Tarzanjay welcomes you

Hello folks this is where I will be posting my work for this subject.

Hope you find them interesting and helpful.

Any comments welcome.

Task 1: The video for this task was set by julio and the criteria was to put our own sounds to it.

I feel the sounds I have used contrast well with the images.

The dark sinister sense of the clip is captured right at the beginning. I started penetrating the blackness very slowly by using a violin bow on a ‘clean’ guitar to create a very thin gradual dissonance. I manipulated the guitar with a bit crusher to generate the fuzz of the valve amp, the bit crusher made the sound feel thinner than it normally would and gave a ‘broken’ distortion that portrays the darkness of the art in the video. I used variations of the bit-crush manipulated guitar sound combined with the sound of me blowing to create the pulsing blip that portrays the rotary motion of the fan. A book was used for the sound of the tape reel unravelling which I decided to repeat for the rest of the video as it brought in a minimal rhythmical feel that went along nicely with the flicker of black and white just before the end. For the flicker I added a delay and pitch-shifter onto the blip/crush sound to create a dissonant melody and make the flicker more dramatic.

Overall I am content and pleased with it.

Hope you like it

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

 Task two: For this task I wanted to keep the instruments very iconic to each of the characters. I used the alto sax for coyote because I thought it sounded slightly sinister but also had a comical effect against the cartoon. The bass symbolizes the roadrunner and I made a short melody as a motif which plays every time roadrunner enters the plot of the cartoon. I did not want to overcrowd the music with lots of instruments because I feel it would lose the relation between the characters. Instead I added a flute to create whatever feel I needed to fit the plot in the cartoon at the time. This also acted as an event indicator where the flute would carry the feel of the cartoon by accenting in melodic ways. I used the gentle dynamics of the violin when coyote falls asleep to create a soft ballad to reflect the contrasting situation that coyote is in as he walks off the cliff. I felt it absolutely necessary to get a live trombone to fit the part where coyote falls as I think it gives more power to the animation. I also used some modulation and pitch bend where I felt it was necessary to express an action during the cartoon. For coyote’s footsteps I created a low squishy synth sound to reflect on the sly and comic nature of coyote’s endless failures. All of the voiceover parts and sound effects were done by me except for the iconic ‘meep-meep’ of roadrunner. I decided to add some voice just to give some areas of the cartoon more life to improve the comic effect.

again please leave a comment

Task 3: I wanted something fun to keep me enthusiastic about making music for a commercial so I chose this one. It felt challenging as I had to get the beat just right and timing was everything. Obviously I could not just have a beat, I gave the commercial life by making robotic sounds out of various materials I had lying around. I used my nails on my jeans for one sound which I modulated and granulized to give it a robotic tone. I manipulated my alarm clock to create the beep noises. Some of them were samples that I cut up from the radio sounds in garageband. The setting in the commercial is outside so l used a recording of the street by my house to create the necessary atmosphere needed to bring the commercial up to media standards. To make the commercial more memorable I added a synth melody which I think ties the piece together and adds a narrative between the viewer and the quirky dancing robot. I kept the click at the end because I wanted it to represent a jingle or audio logo which I think works really well.

Tasks four and five: This is an excerpt from the film Kung Fu Hustle. I decided to put the sound design and the music tasks together because I feel it is more challenging to get the balance right and it is good practice if I ever went into sound and music for any media. I’ll talk about the sound design first. The eagle sound was a sample I found on the internet as it is hard to do my own real recording of an eagle. For the hand clasp I made a ’swooshy’ sound with my voice and edited it with EQ and pitch plug-ins. I recorded all of the voice overs by myself which was fun but might be insulting to someone who speaks mandarin, I added a small amount of reverb and pitch shifted the female voice to make it sound more genuine. The fire crackle is a mix of gas hobs, a grill, a real fire and the sound of my boiler turning on. To get the dynamics right for the fire I used more EQ and a mix of high and low pass filters, I layered it three times and added some reverb on one of them to unify all the sound nicely. The explosion uses a brick, lots of rubble/stones falling, a rumble sound with my voice and a big bag of rice being thrown on the floor. I stretched my voice and the rubble falling so I had two copies of each. I used low and high pass filters to get the boom and clarity of the rubble falling. EQ was used and reverb to smoothen the sound of the bricks and to boost the low end of my voice and the bag of rice. I layered many tracks and pitch shifted each one to make different partials which created a dense cluster of sound. I created the wind sound with logic synths and used envelopes to change the sound of the wind so it seems more realistic. For the crack in the floor I crumpled some paper and did a small amount of EQ just to get a better sound. I added a thunder sound for when the bad guy gets blown down and the floor cracks. For the clothing that flaps in the wind I held two pairs of boxer shorts and shuck them together as fast I could, some EQ, reverb and compression was added to help it fit nicely in the mix. 

I wanted the music to be dramatic and heroic but it also needed to reflect the picture accurately so I also wanted to keep the texture faintly eastern but give it a Hans Zimmer style soundtrack. I made a very high pitch synth that resonates, this is symbolic to the power that the hero gains as he is floating in the sky, It is also used to represent his power at the end of the scene when the hero comes out of the fire and opens his palm. After this first section the hero starts to fall, I bring in timpany drums which have a powerful sound and remind me of battle drums before war, this signifies the beginning of the end and the hero’s monumental drop from the sky. I let the cut of each scene dictate the timing as to keep the music related with the picture. The timpany and a trumpet are used to build up tension and suspense in order to keep the listener expecting something bigger. I then bring in a whole string section starting with an arpeggio to pick up the pace as the hero is now falling at high speed. Again I have used the camera changes to change the trumpet note, I thought it would work well if i had a low drone over the arpeggio to further enhance the battle feel of the scene. More violins enter over the arpeggio but this time they are playing very high notes accenting the arpeggio to create the suspense and fear that the bad guy is feeling, I thought it would be a good contrast to represent both personalties as the scene depicts a battle between two people. To finish I thought it would work nicely if I created a rhythm with all the instruments working together to bring the scene to a climax.

Task six: The criteria was to create a short musical interpretation of a set painting. We were allowed to choose our own so I chose a cubist painting of a classical guitar. I was inspired by the piece Music of Changes ( John Cage, 1951). This composition is structured completely by the tossing of coins, In the book ‘Audio Culture’ edited by  Christoph Cox and Daniel Warner Cage criticizes indeterminate compositions such as his own that are “indeterminate with respect to their composition” but “determinate with respect to their performance. I believe in the indeterminate method with respect to its performance, this means that I will not structure this piece personally but I will leave it up to another ‘power’ to determine the outcome of the performance. As this was a cubist painting I thought a good way to achieve this ‘chance process’ was to cut up the individual parts of the painting and number them. This way I could devise an operation that determines the order of which parts would enter during the performance, therefore shifting the structural process to an indeterminate power. My process was to simply number bits of paper and pull them out of a hat. 

To keep a relation and narrative between the painting and the music I bought a classical guitar and began to play the specific point on the guitar that corresponded to the pieces of the painting. This brings in an abstract and acousmatic experience, focusing on the timbrel and percussive elements of the guitar. I used a stick for some sections, a serrated comb, a ball made of socks and a spoon for the percussive elements. I also thought of making the sections in loops of ten seconds as there were about ten sections so it will guarantee at least one minute of music, the loops would also make it easier for the listener to notice the new timbres and textures being introduced. I feel the mood and narrative overall fits really well with the colours and style of the painting and I am pleased with the result.

Task seven:  This was the first jitter that was set. The aim was to demonstrate an understanding of jitter by effecting the colors of a matrix through musical gesture. I wanted to use randomly generated sounds to demonstrate the intensity of the colors changing. I made three kslider objects to represent red, green and blue in a matrix and attached to each one was its own metro set to a specific timing. From each Kslider I made a random object that chose between 0-8, I then made a select list for which I defined eight different numbers to output through a scale object that was set to (scale 0 12 0 255). This scaled the small numbers so they would fit the entire range of the colors in the matrix. I made bangs from the metros so the patch would operate continuously. I also made a pgmout and sent parameters from one Kslider into it to change the sound.

Task eight: For this task I needed to make something more interactive to demonstrate an understanding of Jitter and Max as a user interface. I came across the ‘PolyColorBlend’ object and realised that the matrix it uses must output variables. This object worked by holding the mouse over the window and dragging in any direction. By using the ‘Jit.3m’ object I was able to see and manage the variables outputted from this object. I decided to use two matrix panels one blue one red and put them either side of the ‘PolyColorBlend’ object. To relate the images with the user I scaled the output from the ‘Jit.3m’ object so that the matrix would output a shade of blue or red in a dark to light ratio depending on whether the variable going in was small or large ( so from 0 to 255). This way if the user dragged down the color would darken and would lighten if the user dragged up. I used this method for the ‘PolyColorBlend’ object by sending three different variables to the RGB input to make the shape change color. I added a flush button to reset the object to give the user more control and also a ‘pgmout’ object that works with the same low to high ratio so the user has a better feel for what they are controlling. For some extra melodic substance I made some chords that would be triggered if the mouse was dragged into the right places, these act as markers for the user so they can drag between them to create a chord progression. The melodic texture is gained from going left to right as if directly using a piano, I thought keeping the ‘kslider’ would also help the user to see what they are doing. Overall I feel I have made a fun and interesting musical interface that is simple in theory but complicated in practice and takes a few try’s to get the hang of. I also feel that the physical connection the user has to the visuals increases the enjoyment because they are more connected with what is happening.