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.

mtf - instrument of wobblyness

well i've built the instrument of wobblyness, and well, it's a bit messy...




BUT BEST OF ALL - it's mounted in a cardboard box :)
lo-fi aesthetic for all round budgetness...

At various stages throughout its construction, it went through design changes :)

Last of these was to introduce a seperate power supply for everything that wasn't the tape motor controllers (attempt at noise suppression - that pulse wave just leaks through everything)...and I don't have enough jacks.... so alligator clip mania !!!

Anway, it just begged for a patch bay style interface (more alligator clips), which I'll probably just keep on expanding because there is still a lot of space.

Presently, I am using two walkmans, two square wave oscillators and two ring modulators.

There is space on the Arduino for another 4 motor controllers, 2 square waves, 2 ring modulators and then there's I think 2 more switches on the 2003 chip which could be utilised.

I doubt I'll get as excited as I could, as 2 simultaneous sources with modulation is probably a good level of interactiveness for real time performance - although that pulse wave out of the arduino (driving the motors) through some ring mod sounds great !!

Here's a sample featuring two tapes of speech, and 1 ring mod.








thanks to Seb, for his invaluable assistance, help, aid, facilitation etc....

mtf - week 08 - physical computing and aesthetics

We (John Delaney and myself) did the appropriate building and connecting during last weeks actual forum ie controlled note on/off for 3 oscillators from cubase.

I don't have any evidence whatsoever, but hopefully John will post something soon[1] and I'll use one of his pictures :)

This physical computing exercise was quite cool - combining this with some sort of envelope controls and it'd almost be a real synth - bass line mania !!
I did notice that the circuit made a lot of noise, unfortunately I just remembered and have yet to ask anyone why - or even for that matter do a bit of experimentation.

As to the instrument aesthetics, I've got to say I think most of Reed Ghazala's instruments are a bit unsightly (I may be exagerating a bit when I say most:).
I think it is good that he got nicely carried away, but I'm a bit of the put it in a simple structure and there you go.
I'm willing to admit that if I'd done this for the length of time he has I wouldn't be surprised if my instruments were just as garish.

I'd quite like to mount mine in a cardboard box, but I think the idea of a clear plastic bottle should work and whilst not being as perhaps exciting as it could be, will suit my idea of aesthetics quite nicely thank you very much.



[1] http://johndelany.blogspot.com/

pp 131-146. Reed, Ghazala 2005, Circuit-bending : build your own alien instruments, Wiley
Publishing, Indianapolis.

Haines, Christian. Music Technology Forum workshop. University of Adelaide, Computer Lab. 13 September 2007.



Tomczak, Sebastian. Music Technology Forum workshop. University of Adelaide, Computer Lab. 13 September 2007.

cc - week 8 - live 2

In the dim distant days of the mid 90's, I used M[1]. This had a time warping feature as a simple graph (known as time distort), nowhere near as powerful as the Live feature...



Above are two different warp versions of a sample. Combined with a pitch shifting envelope I made this particular sample sound quite different, in terms of timing and duration and melodically.
Here is a little sample of the two loops, each repeated twice.


With the drum loops, the warping combined with the warp mode and pitchshifting (global and envelope), make for nice glitchy drum sounds.
This I combined with the follow actions creating a few 4 bar repeated phrases, which make it much easier to manage the liveness.

I appreciate much the sample manipulating features in Live.

The restrictive aspects is quite interesting. The limited effects are not such an issue because of the afore mentioned manipulating features, giving an amazing amount of variety out of a simple sound. And the limited matrix of potential clips, is not necessarily an issue when aiming for 45 seconds of sound, but with a bit of keen editing one could easily introduce a single clip of mulitple drum loops warped and manipulated extensively.




http://www.esnips.com/doc/e4c7bb74-72cd-4844-87b8-c8a3abf708d7/week08_cc_elatsic


[1] http://www.cycling74.com/products/M

Haines, Christian. Creative Computing week 08 lecture. University of Adelaide, 13 September 2007.

Ableton 2006, M-Audio Enhanced Edition Owner's Manual, Ableton.

aa - week 8 - amplitude modulation

well little luck with making anything useful la AM sounds ie "sounds that mimic natural or
human-made sounds".[1]

had a lot of fun with modulating the modulators though.
Spent a bit of time on a scaling constant distance style AM, had to find the cent to freq ratio, but never felt i really understood whether it was doing what i wanted it to.

Then when mucking about with self modulation, I decided that a divider on it would be great ie pitch shift.
So a short delve into the spectral bidules reminded me of what FFT actually does ie average out frequencies.
This left me wondering what other options there were - I didn't want to use a seperate oscillator because I wanted feedback !!
Alas I decided that it was so much easier using a seperate oscillator and putting a divider onto the freq output of the note extractor, and it was - now my next excitement will be how to effectively change the wave type's of multiple oscillators simultaneously.

Anyway, my bidule featured AM and RM, with a fixed frequency and a moving frequency, and a sort of self modulation - which with the divider worked very well as a scaled movable modulator as well.


bidule is at :http://ednkath.customer.netspace.net.au/am.bidule


http://www.esnips.com/doc/2dee16db-a22c-487b-a8f0-788769eb0bfa/week08_AM-SOUNDS


REFERENCES

[1] Haines, Christian. Week 8 - Sound Generation - AM Synthesis.

Haines, Christian. Audio Arts week 08 lecture. University of Adelaide, 11 September 2007.

"Chapter 3 - Loose Modeling Techniques". Miranda, Eduardo. 1998, Computer Sound
Synthesis for the Electronic Musician, Focal Press.

Reid, Gordon 2000, Synth Secrets - Part 11: Amplitude Modulation, Sound on Sound.

mtf - week 7 - physcal computing 2

blah, can't get the maxruntime to recognise or initialise or whateverise the serial port on home computer :(

worked last week,

serves me right for trying at home- will keep workn at it..

anyway, again I'm thinking this is non-stop potentail. At first I was a bit dismissive of basically building a novel sound generation device and then conrolling it with a computer. I was a bit thinking this was overkill and just not necessary.
Why wouldn't you build something and then just play it, OR just play with a computer and not mix the two.

However I have inadvertently come to the pont where I see my former thoughts a tad small and whatever that word is where you are a bit limited.

I'm not really sure how all these exercises we've done tie together, or how they can be tied together - eg trigger a sound and change the pitch so will have to read the exercises again and consider.

I'm not convinced I'm interested in using this tool with my proposed instrument - to a major extent I'm more excited about playing it real time and not lugging more gear around than I have to, but will give it due thought...



REFERENCES


Haines, Christian. Music Technology Forum workshop. University of Adelaide, Computer Lab. 6th August 2007.


Tomczak, Sebastian. Music Technology Forum workshop. University of Adelaide, Computer Lab. 6th August 2007.


note - How do I reference these readings?
individual exercises -
Exercise 1 - Victorian Synth.pdf
Exercise 2 -The STIC Insecticon.pdf
Exercise 3 - STRIC Insecticon.pdf
Exercise 4 - Genetic Mutant Insecticon.pdf

aa - week 7 - basic synthesis

First going into studio 4, I made some Enoesque ambience :)

Second time, I took the Roland SH-5 to studio 2 and made Doctor Who noises, I spent a while but that's all I could make.



One thing I noticed was the non equal tempered keyboard. Does it ever play semitones ? It did make stuff sound more Doctor Who though.

It was very hard to make "natural" sounds, perhaps if I'd thought about it more it might have been easier.
But it just seemed that every time I made a new sound it just sounded like Doctor Who.

aa_week7.mp3

http://www.esnips.com/doc/4022ee89-f205-4f8c-ac12-98f61d7db3f5/aa_week7




REFERENCES

Haines, Christian. Audio Arts week 07 lecture. University of Adelaide, 04 September 2007.

White, Paul. 1994, Sound Foundation - A Synthesis Primer Part 1.

White, Paul. 1994, Sound Foundation - A Synthesis Primer Part 2.