click on the picture for sound

click on the picture for sound

So during this week’s improvisation session I began using Live to play with a drum sample. Yes, no plural here as I have only made one so far. One of the more promising sections of our free-for-all jam was when I used the Three-Band EQ to remove everything but the high-hat from the sample. This both allowed for and seemed to inspire the other improvisers to create appropriate music (remembering our group’s motto: to make music and none of this ambient stuff). However, when I tried using the EQ to solo other parts of the drum beat, such as the kick and snare, the EQ didn’t seem to work as well. This has led me toward the next step in my development of this project- that is to make individual sound files for the kick, snare, high-hat and whatever else. These files can be easily collated in a single ‘scene’ within Live, and that way can have there own effects added to them. Having specific effect added to each part particularly appeals to me due to one main compliant my group made of my sound during the jam- inconsistency of rhythm. It makes sense, I hold a key role in the rhythmic grounding of the project. This failed me during points of the jam when I would dump a new effect such as ‘BeatBox’ onto the drum loop and it would immediately ruin the rhythmic grounding, which the rest of the group relied upon. However, if I were able to drag such an effect onto just the high-hat for example, the total annihilation of this sample would not have such a disastrous effect, as would completely ruined the whole drum sample. Hence, the rest of the group would not have to stop while I quickly switch off/adjust the parameters of the plug-in. Other than this I am slowing learning which plug-in’s sound cool, provide something interesting to improvise with, have bugs and which individual parameters are best to map the XY pane that Live provides. As the weeks progress I intend to narrow in on the particular rhythmic grounding I will offer the rest of the group, who I think will have more apparent avenues for improvisation than me, through the use of melody and so on. Live itself is far from the ideal piece of software, but it is nonetheless really intuitive, easy to use and fun. This use of a vector-driven interface is more than just the ‘gimmick’ it seemed to be when I first looked at the application months ago. Rather, it provides a clever flow to the interface, in a way I find difficult to explain. However, take the use of the F11 shortcut, which allows the application to use the full width of your display or monitor and the way the program resizes in an instant, which I think must owe something the use of vector graphics. This way in which the whole interface flows around and is easily customisable through minimal clicks, is important for is onstage applications. Having had used the program now in a ‘jamming’ situation, I really commend Abelton on the way they have made this program simple and smooth. Never in this ‘tense’ situation did I feel at all lost or confused in the interface that in all honesty, I had only used about five times. And that, my friends, is Live.

Apart from the fact that during my presentation the word ‘um’ seemed to have manifested through my vocabulary beyond all sensibility, I think it went okay. Ben commented that at the end of every sentence the pitch of my voice went up a little, or something, and I certainly appreciate any such critisms because I understand how important presentations like this are in the metropolis of Academia. My great respect for all the music technology students and staff, along with my dream to create great music, made me quite a nervous little camper during my presentation of ‘new surroundings’. Anyway, from the feedback I have received, people did not pick up on this too much, but if you feel otherwise then please let me know via the comment button below.

The other presenters included William, Ben and Timothy Gabbusch. Like everything he is involved with, I could not help but laugh when it came to Ben’s speech. His presentation style was confident, light and humorous while his piece ‘Vocalikov’ was really very good. William’s piece was equally very cool, with a particularly rhythmic ‘glitchy’, ‘buzzy’ sound that caught my attention and is stuck in mind. Timothy’s piece contained a lot of awesome sounds and was quite good, but lacked a feeling of form and structure. I feel this probably owes to his use of analogue techniques in its composition.

Referances

Whittington, Stephen. "Music Technology Workshop." Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 24/08/2006.

Gday fellow soldiers in the eternal struggle of the Blog.

My group has continued making baby steps towards the improvisation project that we will perform one day not so soon. This week I brought in my laptop and played a few drum loops I composed in Sibelius and played them in Reason 3. Both Dave and Ben seemed to take a liking to them; might I quote Dave who remarked, “shall we go with that for this Rhythmic basis.” (Or something similar). This was fairly encouraging, especially because I know the drum loops would be heaps better if I had spent more than twenty seconds on them. Apart from this part of the session, we continued listening to people moan about technological disabilities of studio 5 and Dave’s (awesome) guitar playing. Adrian’s computer bit the dust so we may have to wait some time before hearing anything from him and SuperCollider. Dragos was away, so still pretty uncertain about what he is doing. Ben seems pretty enthusiastic about his vocal/effects contribution, and the other day I was listening to “Intergalactic” by the Beastie Boys and thought of how this may offer him some inspiration (‘another dimension, another dimension, new galaxy’). We also welcomed a new member to the group, Albert. I was less than excited by the thought of adding yet another instrument to melange of sound we have at the moment, but going by his usual attendance, I do not think I have to much to worry about (needless to say, I will be glad to be proved wrong here).

Next up, a few more students presented their work in the new Tech (“now like Jazz and Classical students”) Forum. This commenced with Henry Reid who played ‘Lucky’ a song written about his Grandfather’s life. After the initial excitement of how this form of song writing has recently produced favourites of my own like Tool’s “10 000 days part 2 (Wings for Marie)”, I was a little bit disappointed with the final product. This dissatisfaction mainly stemmed from one instrument which played throughout in what I can only call a lame synth tone, because the rest of it was pretty good I think. Daniel played a recording by his band ‘Enemy Of?’ and I have to say it was pretty good. I intend to record a Heavy Metal later this year, and I am pretty intimidated by their two guitar, bass, drums, vocal line up. Daniel mentioned how he used a program other ProTools to record the drums. After this I was left thinking- there are other programs than ProTools: WHAT THE HELL?!?! Anyway, one day if I am feeling social enough, I would like to talk to him about this program and what his thoughts are on recording heavy music. One thing I really want to learn to do is make good drum recordings. More than anything else. Getting back to Daniel’s piece called, “When you say the heaven you mean the gates of hell” I was overall quite impressed with the song, but the recording did not have the edge (not surprisingly) of a professional recording. But why? I feel like we have all the equipment there to do it. Maybe I will figure it out one day if I stop playing video games…

It is a little disappointing that we will no longer have any of David Harris’s tripped out offerings to look forward to on a Thursday afternoon. This class will be replaced with the improvisation project. My personal experience with group work at uni thus far has lended me to trying to avoid it where possible. Nevertheless, going by last weeks workshops, things may well be different- the Music Tech’ers seem and enthusiastic bunch. My randomly selected group contains four members from my year: david, ben, matt and myself. The other members are Dragos Nastasie and Adrian Reid who are second and third years’ respectively. So far not much in the way of themes or have surfaced, while many ideas have been thrown around. Ambience has been affronted quite thoroughly, I was hoping this might turn into some kind of right-wing new-music crusade, but so far we only decided that chords will be used. But what chords?

I must c e the rest of my group for their effort in bringing instruments along for last weeks session. It sure inspired me to want to be ready with something for this Thursday. For this, I am thinking of composing a few drum loops in Sibelius, making them sound cool in Reason and finally improvising with them using Ableton’s Live. This program is the muse of Creative Computing at the status quo. Another option I was considering was to learn some SuperCollider. Adrian mentioned that he is thinking of doing something with it, so it might be a good opportunity to get into it. I know the JITLib interface is tailored for live applications. I only know about || much SuperCollider though, so I might just be barking up the wrong tree. I will talk to Adrian about it.

My experience with ‘playing music’ is far older than that of my improvisation. This certainly is not something I boast proudly, but as they say, sometimes that’s the way the cookie crumbles. I have to say that I will be glad to discover myself as an improviser.

creative computing - soundtrack for sd1.mov

"im worked too hard to count the music so i only dance to the video anymore"
translated by weimer in under an hour.