Week 8

• Practical 1 - Audio Arts - Recording and preparing Voice Over [1]

This week we learnt about how to record and prepare voice overs. The points to focus on with voice overs are:

- clarity (condeser mic and popper stopper)
- output optimal volume with lease noise using compression (usually 4:00:1 ratio is good)
- deadest sound (dead room is best to record in)

The mic should be set to either cardiod or hyper-cardiod with flat settings. Setting up a music stand is also a good idea to prevent paper rustle from nervous 'talents'.

Later on this same week I got the chance to record a voice over for a "Life Impact" Uni promotion video. Unfortunately I wasn't able to use the dead room for my recording, but instead I set up a quasi-dead room by using those movable walls covered in absorbant sound material.


(click for larger image)

This setup worked pretty well and here is the final product of both voice-overs.

Female Voice



Male Voice



As well as compression, I found a light gate worked well to eliminate unwanted mouth noises between phrases. At the same time this also got rid of any breaths in between phrases. I'm not sure if this was a good idea or not as it makes the voice sound a little unnatural, but I figured most people probalby wouldn't notice this with music and visuals accompanying the voice.

• Practical 2 - Creative Computing - Supercollider (5) [2]

Well it’s week 11 now and I’ve finally got around to doing the Supercollider for week 8. After going through the readings twice for this week 8, there were still some things that I just couldn’t grasp, so I figured I wouldn’t move on until I understood them. Not understanding the material after two separate readings really put me off. Thanks to my lecturer’s (Christian Haines) example, I was finally able to understand what to do.

It was the ‘do’ section of Chapter 21 that I was having trouble understanding. Additionally, for some reason the example code (that didn’t require a MIDI interface) in the MIDI section returned an error – I couldn’t work out why.

Anyway the biggest piece of knowledge I have taken away from this week’s Supercollider, is the ‘do’ message. This allows me similar function to the ‘metro’ object in max. With this function the doors of possibility have open. I only wish I had more time to explore this space of possibility.

FM with Iteration

// Week 8 FM

(
 SynthDef ("FM",
  {
 
  // Arguments
  arg mpitch1 = 60,
   mpitch2 = 67,
   dur = 1.5 // duration of Volume Envelope
   ;
   
  // Variables
  var fm
   ;
  // Output
  fm = SinOsc.ar(
    freq: [mpitch1.midicps,mpitch2.midicps] + // Carrier Frequency
       VarSaw.ar(
        freq: MouseX.kr( // Control Frequency
          0.0, 100.0),
        mul:  MouseY.kr( // Index
          0.0, 1000)
            
           
        ),
    mul:  [0.5] // Overall Amplitude
  
   );
  fm = fm * EnvGen.kr(
     Env.perc(0, dur),
     doneAction: 2
    )
    ;
      
  // Out
  Out.ar([0,2], fm);
  }
 ).load(s);
)

// Routine used to execute do (Iteration)

(

 r = Task({
 
  inf.do(
   {
    // Arguments
    arg click // bang
     ;
    
    // Variables
    var next = 1, // time between bang
     cnt = click % 6, // Influences pitch
     pitch1 =  10 * (cnt*2), // Changes Pitch
     pitch2 =  17 * (cnt*3)  // Changes Pitch
     ;
    // Feedback
    cnt.postln;  
    
    a = Synth.new("FM");
    a.set(\mpitch1, pitch1, \mpitch2, pitch2);
    
    // Pause
    (next).wait;
   }
  );
 });

// Start Routine
r.start;

)

• Music Technology Forum - Presentation - Presentations by Tim Swalling, and Jasmin Ward
  

The title of Tim Swalling's presentation was "Bringing Music to A-Life". It centered around his honours thesis of using artificial intelligence to create music. He talked about his current research into genetic algorithms and mentioned how they're based on natural selection and cellular automata. It was an interesting presentation, and i'll be interested in how his research further develops.[3]

Jasmin Ward spoke about the current competition she is involved in with Stephen Whittington. Her aim is to develop a system using Max/MSP that will filter out audio samples into a different sound. This is suppose to be an audio representation of natural ecological filtration systems that filter dirty water into the clean water. I will be interested to hear her final result.[4]

• Music Technology Forum - Workshop - Workshop on Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa, and Pierre Henry [5]

First off we listened to "Whole lotta love", by Led Zeppelin. This piece featured the Theramin as concurrent sweeps with guitar squealing. To be honest I didn't even notice the Theramin as it was mixed so well with the guitar squealing.

Next we listened to "Bike", by Pink Floyd. This piece started off like a stadard rock song, and then progressed to a trippy improvised sounding music concrete section. This type of music didn't really impress me, and the concrete section was nothing new to me.

We also listened to "Breathe, by Pink Floyd. This is a great rhythmic piece featuring the VCS 3. An excellent example of evolving electronic musical ambience. Personally, i've heard this song to death so hearing it again killed me even more.

The last piece was the best, and appropriately saved till last. This was the tape piece, "Voile d'Orplae" by Pierre Henry. Unlike other tape pieces, this one seemed as though it had a coherant structure rather than crazy depersonalised sound bytes. It actually reminded me of many modern day film sound design techniques. If only Pierre were alive doing movies today. This piece has definately inspired me to check out more of Pierre Henry.

• References

[1] Grice, David. 2006. Practical on Live Recording. University of Adelaide, 2 May.

[2] Haines, Christian. 2006. Lecture on Supercollider . University of Adelaide, 4 May.

[3] Tim Swalling. 2006. Presentation on Tim Swalling's projects. University of Adelaide, 4 May.

[4] Jasmin Ward. 2006. Presentation on Jasmin Ward's honours thesis. University of Adelaide, 4 May.

[5] Harris, David. 2006. Workshop on Iannis Xenakis, Gabrielle Manca, and Phillip Glass. University of Adelaide, 4 May.