Let’s start with ABBA. First off, great band. And I end up listening to them far more than I might usually (though I’m not exactly sad about it) because their name establishes them at the top of my iTunes library. If I click “Play” without thinking I’m greeted by the first track of “The Best Of (The Millennium Collection)”, Waterloo. While this isn’t what I would consider their most “electronic” track, I think their discography as a whole is really interesting in its varied integration of electronic sounds. The title song of the disk “Super Trouper,” for instance, sounds significantly more synthesized than the song that precedes it in my library (another recording of Waterloo). Or see “Me and I” (from Super Trouper) for the best example of their later, more artificial sound.

Before (Waterloo) - you can even see the orchestra in the seconds before the song begins:



After (Me and I):




I suppose what’s really interesting about this phenomenon is not so much that ABBA experimented with different sounds (after all, what wildly-successful band doesn’t?), but instead that we can almost trace the development of electronic sounds in their music. Waterloo, the first track of the A-Side of the “Waterloo” (1974), was recorded over 6 years prior to “Super Trouper” (1980). This is a band that evolved with the changing music scene, and embraced the new technologies (with great success, Super Trouper made it significantly further up the billboard than did Waterloo).

In any event, the movie “Mama Mia” is a must see (as was the musical, but I have no idea if that’s still around). I don’t know that it’s really a cinematic masterpiece, but it’s good fun…

- james

Assignment #2

(sorry for the late post, I was having some "Bounce" problems - would only save first 4.5 seconds of each song. Tried a different computer and it worked fine.)

For assignment #2, we were asked to compose three 20-second clips using only a several-second long .aiff sample of four "clicks." This was very different from our first assignment, as it entailed the live manipulation of sound rather than the doctoring of a sample after recording (all of this live manipulation was accomplished in the program RadiaL).

Each piece displays different features of the program, and my understanding of how to use it. Perhaps the most difficult and time consuming part of the project (besides deciding upon which 20 second portion of 10 minute long recordings to use) was the control mapping. This process, which assigned various functions to the different MIDI channels on our keyboards, was very labor-intensive: not just in mapping the functions and keys/sliders/dials, but also in determining which parameters worked best for each function. For some (ie. a mute-type function, a 0,1 was the correct parameter; for others, like filters, you had to chose 20,20000. Determining how these parameters affected the sound was the most interesting, but also frustrating part of the process).

I would like to add a pet peeve of mine re:RadiaL. It would be nice if you could assign a function to both a key and a slider/dial. For example, I found that I liked assigning a tempo "toggle" to a key on the keyboard, and being able to switch between 120 and 200 at will. This type of control was more precise than a slider. However, I also liked the more dynamic, gradual change in tempo (as well as the greater flexibility) of assigning tempo change to a slider. Unfortunately, this meant that I couldn't incorporate both effects in one piece. (The "toggle" is present, I believe, in the second clip).

Enjoy!









- james

Blog #2

Since the last blog post (and following our discussion in section), I have had much to think about concerning my definition of “music.” What constitutes music? I suppose this is the real question I’ve been grappling with.

What I’ve discovered is that, after several weeks I consider more things to fall under the genre of music than I originally thought. Though I am still unconvinced by John Cage’s 4’33”, (no matter how creative, I simply cannot consider the transformation of nothing into “something” to be music), I find myself identifying increasingly unmelodic sounds as musical. Coming from a background of orchestral music, this was initially difficult – music was a compilation of sounds designed to function together, each with a specific purpose.

This change in perception is likely a response to the work done on the first ringtone assignment (and also, more recently, our musings with RadiaL). In the ringtone assignment, we were asked to record sounds and turn them into ringtones using the tools we had learned up until that point in class. For me, this assignment was difficult to grasp – in my mind, we were being asked to turn noise into music.

I suppose this brought along the realization that the two, noise and music, are really more closely linked than I had initially thought. Last Wednesday in section, we took a series of assorted sound snippets and turned them into a sort of rhythmic melody in RadiaL – again, turning noise into music. Is music simply sound with intent, then?

Enough for those musings on music, now for something slightly more interesting:
Trance



I’ve had a lot of work this past week, and one thing that’s been helping me read is “trance” music. Armin Van Buuren has been my artist of choice, and his “State of Trance” album from 2007 is really tremendous. I think these songs are so appealing because their simple variations on a repetitive beat are fulfill the needs of two types of listening: with the volume, up, you can easily lose yourself in the music; with the volume down, it provides a great backdrop for work or any other activity.




- james

Rediculous Remix

(Warning: NSFW - rife with obsenities)

Christian Bale flips at cameraman... REMIX.

http://www.wwtdd.com/post.phtml?pk=18511

Assignment #1

Assignment one required us to create two separate ringtones, one fifteen seconds long and the other twenty, using various recording and editing techniques. This is what I did:

For the first clip (entitled ‘Drip Drop’), I recorded a faucet pouring water into a glass with increasing intensity. As the clip progresses, there are three “stages” of intensity, in which the water first drips slowly, then pours slowly, then finally pours most intensely.
- After recording this sound, I edited it (primarily in Logic Pro).
- I faded in the very beginning of the ringtone so that it did not begin so harshly. It is a short fade, however, because the recording contains its own manner of varying intensity.
- I then normalized the volume of the clip, and used the gain tool to create greater consistency between the volume of the different water types.
- I slowed the tempo of the clip at two points – at both times when the water type changes, so as to slightly reduce the harshness of each change.
- Finally, I faded out the clip so that it might be more effective if “looped” on a cell phone ringtone.

This is what the end product sounds like:

The process for creating the second piece was slightly different, as this piece requires more digital manipulation of the sound clips.

I began the clip with a recording of a man’s fingers typing on a laptop keyboard. There is an intentional lack of traditional rhythm or time signature to the keystrokes, but they are easily recognized as the true rhythm of typing – the rhythm of the keystrokes, punctuated by strong hits of the space bar, is easily recognizable as type.
- From this clip (which was originally :25), I cropped it down to a roughly :03.5 segment, and separated these segments by a half-second of silence.
(The clip of length :03.5 was first slowed by 10%).
- I normalized the clip’s volume, and then copied the clip five times in different tracks.
- The first track/repetition fades in (to give the cell phone user a chance to answer their phone before the ringtone becomes loud interrupting).
- Each subsequent clip has a markedly increased volume (through gain modulation - +30/70/120/180%) and also a raised pitch (+20/40/60/80%). This is designed to get the listener’s attention more effectively than a static volume/pitch.

This is what the end product sounds like:

(UPDATE: Now it's working! Thanks for staying tuned.)


Hope you liked these ringtones, and feel free to use them on your phone!

- james