Category: Creative Sound Project E2

• Ableton Autopan
• You are able to control the pan from left to right and play around with this feature, Gareth talked about how he implemented it into his practise and it has lots of artistic value from spacial sound
• You can slo sync the left and right pan to a tick which can be useful to use the panning as a musical element of a certain. make of work
• You can also auto pan to any clip which is useful for working with space in art swell

Controlarism

• This is the idea that using a Midi is an art and you are able to control many aspects of a certain DAW by manipulating the shape and remixing your work
• It really looks at hands on performance and to change things like volume, pitch, filter and effects to change a sound signal
• It also goes into custom mapping to use your hardware as a instrument and to give more control
• Live mixing is important as well because to reshape whilst your going gives is more man made value
• It changes the passive relationship between man and machine

Dear Reality Micro

• You can use it any DAW
• Its great for sound artist working with space because of its bin earl possibilities
• It basically takes any laptop, headphones or listing device into a portable spacial device
• You can practice as if you are in a room with multiple speakers
• Its provides artists with the practice of specialisation

Stereo

• We talking about fusing when recording microphones,
• Fusing is when some frequencies can overlap when mixing in stereo
• Gareth showed us some nifty tricks to counteract this in Ableton 12, he talked about going the stereo and spreading out the noise you can counteract fasing, spread out the sound to make it balanced

Sound exercise

Gareth wanted to show us the effect of moving sound to different parts of your head and seeing the feeling you get from different positions. Most people have different hearing in their ears so to was interesting to see how people reacted to it.

It was an interesting experience for me because I got different frequencies in different parts of my ear, I realised that different positions provoke different feelings. Sound from behind for some people can provoke a sense of danger.

The advantages of stereo Neil Youngs Down By The River (2009)

Neil Youngs Down By The River (2009) is a great example of the benefit of stereo panning, the intention was to make different levels of panning for different instruments. I believe this was to create a sense of reality, the layer of sound add depth and make you feel like you are listening to the band live

Stereo can be an amazing medium, you can layer sound into a digital space this is called stereo trance

Cinema

• Many cinemas around the world including IMAX use diffusion to create rich spaced out sound
• Disney Fantasia was the first to bring a audio set up to where the film was being played to create a rich sound source
• Pierre Henry used contemporary diffusion in his gigs, to spread the sound source

Home Cinema 5:1

• This is the calls surround system set up
• Perfect for home viewing in small rooms
• Isn’t overly complex

7:1

• Uses 7 speakers
• more complex and you get a richer sound
• Enhanced immersion and sound stage

Spacial Sound History

Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin 2014. Susan Philipsz

She set up 24 speakers and played a certain scale of music out one speaker at a time, for example all the A chords would come out one speaker. The result was beautiful tones that you could hear and change as you walk around the room. This a great example of specialisation

Pulsar 23

• A semi-modular hardware that creates four percussive sounds when touched. It has an effects rack and tempo/clock dividers
• Comes out of Russia
• Made for noise techno/ main focus is on the bass and hi hats

Part 1: Listening and context

• Looking in and around analog synthesis in Ableton, plus the history and future of contemporary electronic music
• “Space echo” album
• Pierre Henry (France 1967).

Bebe and Louis Barron (USA 1956) The Forbidden Planet

• Was a main stream popular blockbuster film, however the people behind the sound where in the avant garde sound design side to New York
• The futuristic look into the early works of contemporary sound design for sci-fi films
• Using electronic sounds to create suspense, tempo, mass and size of what’s happening on screen
• Bebe Barron talking about how she got her hands on a original German tape recorder form the Second World War, when they got the tape recorder they moved to New York to pursue their passion of Avant Guarde sound recoding

Using Analog in Ableton

• Slightly wonky and out of tune instrument if you desire
• Tried to create Stranger Things music in Ableton using presets and Analog, found it quite difficult but in the end got something similar to the actual original

• It was difficult to try and find the same tone, pitch and feel of the original piece, analog does has the capabilities to create that retro sounding 70s music

Touching on the ethics of sampling again

• We talked about the importance of coming to an prearranged agreement before you ask someone for their creative input, going further into the ethics of sampling we looked at another example
• Lou Reed – Walk On The Wild Side (1972) and A Tribe Called Quest – Can I kick It? (1990)
• Can I Kick Its (1990) main hook baseline was sampled from Lou Reeds Walk On The Wild Side (1972). The two record companies came to an agreement for the sample to be used, there was a mistake somewhere down the line and Lou Reed ended up owning 100% of the royalties for Can I Kick It? (1990)
• This shows the importance of preagreement within the creative industries!

Synthesis

We looked at some hardware thats functions include FM Synthesis, Moog’s semi-modular synthesiser was a affordable synth that has a mini euro rack.

A euro rack was created as a standard board to use for all synthesisers, it acts as a control panel that you can manipulate and change the oscillator by manipulating the euro rack.

I would really like to look more into synths!

Subtractive synthesis

• Subtractive synthesis is a way of sculpting a waveform to create something new, you have to take away certain elements of the oscillator to make it fresh

Oscillators

• Sine
• Saw
• Sawtooth
• Pulse
• Square
• The list continues

The Amplitude Envelope

The amplitude envelope is the path in which the oscillator must pass through

• Attack – How long it takes for the note to come in when pressed on the keyboard
• Release – How long it takes for the note to die down when notes is released
• Decay – Kicks in when you stop playing, the time it takes ti reach the decay level, stays at that level
• Sustain – Keeps it at a certain level it can pass that level

The Filter

LP (low pass) is the most common type of filter

• Filters subtract the sound at a certain volume and frequency
• There are so many type of filters. Its similar to the world of gutter pickups
• HP(high pass) filter cuts out the low end of the oscillator
• BP(band pass) cuts out the highs and lows

LFO (low frequency oscillator)

• Its so low you can’t hear it with the human ear
• It works like water and effects the movement of the oscillator
• It can change the tremolo and the vibrato
• The signal moves the parameter
• Great for dance music

What is Sound Art for me?

Dance, industry, apps, film, acousmatic, ecology, radio, game, animation, mixing, instrument design, immersive media

The three choices we have for next years Sounds Arts course are:

Specialisation, sound for screen and expanded studio practice.

Suzanne Ciani (1946)

Suzanne Ciani was a practitioner of Buchla synthesis, this was a style of electronic music creation formed mostly from modular synths in a performative and abstract way.

Her music is really well toned to a happy feeling, I like her performances in quadraphonic format. She uses space as a compositional tool in her performances, she has good spacial vocabulary.

M108

We went through the specs of room M108, Milo talked through the plug in and run ins off the 8 channel speakers in room 108. I was refreshing to be able to understand how it works, he played some of Ciani (1946) in a 5.1 format. A 5.1 format I found out is a front left and right plus a back left and right with a subs speaker in the middle. It is what is frequently what’s used in cinemas for surround sound.

Sound for visual

We watched a scene from Gravity (2013) and a snippet of a scene from Blade Runner (1982) in this 5.1 format. The difference surround speakers have are incredible, the subwoofer creates a beautiful addition to the ambiance sound for visual if its subtle. “Films are like a long soundtrack with visual attached”.

Serialism – Tonality isn’t used to try and move away from the classic vocabulary. It was very reflective of its time as it was a reflection of the end of the World War in Germany, it is violent at times as there can be something undemocratic about tonal music.

Something about just making music just making music is beautiful. music dousing always need a purpose. Just making music is a meaning, music can ebb and flow on its own. This is called absolute music.

John Chowning (1934)

John Chowning (1934) is an American musical composer that was a crucial part to the creation of FM (Frequency Modulation) synthesis. Frequency Modulation is a technique that enable rich timbres and tone to be formed from algorithms.

Chowning (1934) also gave light to this idea of specialisation. He stimulated his sound in a three dimensional space, he gave the idea of sound moving in 360 degree space using four speakers. He bridged the gap between experimental and music.

Pastiche composition

Pastiche in art refers to the imitation of another art work, this can be to play homage or to ask as a sort of parody but it always has a degree of recognition to the original artwork.

An example of pastiche art are:

Andy Warhol’s “Mona Lisa” (1963):

When talking about sound art, pastiche composition would refer to a sample or mash up of music, for example Bitter Sweet Symphony by The Verve is great example of taking an imitation of a sound and recontexulising it in a different frame

Collage in music:

• Mashing up tapes from different band, cultures and genres
• self sampling, you can sample your own work

The main question we are look at here is where or not art aim is to please or to be owned and institutionalised, in my opinion its both. You have to be happy to share your art but not for someone to steal it, you want credit for the fruits of your labour. I guess as artist we are interested in many different opposing things, so a mash up or collage is an expression of this

Christian Marclay

Christian work at The Tate, is great example of sound as an event happening within time. His work is an example of the presents of time with art, it make you feel present and in the moment. This is a lovely bit of sound art as it depicts the different between sound as an event and sound as a space, I look inline at his work and was impressed by the scale of this project.

What is music concrete?

It’s a style of music practice where a noise is taken out of context and manipulated to change the pace, feel and overall result of the original sound. It breaks away from using recorded sounds rather than traditional music instruments.

Sampling and the Fairlight

Art of noise – Close (1984)

The Art of Noise (1984) by Close is a great example of the early sampling device called a Fairlight and its use. It was one of the first of its kind before digital sampling. A big keyboard that changes a sample and creates something new depending on where you press on the keyboard, high keys create a short but higher pitch whereas lower will bring a different itch.

You can tell a sample by its repetition and consistency, throughout the Art Of Noise (1984) you can see these constant samples pulled from different sources. This a quite a modern example of music concrete.

The Avalanches – Frontier Phschiatrist (2001)

In this sample heavy song they pulled from so many records and samples it was unseen at its time. It has an early hip hop beat behind the various samples of vocals, violins and bird squarks and so on. The reason they pulled areas from different structures is because of the different timbre and noise you get from each sample and record.

Accousmatiuc – Sound that’s decoupled from its source, has no visual implication and becomes its own Sound Object

Is it ethically correct to sample others work?

In class we talked about whether we should credit people when we intend to sample their work or artistic labour.

The Verve – Bitter Sweet Symphony (2009)

Bitter Sweet Symphony (2009) is a great example of the ‘incorrect’ use of sampling. I put the incorrect in quotations because it’s debatable whether or not sampling is a progressive use of artistic expression. The main ‘hook’ of the sound is a sample of a Rolling Stones Instrumental album of ‘The Last Time’ (1965) that they used throughout the song. It brings up a question on whether we as sound artists can hold onto our own labour. I personally think that if you’re a new artist and someone big samples your work it would be good coverage, why can’t it be seen if a smaller artist uses a bigger artists sample? Not sure…

Manipulating some audio we captured

Gareth for the end of lesson told us to go out and find some audio on campus so we could use music concrete techniques to change the sample. I went to the stair well and captured this.

I had to leave early because of work but I went home and used techniques such as Sampler, Simpler and pitch correct to change the sound objects in my recording.

the end result was surprising.