Kev's Blog

What your objective was in creating the music for your task.

My objective for this task was to create a piece of electroacoustic music that used granular synthesis to create all of its sounds. I also wanted to take influence from the work of Xenakis, including particularly his idea of a cloud of sounds.

What well known composer’s approach you decided to adopt and how you modified it to suit your piece. Or, if you feel your approach is original, then explain what makes it so.

I decided to approach Curtis Roads approach in Half-Life (1998). In this piece he uses a very short sample as the source material. He travels through many different iterations of the sample but the piece has a very simple overarching structure of two parts. I took this approach in mind but used four sections instead. The types of granular sounds used distinguish the first three sections such as grain length and density. The fourth section is a reprise of the first three, incorporating all the techniques used.

Note one particular audio technique you applied in this task which you had not applied before.

One audio technique, which I employed in this piece, was using the grainbuf class in supercollider. The two audio files I used were of a square wave reggae bass line and an ambient part of the score from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1971). I used differing grain lengths and densities to create different timbres. 

In your view, how is this task an example of practice as research?

This task is an example of practice as research as it looked at a specific technique for creating sound and then sought to compose a piece using different implementations of that technique.

Autoevaluation: what mark would you give yourself for this task and why.

I would give myself 70% for this task, as it is a good example of how granular synthesis can be used to create many different timbres, which are totally devoid of their previous associations.

Bibliography

Stuart, M. (1971) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. [VHS video]. USA: Paramount Pictures

Roads, C. (1998) Half Life

Granular Piece

What your objective was in creating the music for your task.

My objective for this task was to create a drone music piece. Drone music is a sub-genre of Minimalist music of which La Monte Young is considered to be the originator. (Strickland, 1993) I also wanted to take influence from more recent ambient artists such as Brian Eno.

What well known composer’s approach you decided to adopt and how you modified it to suit your piece. Or, if you feel your approach is original, then explain what makes it so.

I decided to adopt Eliane Radigue’s approach in Jetsun Mila (1986). The timbre slowly evolves throughout the duration of the piece. It is very minimalistic and slow moving. The timbre in this is quite discordant and never seems to resolve itself.  I decided to take the same slowly evolving idea but used a much more pleasant timbre. I also listened to Aphex Twin’s Tassels from his Selected Ambient Works, Vol. 2(Aphex Twin, 1994, tr. 22). This piece works very much in the same way but the timbre is much more unpleasent and unresolved.

The notes used are all based around a C major chord. This is then overlapped by a major 6^th and a minor third occasionally to give suspense and resolution.

The sound source is from a Gregorian chant recording. The voices were then pitch shifted and heavily affected by reverb and delay.

Note one particular audio technique you applied in this task which you had not applied before.

One audio technique, which I employed in this piece, was very gradual automation of parameters. There is a low pass filter, which moves from 200 Hz to 20000 Hz over the duration of the whole piece.

In your view, how is this task an example of practice as research?

This task is an example of practice as research as it looked into musical outcomes achieved by drone artists and recent ambient artists and tried to apply the ideas behind them into an original composition.

Autoevaluation: what mark would you give yourself for this task and why.

I would give myself 70% for this task as I feel it is a really good example of a study into drone music. Its musical outcomes come across well and I find it enjoyable to listen to.

Bibliography

Strickland, E, (1993) Minimalism: Origins, Indiana University Press

Aphex Twin (1994) Selected Ambient Works, Vol. 2, Warp

Radigue, E. (1986) Jetsun Mila, GERM, Paris

Drone Piece

What your objective was in creating the music for your task.

My objective for this task was to create a piece of electroacoustic music that took an everyday sound, and transformed it into something that was devoid of its previous associations. I took a car horn as the everyday sample and used several spectral plugins that were FFT based to transform it.

What well known composer’s approach you decided to adopt and how you modified it to suit your piece. Or, if you feel your approach is original, then explain what makes it so.

I decided to adopt a similar approach to that of Trevor Wishart in Vox 5 (1986). This piece uses spectral morphing to interpolate between various sounds giving the very convincing impression that as each sound changes, it is transforming into the next one. I tried to achieve the same effect by slowly cross fading between each part.

Note one particular audio technique you applied in this task which you had not applied before.

One audio technique, which I employed in this piece, was using the Spectral Stretch plugin created by Micheal Norris. I used this stretch my sample into to different lengths and pitches so that it became totally unrecognisable.  

In your view, how is this task an example of practice as research?

This task is an example of practice as research as the idea was to look at artists who use spectral morphing as a sample manipulation technique and to create a composition based around those techniques.

Autoevaluation: what mark would you give yourself for this task and why.

I would give myself 65% for this task as I feel its a good example of a study into transforming audio material but I feel the piece lacks originality in approach.

Bibliography

Wishart, T. (1986) Vox 5

Electroacoustic Composition Task 4

What your objective was in creating the music for your task.

My objective for this task was to create a piece of electroacoustic music based on the Text-Sound poetry style. I wanted to find a piece of spoken text and then take it completely out of its original context and affect it in some way. To achieve this, I found a video from YouTube demonstrating how to do a ‘transform’ scratch on a vinyl record. I looped part of the first sentence, which said ‘transforming works’. I then performed various transformation techniques on the audio until it become totally unrecognisable.

What well known composer’s approach you decided to adopt and how you modified it to suit your piece. Or, if you feel your approach is original, then explain what makes it so.

I decided to take Alvin Lucier’s approach from I am Sitting in a Room (1970) where he took a sentence and then affected it in such a way to demonstrate the sound of the room it was being played back into. I took this idea of taking a text and reforming it to take it out of its original context.

Note one particular audio technique you applied in this task which you had not applied before.

One audio technique, which I employed in this piece, was beat cutting but with a much larger amount of slices than usual. I used the BBCut library to realise this as well as a bit crusher plugin.

In your view, how is this task an example of practice as research?

This task is an example of practice as research as it has studied the work of various Text-Sound Poets and sought to create a new piece based around the ideas presented by them.

Autoevaluation: what mark would you give yourself for this task and why.

I would give myself 65% for this task as I feel it is a good example of a Text-Sound piece but it suffers from its relatively simple message. I feel that using a political statement would have far more suited the genre.

Bibliography

Lucier, A. (1970) I am Sitting in a Room

Electroacoustic Composition Task 3

What your objective was in creating the music for your task.

My objective for this task was to create a piece of electroacoustic music that took influence from the music originally planned for the Phillips Pavilion from the 1958 World’s Fair. Originally Phillips had planned to commission Britten based on his Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra to do a Young Person’s Guide to Electronic Music, highlighting what sounds were newly available to composers.

What well known composer’s approach you decided to adopt and how you modified it to suit your piece. Or, if you feel your approach is original, then explain what makes it so.

After reading The Tuning of the World (Shafer, 1977) I decided to adopt Schafer’s idea of a soundscape but use is metaphorically rather than literally. I chose to use the observed sounds from a beach and then apply them sounds to synthesis parameters.

Note one particular audio technique you applied in this task which you had not applied before.

One audio technique, which I employed in this piece, was using very simple synthdefs for each different sound. These were then called by tasks, which were manually started and stopped.

In your view, how is this task an example of practice as research?

This task is an example of practice as research as the composer is limited to the simple timbres available in this time period. This, like the last task gives a good idea of what composing electronic music would be like in the late 1950s.

Autoevaluation: what mark would you give yourself for this task and why.

I would give myself 65% for this task as I feel it is a good example of a study into the use of simple timbres. It also was a good exercise in using the idea of a soundscape as a forming device.

Bibliography

Scahfer, R, Murray. (1977) The Tuning of the World, Random House Inc
Electroacoustic Composition Task 2

The box that created most of the sounds and the SM57 that recorded them. Will replace with a better photo when i can find my camera.

What your objective was in creating the music for your task.

My objective for this task was to create a piece of electroacoustic music that took influence from earlier works of this kind in terms of the techniques and tools that were available. This meant using close mic techniques to record sounds and focusing more on live performance rather than highly edited music.

What well known composer’s approach you decided to adopt and how you modified it to suit your piece. Or, if you feel your approach is original, then explain what makes it so.

I adopted Pierre Schaeffer’s approach in cinq études de bruits (1948), which used simply arranged field recordings to create differing textures. My approach differs from Schaeffer’s in the way each texture greatly contrasts with one another. In his piece, the arrangement of sounds could be perceived as an arrangement of one large field recording where as my piece could be perceived more as a fictional soundscape with sinister undertones.

I also adopted Karlheinz Stockhausen’s approach in Mikrophonie I (1943), which concentrates on making as many different sounds from one sound source being a tamtam. My approach differs slightly in that there are several different items used but the concept of simple filtering and different microphone placements is the same.  

Note one particular audio technique you applied in this task which you had not applied before.

One audio technique, which I employed in this piece, was recording my laptop case with a very high gain setting and then making this as loud as possible. This created a very dusty/grainy type of sound, which sounds similar to the noise from an out of tune radio.

In your view, how is this task an example of practice as research?

This task is an example of practice as research as the composer is limited to which audio effects can be used. This along with background reading gives a good knowledge of what composing electronic music would be like in the late 4os.

Autoevaluation: what mark would you give yourself for this task and why.

I would give myself 65% for this task as I feel its a good example of a study into the early work of Pierre Schaeffer in terms of compositional techniques used but it suffers from much cleaner DSP and recordings which doesn’t help place it into that period aesthetically.

Here’s the link for my task. It’s best listened to on a decent pair of monitors rather than laptop speakers.

Bibliography

Schaeffer, P. (1948) Cinq études de bruits

Stockhausen, K. (1964) Mikrophonie

Electroacoustic Composition Task 1

Task 5 Write-Up

For this task, I used the band demo recording from task four as my source material. I initially begin by cutting in various parts and treating them with elastic time and chopping them up until I had some sounds that I found aesthetically pleasing.

I then just experimented with different plug-ins until I had sounds, which gelled together. I generally went for an ambient approach where all the automation was slow moving. I then went through the list of things to include in the piece and added in any, which I had missed.

The piece was solely completed in Pro-Tools so all of the automation of each parameter can be seen in the project itself. 4 of the plug-ins used were not standard with Pro-Tools. These are Moogerfooger ring modulator, Moogerfooger analogue delay, Joe Meek VC5 equalizer and Pitch.

Planning

For this task, myself and three other students elected to work with each other for each recording for ease of troubleshooting and speed. Between the four of us we could each competently play the standard instruments required for the task. I decided to record a cover rather than write an original, as I didn’t have the spare time to write a piece. After suggesting a few songs, I decided on Teenage Kicks, originally played by The Undertones.

Doing

We had one whole day booked (8 hours) out for all four of us to hopefully complete bass and drums. The first problem we had was that the drummer couldn’t set the drum kit up in the way he preferred in the drum room so we chose to put the drums in the chill room instead. Whenever I’ve previously recorded as a bass player, I’ve found that the best musical results are achieved when the rhythm section records at the same time. Because of the strange way in which we had to set the kit up, the players couldn’t see each other and recording with the door shut was not making either musician feel comfortable. So we chose performance over perfect separation and left the door open and immediately got a good take. As we were in a joint session, we had to record the rest of the parts the following week. The remaining parts were very simple and quick to put down but were fairly rushed due to having another joint session with other students.

Outcome

I’m fairly happy with the outcome but given more time I would’ve liked to source in a better drum kit for the recording as the university bass drum front skin was slightly damaged. I first put the E-602 just over the hole in the front of the skin. The sound was very “flappy”, largely due to the skin moving where it had been slightly torn. I then used my live sound experience and put the kick inside the bass drum near to the beater head. This is certainly not the best way to record a kick drum but it gave a result much better than outside of the drum. With time also being a huge factor, I elected to settle with the sound, as this style of music doesn’t demand a hugely prominent kick drum.

I also would’ve liked to use a condenser microphone on the guitar amp in addition to the SM57 and DI. Time again was unfortunately the contributing factor. Having the DI there though did allow for a much better guitar tone after it was run through the sans amp plug-in, giving two contrasting guitar tones. Having a condenser microphone for the guitar solo though would’ve captured more high end and thus made it sound much better.

Technique – AB

2 spaced omni-directional microphones

Stereo derived from time of arrival and level

Distance apart – 50cms

Distance from source – 90cms

This is my favourite sounding of the three techniques for guitar. It has a much more “rounded” sound than the others, which  have more excited mid or high range.

Technique – ORTF

2 spaced cardioids at 110 degrees

Stereo derived from time of arrival and volume

Distance apart – 17cms

Distance from source – 90cms.

Technique – Phased Array

2 spaced figure of 8 microphones parallel to each other.

Stereo derived from time of arrival and volume

Distance apart – 25cm

Distance from source – 90cm

Technique – AB

2 spaced omni-directional microphones

Stereo derived from time of arrival and volume

Distance Apart – 1.75m

Distance from source – 60cm

This is my preferred technique as the sound is much more defined and rounded. I also like that it slightly picks up the click from the pressing of the keys as this gives the recording an imperfect characteristic which is in this case more pleasant than a perfectly recorded upright.

Technique – Mid-Side

1 cardioid, 1 figure of 8.

Stereo derived from volume

Coincident pair

Distance from source – 40cm

Technique – NOS

30cm spaced cardioids at 90 degrees

Stereo derived from time of arrival and volume

Distance – Figure of 8 1m from piano, Cardioid 80cm – piano

I initially tried an experiment by adding a figure of of 8 mic to the NOS technique but chose not to include the figure of 8 as it clashed with the two cardioids too much. I’ve left the figure of 8 recording in the Pro Tools project for evidence/interest but have muted the track.

On the last week of laptop musicianship each group performed their pieces so that Julio could make notes and get a rough estimate of what sort of mark we will get. Our group met today to totally finish the work for the module. This meant scoring both pieces. Here is the score of our elements piece:

As you can see we adopted many of my previous photos into a concise score. Each colour represents an element as seen on the key. Everybody contributed to plotting the score except for me as I suggested that my artwork skills are relatively poor. To make up for this in terms of credit, I synchronised each part in a logic session and then mastered the mix.

Here is the score for our second piece:

For this we opted for a vertical timeline with each part well distinguished. We added the body round the outside to show the relevance to the story of echo. We discussed whether to add the story of echo in a text format on the score. We eventually decided not too as we felt that it was perhaps a bit cliché. I helped to draw this score, as it didn’t involve as much detail. I’m fairly positive though that anybody who tried could guess which parts I drew in knowing how terrible my drawing abilities are would almost certainly be correct. To have a synchronised pure sound for this piece would have taken a long time as some parts were played on the caps-lock keyboard in logic, some in Ixi Quarks and some in SuperCollider. We decided instead to use Tom’s Edirol portable recorder to capture the piece. Although it captured the piece extremely well, we didn’t experiment hugely with microphone placement so the result is that some parts are slightly too loud or quiet. Apart from this minor discrepancy in levels, i think that the mix is of a credible standard.

I’m really happy with the work we created for this module and hope that I can do a similar thing in other modules in some form. I feel that the module has immensely helped me in looking at other angles in composition and also that sometimes by restricting yourself; you can often achieve a far better piece. It’s also made me think about anticipation and the psychology of music a lot more.