Project - CC1

For this project I just used three sounds; a door being shut, the noise of a mobile phone signal (that annoying one you always hear coming out of electric devices) and the voice of one of my friends.
There were several parts to this composition of mine. My main intention was to change the sounds pretty dramatically and observe the effects of different softwares, plug-ins and devices. In some cases I also used the real-time change of particular devices. For example, I stretched the time of the door sound from 1 second to around 50 seconds, applied phaser to it and recorded the result while I was changing the parameter of the LFO amount on the phaser.
I also used panning, muting, reversing and other applications like these quite frequently in my tune.
The tune is about a dream; it is called “Pleasant nightmare”. It starts with the door being shut, goes on with the sound of door being delayed (not consistently; I changed the delay time and recorded it real-time) and having other sounds on top of it.
The track finished by a lady saying something (!) about good news, the door being shut again and the sound of an answering machine.
In total, it was a really interesting project I have done so far; especially when I lost my entire pro-tools session and I had to redo it again.

Nice semester ending.

HERE is my final MP3 track...

And here is the score for this dude.. :

Project - AA1

My final project was the recording of a song by the band “Anathema” from their 1999 album Judgement. The song is called “Parisienne Moonlight”.
Having no drum tracks, Amy Sincock did the vocals for me, Nathan Shea played bass and Douglas Loudon played guitars and piano.
For vocals, I used two microphones, a Neumann U 87 condenser and a Sennheiser MD-421 dynamic. The interesting issue was that the U 87 picked up so much reverb from the recording venue (studio 5) and I actually found it quite useful because the reverb plug-ins for pro-tools are not satisfying enough (or at least I don’t know how to get a good sound out of them yet). However, the MD421 picked a pretty much drier sound compared to U87.
I recorded bass through DI. Using Avalon pre-amp I got a relatively decent and fat sound of bass.
For acoustic guitar, I used two Neumann NT5 microphones and got a result of a wide and fat sound.
The electric guitar was recorded using a Shure SM58 and a Sennheiser MD421 microphone. In general, I found MD421 one of the handiest microphones around.
For the piano I used two NT5s and two U87s. The technique of using these U87s was the middle-side technique which provided me with a very wide and good stereo sound.

The process of production was a long story. In most of the cases, to have a wide sound, I doubled a particular mono track and then panned each of these two tracks to right and left. It is also notable that I inverted the phase of one of these two channels in order to get that stereo and wide sound.
Unfortunately, and as a result of me having few experiences in recording, I faced many difficulties in terms of having parts of my recordings distorted or not being able to apply the proper effect n the appropriate time and so on. But the good side of the story is that I learned a lot during the process of recording and production, which would be very handy later.

HERE is my final MP3 track...

These are the documents for this project:
- Pre Production
- Production
- Recording

Week 12 - CC1

This week doesn't have an exercise!
Here is my Pre-Production sheet for the project of this semester.
To see the enlarged picture, click on it!

Reference:
- Christian Haines 'Creative Computing I' Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 31/05/2007.

Week 12 - AA1

This week’s exercise was to re-mix the Eskimo Joe track “New York” again. This time with reverb, compressors and mastering plug-in.
The to me, the important part of the exercise was how these effects were supposed to be chained. The order of putting these effects is important, according to Christian. I personally use compressor as the last effect on tracks, because there might be unwanted frequencies caused by some device and the compressor controls all of them.
I also used delay and reverb; not for all tracks though. I used delays for one of the guitars and reverbs for the vocal tracks. At the end, it was compressor, which was used for a group of tracks and also the final master track.
30 seconds of the final result could be found HERE.

Another interesting exercise of our this week was to GROUP several tracks in protools and apply effects and changes on mixing to them simultaneously.As shown in the picture above, it is relatively easy to do the job and determine either the tracks are going to be changed together in terms of the effects applied on them, or the mix, or both.

My references are as same as the last week's! I still think the material stated in these references are valid for this week's exercise as well.

References:
- Halbersberg, Elianne ‘The underdogs’, Mixing Magazine (Accessed [20.05.2007]), (http://mixonline.com/recording/mixing/audio_underdogs/)
- Steven Fieldhouse 'Audio Arts I' Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 29/05/2007.
- Drury, Brandon: ‘Music Mixing Technique’, Recording Review (Accessed [20.05.2007]), (http://www.recordingreview.com/articles/articles/59/1/Music-Mixing-Trick-Run-Everything-Through-A-Delay/Delay-Effects-Can-Bring-Excitement-To-Your-Music.html)

Week 11 - Forum

Construction and destruction in music;That was the topic of this week’s forum; however, many other (and in few cases non-relevant) issues popped up and were discussed in the session.
Simon Whitelock (the dude that accused me of not having any understanding of mainstream western music) was the first to present his ideas. He –as a DJ- has enough experience –and therefore qualifications- to comment on other’s “cover” works and the way they manipulate songs initially composed, arranged and performed by someone else.
He said that in many cases, the result is good but the way they –again- manipulate others’ tunes is not particularly justified (or as he addressed it, it’s just “Jacking” stuff!). I can agree with him on the point that many musicians gain their reputation and success “because” of something that they haven’t really been involved in. In other words, many icons (for example Crazy Frog) owe all their success to another person; they just have been wise enough to use the best thing and give the best shot in the right time and right place, but..
I also do believe that the intelligence needed for such an act could be appreciated; at least I appreciate it. In the session, I took the example of an anonymous musician who just becomes popular because some famous person takes his or her song and introduces it to public. (What Madonna did with Mirwais) and I think both parties are happy and the issue is a “win-win” game. However, due to freedom of speech and all these stuff everyone can have his/her own opinion; especially in a highly subjective issue of music.
Nathan Shea went second and expressed his opinions on a “death-metal” composer who was strongly spending effort NOT to come up with something mainstream, pop-sounding and commercial. In his viewpoint, numerous works of musicians working in fields of death-metal, black-metal and other “prefix”-metal genres were examples of deconstructing rules and mainstream portrait. I almost completely agree with him but I think there are few other examples which could be added to this; Many of musicians who basically “started” a new genre or/and eventually became icons of that particular genre (Jimi Hendrix, Curt Cobain, Ozzy, etc..) were breaking rules and ordinary settings of popular music in the first place, anyway. I think the values and benefits of “deconstructing what is supposed to be the rule” is not exclusive to black or death metal.
John Delany went third and talked about the fact of deconstruction (or might be construction!) of music in order to produce ambient (or particularly in the case of the music he played “scary”) themes for movies. He introduced and talked about the use of non-ordinary sounds in the context of a sound theme. In my opinion he was focusing on the impact of the whole idea of construction and deconstruction in music and its result which not just necessarily is bad, but also is listenable and enjoyable in many particular cases.
Although I am a big fan of ambient music, I don’t think I am qualified enough to comment on this idea that much. I do agree with John that making music while deconstruction rules, or sounds could possibly result in a valuable and creative (and also good-sounding) tune but I can also think of many cases in which the experiments of destruction, mainly in ambient music have resulted in tunes which don’t really sound good to me!

References:
Whitelock, S. "Forum week 11", at University of Adelaide, 24/05/2007
Shea, N."Forum week 11", at University of Adelaide, 24/05/2007
Delaney, J. "Forum week 11", at University of Adelaide, 24/05/2007

Week 11 - CC1

This week’s exercise was to continue working with the software Metasynth.

Apparently the algorithm by which the software works is sort-of CPU-consuming. The reason for that is the numerous times that the computer crashed. Apple computers have a good reputation of NOT crashing so I can’t blame the computer; it’s the software’s fault.
I don’t really know if the following exercise is the fifth or sixth time I actually did the job (refer to the issue of crashing)

1^st step of mine was to take a sound sample and derive it into Metasynth. I used a vocal sample of the recording of Audio Arts’ week 11. I normalised and got rid of the empty spaces (rests) using the software Audacity.Having put the result in the room “Spectrum Synth” of Metasynth, I rendered the result and saved it as an AIFF file to use it in the sequencer section of the software.
For sequencing, I needed few sound files so I chopped the result of the 2^nd step into 5 different files and used the “Sampler” of the “Sequencer” room of Metasynth.
This is how the sampler looks like. As apparent in the picture, I have 5 different files which are automatically recognised by the software. I just needed to address the folder in which the files were saved.
The last part of my job was to use the applications available in the “Montage” room of Metasynth. The entire idea looked like “Music Concrete” to me. I don’t really know how relevant that concept is to this exercise but I had an extremely hard time with Metasynth and I don’t really want to think about the relation of my ideas and the software.
You can hear the final result HERE.

I strongly advice everyone to avoid using this software, unless its bugs are fixed.

References:
- "Metasynth" software official website (Accessed [31.05.2007]), (www.metasynth.com)
- Christian Haines 'Creative Computing I' Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 24/05/2007.
- "Audacity" the software's official website (Accessed [31.05.2007]), (http://audacity.sourceforge.net)

Week 11 - AA1

This week’s exercise was to mix down the song “New York” by “Eskimo Joe” in 3 different forms;
For the first sample, I chose to mix the song totally dry (no effects) just using the main audio tracks of the session in pro-tools provided to us.
In addition to be dry, this sample is a mono audio track; therefore there is no panning used in it.



2nd sample of mine, is another dry mixing, but stereo and including some pannings (of the vocal track, guitars, keyboards, etc.



The only difference between 3rd sample and the last two is the usage of equaliser on it. I didn't equalise all the tracks, though. I EQed the drums (kick, overead, etc.), the vocals, the bass, the guitars and the main intro piano.




Personally, I found the 2nd sample more “natural” whereas the equalised one sounded a little “artificial” to me; however, I think I needed some reverb to be satisfied with the sound.

References:
- Halbersberg, Elianne ‘The underdogs’, Mixing Magazine (Accessed [20.05.2007]), (http://mixonline.com/recording/mixing/audio_underdogs/)
- Steven Fieldhouse 'Audio Arts I' Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 22/05/2007.
- Drury, Brandon: ‘Music Mixing Technique’, Recording Review (Accessed [20.05.2007]), (http://www.recordingreview.com/articles/articles/59/1/Music-Mixing-Trick-Run-Everything-Through-A-Delay/Delay-Effects-Can-Bring-Excitement-To-Your-Music.html)

Week 10 - CC1

This week’s exercise was to work with the software Metasynth and experiment the different effects it applies to the sound.
For the initial sound, I used the quote from last week, the “We become what we…” and inserted it in Metasynth.
As apparent in the picture below, the software has six different “rooms” and each of them works with different effects and changes the sound in a different way.I used the “effects room” and I applied effects “Pitch and time”, “Echo”, “Stereo Echo”, “Reverb”, “Resonator”, “Harmonics”, Stretch”, Harmonise”, “Phaser” and “Flanger”. Some of these effects’ functions are obvious like “Pitch and Time” which changes the pitch and (as a result of the change in the frequency) the time duration of the sample. “Stretch” changes the time duration of the sample according to the settings by the user. (I could not observe its function properly because I had affected the initial sample of mine using other effects prior to Stretch and it was a bit hard to precisely realise this particular effect’s effects.)
“Harmonics” adds harmonics (with regards to the key indicated and controlled-by-the-user in the software) to the basic pitchers (or rather frequencies)
One of the specialities of this software is the use of curves and manually-set diagrams to indicate the way the effect manipulates the sound.
I randomly drew curves and checked the results out.
After finishing my work in the “effects room”, I recorded the result using pro-tools. (Later I found out that I could have saved the file in AIFF format using Metasynth itself.)
“Image Synth” is another room in Metasynth where the information of generating sound is taken from an image. Again I came up with a random image and checked the result. I figured out that the vertical axis is used for the frequency; ie. The higher in the axis you go, the higher frequency you will get. The horizontal axis is for time. Because I applied a filter (which is another pre-set picture used as a filter) to my image, the beginning of the sample contains fewer frequencies and therefore it sounds like a fade-in. (which is well logical!)
I think because I almost used all the possible frequency range, my final waveform was like a rectangle, again pretty logical!I recorded this sample using pro-tools as well as shown in the picture below.

References:
- "Metasynth" software official website (Accessed [23.05.2007]), (www.metasynth.com)
- Christian Haines 'Creative Computing I' Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 17/05/2007.
- Krabye, Helge : ‘A short presentation of Metasynth 4’, Krabye.com (Accessed [23.05.2007]), (http://helge.krabye.com/metasynth.php)

Week 10 - AA1

This week’s exercise was to record drums which compared to others is a total pain in where the sun never shines. Since the instrument has several parts and depending on the music, the importance of each part’s sound differs, there are many ways in which drums can be recorded. However, the two main categories of setting the microphones are “minimal” and (I think) “not-minimal!”

There are few points that are to be noted; the tuning of the drum heads, the comfort of the player, the positions of different parts, etc play a huge role in the final result. Personally, as a sort-of funk drummer, I DO like a nasty ring for the snare and toms. (According to Steve this is not shared within all sound engineers and producers.)I did two different sessions of recording. (Because I am the only drummer in the batch and I had to play as well as record!)
The first one was with Edward Kelly.
I used a Shure 52A beta for the kick (bass) drum, a Shure 56A beta for the snare, 2 Neumann KM84 microphones for the over heads (which were panned to left and right) and 2 AKG U87 condensers in front of the drum set so-called Middle-Sides (MS) audio capturers.
The protools session is as shown below:The final MP3 result is here as well: I used a 7-channel equaliser and a compressor for my bass drum track, a one-channel EQ and the same compressor (with different parameter settings) for my snare, a 4-channel EQ and a compressor for each of my overheads, one-channel EQs for my MS mics and finally a 7-channel EQ and a compressor for my master drum sound.
This was an experience of a minimal microphone setting. I purposely did not use any noise gate since firstly minimal setting is not my priority and secondly I intended to use the original reverb of the recording space (which again is not my first choice)

Second recording of mine had more microphones and was done with the help of Bradley Leffer and Darren Slynn.As it is quite obvious in the protools picture, I again used a 52A for the kick, a Shure 57 for the snare, a Neumann KM84 just for the Hi-Hat, a Shure 52A beta for the floor tom, two Sennheiser MD 421s for tom-toms, two NT5s for the overheads, and again two AKG U87s for the MS.
One of the main differences of this experience of mine with the first one was the fact that I used a noise gate as well as the compressor and the equaliser for the master track of the session. The final result was closer to my personal “taste” of a drum sound; pretty funky,.. and.. What a good drummer!

References:
- Knave, Bryan: ‘Capturing the kit’, Electronic Musician (Accessed [20.05.2007]), (http://emusician.com/mag/emusic_capturing_kit/)
- Steven Fieldhouse 'Audio Arts I' Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 15/05/2007.
- Shambro, Joe: ‘How to record the perfect kick drum sound’, Home Recording – About.com (Accessed [20.05.2007]), (http://homerecording.about.com/od/recordingtutorials/ht/perfectkick.htm)

Week 9 - CC1

Part 1

This week, we continued sampling and processing in a more advanced level.
For the sampling exercise, I used Doug’s voice and the sentence of “We become…” as same as the previous two weeks.
HERE is the basic quote:

Having the voice recorded to a pro-tools track, I reversed it as shown in the picture, and it resulted in this sample:
I applied “delay” to this sample, then I re-reversed the sample, applied “reverb” to it and normalised it.These steps’ samples are here in order:
- delayed and re-reversed sample:

- delayed, re-reversed, reverbed and normalised sample:

The next step was to create regions in the sample utilising the “choices” of pro-tools. In other words, I gave the control of choosing the beginnings and the endings of various regions to Pro-tools using the Tab key and the keys “apple” and “E”. In this process, pro-tools “decides” how and in which parts to chop the sample to different regions.
The next step was to consolidate each region. It was done as shown in the picture.

At the end of this part of the exercise, I had seven samples, which can be found below:
Sample 1
Sample 2
Sample 3
Sample 4
Sample 5
Sample 6
Sample 7
As same as the last two weeks’ exercises, I mapped the samples to octaves 0 to 7 of the keyboard using the device of NN19 in the software “Reason”.
I also mapped the controller knobs of the keyboard “Novation” to the controllers of NN19 (I could have mapped the faders as well). For this, I simply asked reason to “Learn” what knob I want to assign to any particular controller and played with that knob while reason was “Learning”.I set 3 different knobs of the keyboard to control the amount of panning, the samples’ amplitudes and the filter controller of the device.

It is notable that the “resonance” I set for the filter was NOT zero; I could end up having a sort-of WAH effect using the filter.
..and as the final task, I played and recorded a track! It is found HERE.

Part 2:

This part was the process of applying the Gate effect. The gate on one track was supposed to determine when ANOTHER track was supposed to be played. In other words, the control of sending track 1's signals was upon the activity of the Gate effect of track 2. (I still think this explanation has grammatic problems!)

My original track on which I wanted to apply the Gate effect was again the sentence of "We become..." with some slight changes (reversed, delayed, re-reversed and reverbed) and can be heard HERE.
The KEY (the indicator of the activity of the Gate was what Christian had provided for us (Claps sample) affected by Phaser and "Amplitube" effect (which sounds like a distortion to me).

I purposely changed the rhythm of Christian's initial sample and came up with THIS TRACK..
Applying this technique, I got a final result which can be heard HERE.

References:
- "Soundhack" software official website (Accessed [15.05.2007]), (http://www.soundhack.com/)
- Christian Haines 'Creative Computing I' Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 10/05/2007.
- Bruce-Douglas, Ian : ‘Propellerhead ReasonReview’, Audiomidi.com (Accessed [15.05.2007]), (http://www.audiomidi.com/aboutus/reviews/douglas_reason2.cfm)

Week 9 - AA1

This week’s exercise was to record 5 samples of bass guitar.
For the 1st sample, I used an AKG 414 condenser microphone. I did not use any other devices (such as the Avalon pre-amp) and recorded the line only using the mic and the Laney bass amplifier. As you can see, I set 3 microphones pointing towards the amp differently.

The bass player did not have his “tone” switch opened to the max; therefore I was not receiving a full range of treble frequencies.




This experience gave me a relatively clear sound. I found AKG 414 a good microphone to record the bass guitar with. Positioning the microphone pointing towards the edge of the amplifier, I also ended up having a reasonable amount of bass frequencies in my sample.

My 2nd sample used a “Shure 56A beta” dynamic microphone. I sent its signal to the Avalon Pre-amp and recorded the final result from the Avalon.




The use of Avalon notably added to the strength of the signal provided by the mic.
The result (compared to AKG) was a fatter and bassier sound.

3rd sample used a Yamaha MZ-204 dynamic microphone. All the processes were similar to the previous sample and I used Avalon again. It is notable that both samples 2 and 3 were having microphones pointing the centre of the amplifier.




MZ-204 did not make a huge difference in sound to me (compared to Shure). Both of these microphones are often used to record kick drum and presumably their functions are more or less the same.

For the next sample, I utilised the DI. Going directly to pro-tools and being recorded with no intervention of any other devices. Although the tone switch of the bass was not fully open, DI picked more of treble frequencies.




Attention!: the DI and the AKG (Sample 1) were recording in the same time. The technique was that I used the “Link” gateway of the DI; sent one signal direct to the pro-tools from it and another one to the amp. I could record two different tracks simultaneously.

5th sample is a stereo recording having AKG 414 set to the right channel and the DI to the left.




Out of all, this one sounds the best to me personally. Considering bass as the common background-instrument (or base-instrument?) of many songs, this experience was totally suitable for the job in my opinion.
Here is the picture for my Pro-tools session:
References:
- White, Paul: ‘THE LOW DOWN, Recording Bass Guitar’, Sound On Sound (Accessed [11.05.2007]), (http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar99/articles/recordingbass.htm)
- Steven Fieldhouse 'Audio Arts I' Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 08/05/2007.
- Shambro, Joe: ‘Getting The Perfect Low End, Recording Bass Guitar’, Home Recording – About.com (Accessed [11.05.2007]), (http://homerecording.about.com/od/recordingtutorials/a/bassguitar.htm)

Week 8 - CC1

Our task this week was to continue “Sampling”; The same principals of previous week applied and in addition we tested the software “Soundhack”
For the first sample, I used Soundhack applying changes to the sample 1 of last week. I changed the duration scale of the file by a ratio of 6 and came up with a new sample.
Again utilising the device NN19 in Reason, I mapped this sample from octaves -2 to octave 0 of the sampler key map.

For the second sample, I used “Phase Vocoder” effect again and changed the Window type from “Hamming” to “Rectangle”.
It’s notable that many of the characteristics of the file –including file format- could be varied using Soundhack. (As shown in the picture)I mapped this sample to the key range between C#0 to C1.
Third sample is the result of applying “Spectral Rate Extractor” effect on the 3rd sample of the previous week. Having changed he Transients and the Stable Sounds of the file, I got to this result.
I mapped this sample from C#1 to C2.Fourth sample uses Phase Vocoder again having different duration scales. I applied this effect on sample 4 of the previous week’s exercise.
Prior to having this sample mapped to a key zone in Reason, I changed the looping region of my file using Peak. I nudged the loop Backwards to see the effect; it is clearly recognisable in Reason after being mapped.I mapped it from C#2 to C3.
For the fifth sample, I picked the 5th sample of the last week, applied Phase Vocoder to it, then applied Spectral Rate Extractor” to the result and finally came up with my new sample.
I mapped this sample from C#3 to C5.Using the same principals of last week, I recorded my final tune, - in Reason- using my new samples, applying delay effect, varying the amount of attack and release of my tones and playing with panning, filter, pitch bend and modulation controllers.This is my final result. click HERE.

References:
- "Soundhack" software official website (Accessed [08.05.2007]), (http://www.soundhack.com/)
- Christian Haines 'Creative Computing I' Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 03/05/2007.
- McLean, Steve: ‘Berklee Shares, an overview of mixing; propellerhead Reason and cakewalk sonar’, Berklee Shares (Accessed [29.04.2007]), (http://www.berkleeshares.com/production__technology/mixing_reason_sonar)