Tarzanjay welcomes you

Here I will write about what I have learned during lectures each week!

WK2

I am starting to understand that there is a lot more to acousmatic diffusion than just playing with faders!

I learned about setting up the 8.1 surround system which we are going to diffuse with, choosing which speakers go into what input is all important and can mean the difference between a successful diffusion and a bad one. Every diffuser has their own styles and techniques which dictate the setup process. Always remember safety first and an organised cable system is more helpful and efficient if something isn’t working than having to de-knot or follow every wire to find the problem. The yamaha digital mixer is the most confusing mixer i have come across but i have learned about the different inputs/outputs and auxilliary/groups that you can take advantage of. I am used to panning with the faders as I have done some diffusing last semester in the electroacoustic ensemble module but the interface of the yamaha is different to the analog mixer so some hands on practice is needed to best get to grips with the digital mixer.

Other pointers I noted are:

* When performing do not just have sound panning all over the place at random, instead keep movements well structured and relevant in order to keep the listener expecting something.

* Have consistency in your sounds and when performing

* Think of what you want to achieve when choosing and structuring your sounds

* Get to know the dynamics and morphology of your sounds 

* ‘Spectro Morphology‘ – The characteristics of the frequencies in your sounds

                                     – The differences and changes within the frequencies when moving and blending                                              into other sounds

* Always practice moving your sounds and using different techniques to get the best movement and feel from your composition.

* A piezo microphone can be handy in recording hard to reach sounds or doing things that ordinary microphones can not. For example recording the melting of ice inside an ice bucket.

 

WK3

Today we set up as usual and took it in turns to diffuse a composition called ‘Clarinet Strings’ by Dennis Smalley. The piece consisted of a single clarinet but it portrayed various techniques which were manipulated in different ways to create an acousmatic experience. During this practice we were taught about controlling the faders. When fading from one to another make sure you bring one right up before you bring another down in order to create a better movement, otherwise a drop in volume happens between the speakers which extinguishes the feel of the composition, this is because the sound moving dissipates and the drop in volume becomes apparent to the listener during the listening process breaking the flow of the sound. At the end of the lecture we were assigned into groups and we were to decide on what piece of acousmatic music we were going to diffuse for next week and address our reasons why. 

Pointers:

* Two techniques for panning sounds; 2 faders up then 1 down. 1 fader up and 1 down

* The paradyme of MIDI is event based.

* Dennis Smalley can spend up to four hours alone in a room practicing his diffusion techniques!

 

WK4

Today we listened to pieces of acousmatic music that the groups had chosen. My group chose the Ouverture section of Robert Normandeau’s ‘Clair de Terre’. The song is split into many sections or ‘chapters’ and Ouverture is the first chapter in Normandeau’s epic composition. I feel the diffusion went well and everyone had a try on the mixer, it is clear that in order to be fully prepared for diffusing your own piece some outside learning practice is needed. We were set another task for next week which was to select another piece of acousmatic music or start on our own piece and diffuse it next lecture.

We chose the piece for these reasons;

- Ryhtmical elements

- eerie sounds ‘Distopia’

- almost like music for a sci-fi horror

- Mixes a range of musical ideas and acousmatic sound

Pointers:

* Jot down timings whilst listening to your own composition to help when diffusing

* It is good to bring all faders up at times to give you some space to think

* You can decide to keep the faders up a small amount to keep the sound in the environment so the room is kept warm.

 

WK5

Today we had another try at diffusing more acousmatic music, My group chose another piece by Normandeau called ‘Cadre Large’, it consists of energetic rhythms and mainly focuses on the bagpipes. What I thought was interesting was how the bagpipes created an arabic, atmospheric feel which changes the stereotypical idea of the bagpipes being a scottish culture. The piece is meant to be an outro to the entire composition and i think it acts as a climax that draws the journey through sounds to a close very well. We practiced panning the sounds diagonally, this achieves a nice affect which can surprise the listener as they may not expect the sound to jump behind them. I am getting used to using the faders now and the setup today was much better as inputs 1, 2, 3 and 4 represented front left, front right, back right and back left. The same was apparent in the four smaller speakers placed in between the larger speakers in the corners of the room. This allowed me to pan sound around the room easier because it was easier to keep a mental note of speaker position and fader changes as the setup made a clockwise circle which seemed more intuitive.

Pointers

* Beethovens sketchbooks illuminate the creative process – Keep my own log of ideas.

* Melotron – an early keyboard that uses pre-made tape to playback sounds.

* Chamberlain -Another tape based loop player

* Raymond Scott’s – orchestral machine

* Use sounds rhythmically 

* It is important to mix the levels well and master down thinking about the variation in frequency e.g. too little bass or too much treble. A well balanced variation of frequencies is more interesting to listen too as it offers more for the ears 

 

WK6

This week was all about the ‘working composer’ which is the ideology of putting oneself into the composing level without having an idea first. I have tried this a few times but not in a serious way, It usually comes from having some fun with friends and playing instruments together which surprisingly is something I do less now I am at University, maybe it is because this course focuses more on the technology side and I spend more time making music for university in front of my laptop and less time playing instruments for leisure. I think this is effectively the working composer only that when working there are already criteria for guidance which would transcribe into the real world anyway saying for example putting sound effects to a film or making music for an advert. However using this for acousmatic composing would be different as there are no specific creative processes involved, just the acousmatic philosophy of ‘Noise Sound’. I see how it could work as sometimes giving oneself an idea could cause problems if it is too ambitious or too contextually thin, and sometimes it can be frustrating to even come up with a plausible idea. One problem with not having any idea is that a medley of sounds could be created that are not associated with each other and would blur the narrative as the composition would not have a clear connection with the listener, therein invalidating the purpose of acousmatic listening. I think this ideology of spontaneity can theoretically produce something special but not always.

* Divshare – upload sound and video

* Panning and setting up logic in surround

* Examinations will be in the recital hall

* Kiki – Clocks – talked about granular manipulation, speed up and slow down, time and stress. A good paradigm

* Ollie – Drone – based around electric guitar, screechy, intense, good development of narrative

* Andrew – Partial frequencies, spacious, minimal, confined, eerie, rhythmic.

Wk7

This week was all about form as a creative process, we discussed what form is and we were encouraged to think outside the box. Form has many identities and many famous composers have had there own opinion on what it means and what it actually is, my hypothesis is that form has many degrees. Form is structure, process, identity and consistency. To deliver a message or feeling to the listener a composition needs a narrative, this would be a derivative of form because there has been a process involved to create the narrative, be it in tonality or arrangement or simply an emotion. Form has derived from expression since the beginning of music as composers wanted to express their emotions in specific ways therefore thinking about how they would achieve this in there compositions, the act of even thinking would be a form. It is the birth of form that created different styles of music which we now call genre’s. Expression must contain form as to express ones feelings certain characteristics are transmitted into the compositional process. Form is in every genre of music for example electroacoustic music is a mix of electronic instruments and acoustic instruments, even if the narrative of an electroacoustic composition is hard to see, a basic form is in the mix of electronic and acoustic sounds. Serialism uses calculation and numbers as its form. Chance music uses pre-determined sounds that are randomly generated by a set of processes, this would be the form. Is it possible to have no form? I believe it is not possible because any composer has a subconscious level pushing their creative train of thought, a pre-cognitive nature to transmit something to the listener and to arrange sounds in a certain way would be one’s natural progression. This nature of a composer would be their form. Form is subconscious pre-determinacy. Form will always be changing as new genres of music are appearing all the time and new music technology will always be changing the way we express ourselves.

 

PROJECTS

Prologue

 My original idea for the first task was to create a soundscape based around traveling through space from the dawn of the big bang up until modern day. I imagined myself as an entity being catapulted from an explosion and pass by the debris only to crash through an atmosphere of some newly developed planet millions of years on and then plummet into the sea. The second part would be making my way onto land and witnessing every age of man such as cave, stone, industrial etc and ending through modern age back into space. The idea for the composition was to be really detailed in my sounds so the listener felt like they were actually there and could get engrossed in the soundscape, but as I gave it more thought I realised that the piece would need to be around fifteen to twenty minutes long but obviously that was too long for one task. Thinking about what kind of sounds I would like to use and how I could relate them with each section became a lot trickier because the detail in the narrative would be huge. It was clear I would need to hold back on an extravegant fifteen minute composition. I decided to note down some key ideas to make clear sections and to help me make decisions on what to compose.

 

Explosion

passing by objects in space

Entering an atmosphere

crashing into the sea

thrown onto land

face the elements 

through the ages

 

It was apparent that in order to fully capitalise on this idea I would need to split the composition into two so I could focus on small details. I also decided that I would scrap the journey through the ages idea so the first composition would be in space and the second would be on earth. For the space composition I thought of mechanical and technology and for the earth composition I would focus on the elements water, fire, earth and wind. When I had this thought the contrasting idea became apparent, I would use only man-made materials for the first task and all natural elements and sounds for the second. With this in mind I set about recording lots of different sounds around my home and outside.

 

Composition one: Dead Space

Narrative: Space shuttle takes off and breaks through the atmosphere, once in space the 4 fuel pods it used to get into space drop off. There is a little rest while the shuttle calculates it flight path and starts to fly very fast past debris and into debris through space. The shuttle eventually picks up a strange signal and the crew decide to travel at warp speed in the hope of finding the origins of the signal, the shuttle enters the harsh atmosphere of the alien planet and eventually lands. The shuttle doors open and the crew start walking around, A siren is heard in the background and suddenly creatures making strange noises start circling the crew. They appear to be harmless so the crew carry on investigating the new planet.

The main sounds that this composition is based around are a washing machine and a kettle boiling. The result was really interesting because when I closed my eyes and listened to them both together I imagined it could be the sound of an engine or a blast of power, the kettle also has a very ambient sound on its own and I thought I could use it to represent the sound of a spaceship and the density of the air in space around the ship. The washing machine is used to emphasise the power of the spaceships thrust. The kettle is the first sound you hear and stays for the entire duration of the composition, the washing machine is the warping sound from around 13 seconds. I use this throughout the composition too but I have enveloped the volume to give dynamics to the sound representing different speeds in space. I enveloped channel EQ and various pitch transforming plug-ins to manipulate the sound of the kettle and the washing machine in different places, according to the demand of the narrative for sections within the composition. Other sounds used are a metallic cat ornament which is made up of coiled and springy metal, I recorded myself hitting the ornament against other materials such as concrete and metal. The recorded sounds of this object are used at around 45 seconds and repeat 4 times, this represents the canisters of the space shuttle dropping off once the shuttle is in orbit. I also used this sound from around 58 seconds up to around 1 min 19 to represent objects passing the shuttle and hitting against it. Another use of the metallic cat was its resonance which is apparent for both of the previously stated sections but also at around 1 min 15, where I manipulate the long resonance with phase distortion and vocal transformer plug-ins via envelopes. This represents the strange signal that the crew pick up. At around 1 min 40 seconds I have manipulated the kettle sound with EQ and pitch shifting envelopes to make it sound like rain on metal and gusty winds to give the listener a better feel of the harsh atmosphere of the alien planet. At around 1 min 50 I used the impact sound of bricks hitting concrete combined with the metal ornament to represent the shuttle landing. At 1 min 55 I used the metal ornament again to represent the crew opening the hatch on the shuttle. During this part the siren enters in the background which is made from blowing across a glass bottle top and enveloping pitch shifter plug-ins. The footsteps from 1 min 58 onwards are pebbles from a beach which I recorded during my stay in lowestoft, I enveloped some more pitch shifter to change the depth of the sound in order to keep changing the texture which is important when repeating sounds. The final alien sounds were done with the glass bottle by tapping it with a pen and blowing over the top then some pitch shifting and phase distortion envelopes were added. The panning in the piece was mainly used to emphasise certain aspects of the composition such as the movement of the shuttle as the canisters drop off, the passing by of objects in space, the direction of the wind and the placement of the creatures. I wanted to create an atmosphere and give the listener a sense of being right in the middle so they felt close to the narrative.

 

 

Composition two: Morphanature

Narrative: This piece was influenced by spanish sound artist Francisco López (1964-) and his work on the environmental soundscape in Latin American rainforests. He makes the connection with Pierre Schaeffers concept of “acousmatic listening” in the book Audio Culture edited by Cox and Warner and says although “rainforests are full of sound, the sources of these sounds (insects, birds, monkeys etc.) remain largely hidden.” I wanted to try this practice using various environments to capture natures main elements: Water, fire, wind and earth because it intrigued me and interested me, especially when listening back to the recorded sounds and the tonality and textures within them. I also wanted to make use of spectromorphology to link the sound in a seamless way, Dennis Smalley (1946-) uses this term to describe the processes he takes when making acousmatic music. Spectromorphology represents the developments of sounds in time and the transformations that the sounds undertake to eventually become a new sound with new frequency parameters. I thought this would make good transitions and would help define the sections in a softer more subtle way.

The Main aspects of this composition are the sea, birds, twigs, fire and wind which is prominent throughout the entire piece. For the sea I travelled to Lowestoft which is right on the east coast and spent a few hours walking up and down recording different areas of the beach. One thing I noticed is the difference in texture of each wave as they crash on the shore, the surface of the shore line was directly defining this texture for example pebbles would create a rainmaker effect as the waves crashed and ebbed over them on its way back into the sea. The sound of the wave crashing onto sand would create a hissy swelling each one completely unique as the volume of each wave would change. It was nice sitting at my desk listening to the 30 minutes of waves I had recorded so inevitably it was a hard task to choose only a minutes worth for the composition. For this I had to think about what I wanted to achieve, Something with gentle but also strong textures and variants of each. Eventually I had my favorite segments which I edited together to give me my first section. I then defined the sound to produce a better tone and get rid of any background noise with EQ. For the manipulation of the sea I double tracked it and moved one slightly out of time to the other to create a subtle delay/phase effect and used a speech enhancer plug-in, which had a denoise function that gave the sound an underwater feel. I used envelopes to change the dB level of the denoise effect. To add a little more texture to the section I granularised a pebble recording I had made and enveloped pitchshifter plug-ins to create variation. I also used this technique on pebbles to act as an outro to this section, using dense reverb at first to sound like the pebbles were underwater then ‘drying’ the sound as it makes the transition from the sea to land. I pitch shifted this part from low to high in small intervals to emphasise the (coming out of the water) transition. The morphing of this section in to the birds section was quite tricky as waves sound nothing like birdsong. For this I used the speech enhancer plug-in and changed the variable noise type with envelopes in places to take the normal sound of the waves away, this made the sound very dense but also gave a trickling water sound that had some high frequencies in it. I then used the noise type, denoiser and also the pitch and formant variables in the vocal transformer plug-in for the first part of the bird section to get a sound like squarking underwater. With these parameters on envelopes I was able to slowly transform the sound of the sea into sounding the same as the manipulated birdsong, then it was a case of bringing the envelopes back to a neutral position to signify the next section. For the second section which starts just after 1 min 30s I wanted to create a feeling of dense forest and earthy sounds. For this I layered different recordings of birdsongs I had gathered from Cambridge, Lowestoft and Cheshire to create a hive of different textures. It was tricky choosing which parts of the recordings were the most effective as there are so many different sounds made by birds, but with lots of patience and careful editing I had my different layers. Before I started manipulating these I used EQ to get rid of any background noise and bring out the higher frequencies that birds sing at. For the bird sections I used a range of plug-ins to manipulate the sound: Denoiser, reverb, phase distortion, modulation delay, flanger, speech enhancer and vocal transformer were used to enhance certain aspects of the birdsong but also to distort and change the sound, in order to explore the frequencies (high and low) that the birds are incapable of reaching to make it interesting to listen to as this would not be how we hear bird calls usually. Nearly halfway through this section at around 1 min 55s I start to fade in the sound I recorded of dry leaves being rustled which I layered twice and moved slightly out of sync to create a subtle delay effect which is barely noticeable. I used this to create a clearer forest texture for the listener to make the soundscape more believable. During the second section I bring in the sound of me snapping twigs at around 2 min 41s, I found after listening back to it that the sound of snapping twigs is incredibly like fire when wood crackles so I decided to use it as the transition into the next section which was to be fire. To make a morphological transition I used the denoiser envelope on the twigs to get to the same frequency as the fire and then slowly faded the fire in. A simple transition but I found that it worked very well, I tried it on some friends and they thought that the twigs snapping was actually fire so that satisfied my pedantic nature. The third section starts just after 3 min 5s and concludes this composition. For this section I made a small, controlled fire in my back garden and recorded it getting louder and quieter. I left the microphone on record as I kept feeding the fire more bits of dry wood. Again I edited out the bits with outside interference and used EQ to brighten the sound of the fire. I layered three different recordings of the fire over each other but on separate tracks so I could use different manipulation techniques for each track. The plug-ins I used are tape delay, flanger and fuzz-wah. For this section I wanted to tap into the poppy and crackly textures that are so dominant when listening to fire, but I also wanted to bring the listeners attention to these sounds at different frequencies and the impact that they have when being listened too. Overall I wished to create an experience for the listener that ties together sounds that come from nature and to emphasise the beauty of these purely natural sounds. I would like to try and create something similar to this again but without any time restrictions so i could really expand on the various textures and tonality that our natural world has to offer. This composition has inspired me to use natural acousmatics for a part of my dissitation as i feel the power that these sounds have over the listener are very influential in effecting mood.