Music Technology Workshop Forum (week 3) "Compossible"

In this weeks workshop forum the entire class was involved in a 45 minute musical piece, "Compossible", by David Harris. It was very entertaining in my opinion. Weird, but entertaining.

The piece consisted of percussionists, vocalists, keyboardists and readers. The percussionists were given a unique piece of sheet music where certain percussion instruments were to be played once between particular intervals of time at the percussionist's own discretion.

The vocalists were to sing one note also between certain time intervals according to their sheet music at their own discretion. They had the choice of note, and whether to sustain it or not.

The keyboardists were given sheet music to sight read, but played the single notes or chords at their own discretion within the time intervals provided on the sheet music.

The readers were given sheets not containing music, but many paragraphs that were to be read in a clear voice within the time intervals at the readers discretion.

I was a reader.

In this piece of music we were not required to play, read or sing in sync with one another. We could play, read or sing whenever we wanted, as long as it was within the correct time intervals.

David suggested that we undertook a 5 minute trial run before starting the 45 minutes piece. It was the funniest piece of music I had ever heard. And that was just the trial run! All the random playing of percussion instruments, keyboards, and vocal sounds had me laughing uncontrollably. At one stage I had tears in my eyes. We were stopped at five minutes and I was told that I didn't have to "piss myself".

After I got my breath back, we started the 45 minute piece. There were times where I almost lost it again, but I controlled myself.

It was a very interesting exercise.

CC1 Week 3 "Introduction to SPEAR"

In this week's assignment, we used our paper recordings from last week, analysed and edited them in a Spectral Editing program called SPEAR. I did not make any paper recordings, so I have used a pre-made sound file.

The program SPEAR, to me, was like a "Paint Program" for sound files, where the sound waves were like a picture that I was screwing around with. I found it highly entertaining and enjoyable. I had no idea I create such weird and wonderful sounds just by moving a sound wave to different time slots or frequencies, or deleting slabs of sound waves. I could even stretch the time, or transpose the frequency of the sound waves, creating an even more unique sound. It was unlike anything I ever heard. There were points in time where the sound was unbearable, but a quick "undo" resolved such an issue.

Instead of paper recordings, I have chosen a sound file that I created last year using a mixing program called FruityLoops Studio 5. I turned ELO's "Evil Woman" into a dance number and named it "Evil Woman Benmix". All the patterns and loops in this file were my own creation.

The links below will direct you to the original file of "Evil Woman Benmix" and a small sample of the file that I have "tampered with" in SPEAR.

EVIL WOMAN BENMIX

EVIL WOMAN BENMIX SPEAR SAMPLE

AA1 (week 2) "Session Plan"

I am beginning to come to terms with how challenging Audio Arts is going to be for me this year. I listened intently to our teacher, Steve Fieldhouse, while he talked to us about his history as a "sound engineer". He has a very colourful history and worked at many studios big and small.

For this week our assignment was to create a session plan for the recording of a band of our choice. I had never heard of a session plan in my life so I naturally panicked.

Most of what Steve told us this lesson made no sense to me. I should've spoken up and asked questions, but I stayed silent instead. This, was a big mistake.

After the class a fellow classmate and I spent some time in Studio 5. This was my first time ever in a recording studio and I was more intrigued by the Electric Upright Piano than the recording software. Big mistake? I will soon find out. It was apparent that my fellow classmate knew much more about the software (and hardware) than I did. I asked questions, and he answered them to the best of his ability, which were much appreciated.

After 30 mins in Studio 5 I departed and met up with another fellow student. We discussed certain issues regarding the session plan. By the end of the discussion, my mind was much clearer on what I had to do.

I decided to make a session plan for the recordingof the Jazz cover band "Jazz It Up". I am the keyboardist.

The session plan is as follows:

No track sheet was needed in this case as all perfomance related information was recorded as partof the ProTools session file.

AA1 (week 1)

For our first lesson ever of Audio Arts, nothing too special really happened. I was not expecting anything too special. After all, the first week mainly comprised of going through Course Outlines and ground rules.

Our teacher (I have already forgotten his name!) showed us the basic equipment that was used in the EMU and how to set it up.

We were shown how to properly roll up microphone leads, which is is something that I need to learn.

This was what our first lesson was made up of. i am looking forward to what will be a great year.

CC1 (week 1)

For my first lesson of Creative Computing I made my first mistake by going to the wrong floor of the Shulz building. But this was not my fault. The time table had "Shulz 506" written on it, so I went to the fifth floor. I met up with a few of my classmates, who were also confused.

We went down to the fourth floor and found our class.
"This," I thought to myself, "is going to be interesting."

I don't have a lot of knowledge of computer technology, so what the teacher talked to us about in this lesson, to me, didnt make much sense. I am confident that i will grasp the concepts very quickly.

Music Technology Worshop Forum 1 (week 1)

This lesson had me highly anticipated. A 2 hour Music Technology Workshop. Fun!! However, due to the Clipsal 500 (I attended), I was exhausted by the time i reached the fifth floor on thursday afternoon.

As much as I was absolutely stuffed from a hot 2 hours at the track, I was persistant to undertake this first class. It was extremely important that I attended.

It was a good thing I did attend, because yet again we were given course outlines and more importantly, brief details of group presentations.

Near the end of the lesson, other music forum students joined us in the recording studio where we were situated. It became very crowded, VERY quickly. We were then all greeted and de-briefed by the teachers.

I am looking very forward to this workshop.