CREATIVE GROUP PROJECT #5
‘Ive been away but now im back’
Mixing-
I set the project outputs as surround to allow 3D movement of sound, I then watched the video and recreated the movement of particular trees in the space relative to the camera. This was quite a repetitive task but I found mapping the area interesting. A problem I faced was overcrowding of sounds, this was intended as I wanted the piece to be immersive, however it does get difficult to differentiate sounds from each other at some points. After about 30 minutes I developed a method to make it easier to mix, I first automated volume based on distance from the camera, i then would go to the beginning and pan the audio based on direction.
CREATIVE GROUP PROJECT #4
‘Ive been away but now im back’
Natural sound reflective writing-
I found it quite easy to create the vocal sounds in sound grain as I’ve worked with it before. I did however try to create less perfect harmonies than I did previously, as I feel that this suits plants and nature better, there is a sense of imperfection or not adhering to a particular order. I created four tracks, differing in pitch and harmony (though only slightly), I plan to assign these to plants in the environment. Hopefully the four tracks are diverse enough to avoid melding into one. If not I’ll have to record more later in the mixing process.
Mechanical Sound reflective writing-
I found it very easy to record the guitar string rattle, however the finished result wasn’t quite what I had hoped for. I thought it would blend in with the vocal sound a bit more, but it seems to stick out in the mix. Also I noise gated this sound with the side chain input as the leaves rustling, this did not produce the effect I wanted. The sound wasn’t as defined as I would hope, it just sounds like its being turned up for a few seconds. I didn’t manage to record the metal sound I wanted due to time constraints, however I will try to record it at a later date.
CREATIVE GROUP PROJECT #3
‘Ive been away but now I’m back’
Sound walk reflective writing
Im very glad I took the time to plan out the walk. I wanted the recording to feature some specific things, moving through a place surrounded in plants, a close up of plants with interaction, and a change of environment (moving from woods to a clearing). I didn’t think about the fact that all the elements I’m trying to vocode and manipulate are all contained in one audio file, should’ve realised this early to be honest. So I’m going to have to record a few elements separately and mix them in. Also my interaction with the plants didn’t produce as much noise as I hoped, so I will have to record this separately. One more problem is the wind gets quite distorted when I walk into the clearing, I should have used a better microphone with a deadcat on it. Im very glad I recorded a video as its really helping me gage the geography of the walk.
CREATIVE GROUP PROJECT #2
‘Ive been away but now I’m back‘
Mechanical/Natural Harmony
The plan is to attach particular sounds to a point in the environment (eg. A tree or plant). I’ll do this through quadraphonic mixing, then exporting as stereo allowing front to back movement of sound. To keep track of plants placement in the environment I will take a video. I have my method of mixing, I need to now determine the sounds I will use.
I will be trying to reflect the idea mechanical/natural harmony. Im going to build a collection of mechanical and natural sounds separately, then marry the two.
Natural sounds:
Vocals- I think I will use soundgrain to sustain the audio, making for a smoother more permanent auditory environment, by this I mean I hope that it will strengthen the geographical permanence of the sound.
Wind- Hopefully this will be picked up in the sound walk recording, however if it isn’t prominent enough, I’m prepared to record wind separately and mix it in.
Plants rustling- I think this will be picked up in the sound recording, I might interact with the environment to produce these sounds (running hand through leaves). This interaction could be interesting to explore, although I’m not sure what the meaning or purpose would be (maybe to reflect the human/nature relationship). This reminds me of a sound piece by TomuTomu on YouTube called ‘Plant sounds’.
‘The plant’s “state” is represented through sound, primarily frequency. The plant responds to changes in its environment such as humidity, temperature, light, and touch. The micro-voltage fluctuations of the plant are detected by Ag/AgCl electrodes. The voltage is amplified and sent into an Arduino to be digitized. The numeric values are sent to oscillators, resulting in the soundscape.’
Im not going to pretend I understand how this works, I have no idea. However, I will research this at a later date. It would be interesting to recreate this piece and use the audio in my project but I don’t think I have the time to do it. I will however use the audio as a reference for my ‘artificially created’ sounds.
Mechanical Sounds:
Vocoding- I think a sharp, mid to high pitched synth would reflect the mechanical side of this project. To geographically anchor this sound I will vocode parts of the environment, possibly the wind and maybe the rustle of leaves.
Rattling guitar strings- Placing an ebow very close to a guitar string causes the string to rattle against the plastic casing of the bow, harmonically layering this sound results in a harsh yet clean and crisp sound. This sound also has a very metallic quality, probably due to the metal guitar strings.
Rubbing metal together- Personally I love this sound, very high pitched and smooth. It evokes the feeling of movement with minimal friction. The problem with this sound is that the length of it is restricted to the length of the metal, however I plan to solve this by placing the audio in a sampler and using the alternate looping setting, alternating forward and reverse.
CREATIVE GROUP PROJECT #1
‘Ive been away but now I’m back’
As a group we brainstormed ideas for out collaborative project. The future seemed to be the prevailing theme, specifically using the future to represent or reflect the past or present. We settled on the title being a quote from the bar scene in the movie ‘the shining’, as the past and present seem to melt together in this scene. The quote is ‘Ive been away, but now I’m back’. To me this title evokes nostalgia, change or development of self, a strong sense of environment and a sense of harmony or balance.
My Track:
I think I would like to create a soundscape, possibly built from a sound walk. My intention is that hopefully using a recording of a sound walk will ground the listener in a familiar reality, everyone knows the sound of walking through nature. By using this familiar base, I can hopefully build a subtle soundscape around it, invoking these themes I named above (nostalgia, change….). I also want to use an auditory pallet that reflects my idea of the future, clean, crisp, a harmony between mechanical and organic. I might also experiment with sampling songs, specifically songs that have strong place in my memory, a particular album places me at a specific moment in my past every time I hear it. This might be a fun avenue to explore but I’m not quite sure how I can utilise this yet.
Graphic Notation
Things you might want to express:
- Pitch
- Volume
- Distance (in mix)
- Texture
- Harmony
My first attempt in graphic notation:
If I were to do this exercise again I would plan out specific parameters. I automatically set left to right as time, but half way through making the notation I thought of making up and down the stereo field, and so some notes don’t fit accurately within the field. I would like to go back and label the parameters to make it easier to understand. My favourite part of this notation method was the blending of elements, I could quite easily express the link between the low synthesiser and the bass drum by weaving the notation. The circular symbol on the left is an attempt at notating percussion, I feel this would be a useful tool to use once I become familiar with the method.
SOUNDGRAIN EXPERIMENTATION
Soundgrain is a software with which you can automate granular sound synthesis. Im sure that there are many ways to use this software, but the first thing I wanted to do was explore the human voice. I imported an audio file of me singing a constant falsetto note and started experimenting. The first thing I noticed was the fluidity of the sounds, the sound would glide smoothly between high and low frequencies. I think this is the strongest aspect of the software, typically as a producer or sound artist I find myself using a keyboard as the controller for my synthesis, which limits you to specific notes (with the minor deviation using a mod wheel). Whilst using this software I found myself relying solely on my ear to find the right frequencies to use and to find harmony between frequencies, this was a new and welcome method of sound creation.
Another benefit of the software is the ability to select very small parts of the audio file to loop indefinitely, this creates a constant drone with the timbre of a human voice. I see this as a very natural familiar sound being used in a way that doesn’t make sense in its original context, whilst retaining its organic properties, an impossible organic sound. With this technique you could create electroacoustic compositions that retain an intrinsic human organic quality.
The result of the experimentation:
Percussion is made from breaths, hitting my fist on my chest, a bass drum, a snare, a very short snippet of someone speaking, and an off set tremolo applied to a recording of wind.
The chords are played by a prophet V soft synth and 2 ebow guitar tracks. The low synth is an audio track of the sound grain synthesis with a side chained noise gate applied.
RADIO PROJECT #3
Making
My main role in this project has been to organise work loads and try to help guide collaboration, I’m also combining peoples work and mixing it. So far I have found that mixing the pieces has not been too hard, as everyone has created unique pieces and they each serve their own purpose. They seem to work well together, Szymon’s piece creating an eery stirring and creating tension, Daniel’s piece accelerates the tension and chaos into the crescendo, Sephora’s piece creates a calm otherworldly sound-space that somehow stays within the style Szymon’s piece giving the project a full circle feeling. Toby has created sound effects that give the piece texture, subtle sounds that ease us into the madness. Raul and jack wrote the script, Raul also recorded the dialogue and sourced a voice actor.
My contribution to the piece is the crescendo and the hard cut. Appearance and audience being a strong theme I experimented with shaping, moulding and manipulating a crowd of voices. I started by bringing in the sound of a crowd very low in the mix at the point where the protagonist says ‘our society is a spectacle’, I then gradually increased the volume of the crowd. I used a bit crusher on the crowd and gradually decreased the resolution distorting the audio. I also placed a noise gate on the crowd and side-chained it with the dialogue as the input, i started with the threshold very low so the crowd sounded normal, I then gradually increased the threshold leading up to the crescendo. This had the effect of very gradually shaping the crowds voices to the singular protagonist voice, so the crowd noise increases in intensity, and concentrates into the protagonist.
RADIO PROJECT #2
Planning
We have decided to express our idea through an interview, as these are common place in radio and the format gives us room for creativity and manipulation.
Now that we had our idea we could then distribute the work, the work was divided into Dialogue editing, SFX, music and background, and broadcasting. We also had two people write a script and create a timeline of events, this allowed everyone else to begin working on sections.
We will express our piece through an interview of an instagram influencer, as this seems like the epitome of spectacle. The interview will then turn sour at one point, and will begin to turn the soundscape uncomfortable and jarring, the interviewee will begin an impassioned monologue similar to Howard Beale in Network (1976). When we reach a crescendo we will then hard cut to a relaxing auditory space, and an extract from ‘The Society of the Spectacle’ will be read out.
Ive found that he concept for the piece has been pretty much unanimously accepted which I find surprising. However I think its been hard to coordinate collaboration between people as everyone is at home, and the piece is forming as everyone makes their parts. As a result of this the piece has been an amalgamation of peoples works, different tempos and keys. This does have some positives such as giving a sense of chaos (which is a theme we are trying to convey) but I think it would’ve been nice to have people collaborate on sections knowing how they would fit together, perhaps this would be easier to do in person and with more time.