (3)

I haven't changed the bidule since last week (other than changing various values and a little bit of routing).
Above is obviously a screen shot of Plogue. I didn't take one of Live :( at the time I forgot and didn't save it, keep'n it live and all that.
In Live, I introduced a number of samples into the Simpler and then adjusted individual settings. Also I used a reverb with an edited envelope send.

So thoughts this week ;

I did this using a VSTi style piano for access reasons.. but noticed the main thing is timing. Using midi FX in plogue, and then programming edited piano sounds rhythmic style (in simpler) makes for a bit of an abstract output - so either work on making it more regularly rhythmic or more regularly abstract.

Using semi tuned samples means playing in key - that's just a practice with the final setup style issue.

and I can't quite work out how to change tempo :? humorously enough I just happened to have all the delays in the factors of 250ms and 333ms so it wasn't too bad.

The audio is a 2 minute excerpt from a longer duration.


http://www.esnips.com/doc/54fe440e-964b-4146-97f1-1332f08b35c8/week11_bodycoustic
this should be the address.



Haines, Christian. Creative Computing week 11 lecture. University of Adelaide, 18 October 2007.

Beaulieu, Sebastien; Trussart, Vincent; Viens, David; 2007, Bidule v0.95 user manual,
Plogue.

AA - week 11 - spectral synthesis

Once again I had some fun with Plogue.

I quite enjoyed mixing up the freq + amp signals (fft) between different sound bases.

The sounds I was using was a noise source, 3 tone generators (1f, 2f, 3f), and samples from my FM and additive synth adventures.

To these I added a little parameter modulation, lots' of messing with the routing and volume adjustments.

I also played with the FFT window size, but found I liked it low (512).

pp126 - 136. Miranda, Eduardo. 1998, Computer Sound Synthesis for the Electronic

Musician, Focal Press.

Haines, Christian. Audio Arts week 11 lecture. University of Adelaide, 16 October 2007.

CC - week 10 - integrated setup

I went into studio 5 to once more battle with the Disklavier.

This, the second time, was once again a battle with technology.
And once again, when all hope was lost, rebooting the device saved the day - it only took me an hour to get it working :P Hmmmmph, rebooting a piano


I did spend at least 5 minutes just playing the Disklavier from the Novation just to watch.. and initially when I used both the In and Out on the Novation, I had a 1/2 sec feedback loop happening.. much enjoyment !!
the waves of key movement travelling up and down...

RESULTS
The latency is large enough to effect performance, so I will have to incorporate such into the performance - unless there is another setting yet to explore.

The responses are not always as expected, example being it not always playing the notes the transposition bidule should be playing.. I think this was dependant on note velocity and duration.
This I assume is down to the Disklavier's mechanical action.

And the Midi buffer bidule occasionally decided to not send anything. At this point, I am not sure whether it was actually the bidule or perhaps the Disklavier not reacting.. further research !!

Still,
much great advancement on the glorious road to revolution and freedom !!!

The example below is not the best section of the recording I did. However, I did it on my mp3 player without checking, and it is the most free of distortion..

http://www.esnips.com/doc/94915655-06c2-4761-ada2-4fad4a30bc0a/Week10piani

This one features distortion but more piano goodness.

Haines, Christian. Creative Computing week 10 lecture. University of Adelaide, 11 October 2007.

Beaulieu, Sebastien; Trussart, Vincent; Viens, David 2007, Bidule v0.92 user manual,
Plogue.

aa - week 10 - additive synthesis

Once again I got a bit too excited with Plogue.

I did the basics; introduced multiple oscillators and gave each one a volume, pitch, filter envelope.
Had an extra fun time by putting summing the individual volumes, and using that as a divider on the end signal to keep it from going to far over 1 (except for those nasty filter squelches)

Then gave the envelopes a negative potential as well..
This caused me to spend a while on neatening up the filter envelope - as the filter cutoff has particular tendencies to bug out when too high or low.. this was one of my extra fun times :) giving it a changing gradient as it got closer to 20.

I also had a bit of fun with polyphonising the whole thing..
I was using mulitple UI's to keep it a reasonable size, and the master UI would call up the individual oscillator UI at request.. however when the whole thing was polyphonised, I would get a UI for each polyphony voice. ie lots..

So this image below is the inside of one oscillator.
I had four of these, and each was polyphonised, and then inside another group.



But by polyphonising in this way had other problems. When I would unpolyphonise so as to edit, the master UI button would disappear - so I would have to replace it.

Here is the 'voice' UI.



Picture of the sound.
All computer game noises this week.



GOOD NEWS
audio is now uploaded !!



http://www.esnips.com/doc/dbde5811-85da-4966-b23d-674c8d6c7433/week09_addSynth




Haines, Christian. Audio Arts week 10 lecture. University of Adelaide, 09 October 2007.

p124 - 126. "Spectral Modeling Techniques". Miranda, Eduardo. 1998, Computer Sound
Synthesis for the Electronic Musician, Focal Press.

Reid, Gordon 2000, Synth Secrets - Part 14: An Introduction to Additive Synthesis,
Sound on Sound.

CC - WEEK 9 - INTEGRATED SETUP

I've got to say, that Plogue has been incredibly stable for me at home. So when I went into studio 5 with Freddie, and forgot to save - it crashed. I think it's probably crashed, like, once over the last couple of months...mmmm.
So when it crashed I was, like, totally surprised :P

Anyway, we came out with a bit of experience, and thanks to Freddy, the idea of using an FM oscillator for a modulator - very cool..

So I acheived my finished product at home.

I had trouble getting the relative Parameter Modulator to act in what I considered a coherent manner. Setting it up with an osc producing a Ramp waveform, the modulated parameter just continued to go up + up... even using other waveforms it behaved surprisingly.
Using a triangular wave produced an effect like the wave below. The sine was similiar, and the square like a triangle...






http://www.esnips.com/doc/4ff8e78e-bd15-4a12-8407-a2f070b63834/week9_realtime




Haines, Christian. Creative Computing week 09 lecture. University of Adelaide, 04 October 2007.

Beaulieu, Sebastien; Trussart, Vincent; Viens, David 2007, Bidule v0.92 user manual,
Plogue, viewed 09/10/2007,

aa - week 09 - FM synthesis

I got all excited and decided to build a multi-operator FM synth.



Finally I worked it out and got a reasonably manageable (I thought) 4 operator version working.



Using the audio matrix for routing was incredibly useful (especially once I started hitting the random button!!)
Not that all the channels did anything :) 1 - 4 operator in/ out (source and modulation). 8 in LFO. 7 + 8 audio out to mixer.



My major problem was that I forgot about frequency scaling (for melodic style output).
Once that was sorted my major minor problem :) was the oscillator bidule output level - as an audio module versus a modulator module.

The modulator intput I multiplied by the note frequency, which I figured would give me a range of 0hz to the pitch for the modulation freq, which would be adequate with the amplitude range of 0-1.
But this wasn't enough!!! I found to get really effective I needed to crank the output (using up to 10).
I'll have to give this more thought.









Haines, Christian. Audio Arts week 09 lecture. University of Adelaide, 02 October 2007.

Truax, Barry. 2006, Tutorial for Frequency Modulation Synthesis.

Miranda, Eduardo. 1998, '3.2 Frequency Modulation', in Computer Sound Synthesis for
the Electronic Musician, Focal Press.