Oli’s World

Ok, i have found that recently there has been some interest in my two contrasting pieces with everyone, a lot of people have been asking me how i managed to make the singular sounds become all sorts of weird and wonderful manipulations.

to those people i have one thing to say ,

Ixi Quarks.

julio went on and on about it and now i see why, it will do anything you could probably find the time to imagine to your sounds,

to start with i decided to find two different sounds, after a conversation with jay, i decided that the contrast in my pieces would be between one piece being made with natural sounds and then the other to be made using man made sounds.

in this case my natural sound would be chickens, and my man made sound would be a level crossing.

my method of recording these sounds was possibly a little crude but it worked none the less and i got a fairly decent sound from it.

to record my natural sound i went to my bands, bass players house to record his chicken shed, i can safely say it was the smelliest recording session i have ever been a part of. i sat in the chicken shed with my sm58 and my laptop and recorded approximately a minute of sound into logic.

i had a similar method of capturing the level crossing, except it took a bit more planning, in order to get this sound i had to visit the crossing i would record at and ask the operator what times the trains go past, once i knew this i would go hoome, get my laptop and go back and wait for a train to go past, i then set it up so that i was recording through the laptop mic simply cos its easier.

once a train had gone past and i had recorded it i then went home and put the sounds into IXI Quarks,

i then selected the tool i wished to use and then recorded about 4 minutes of each piece being manipulated by the different functions, for example the one i used most was the worm tool. this tool basically makes a smaller line travel around the sound and as it does it plays the frequency range of the section it is on.

after doing this for both pieces i then cut it down to the 2 minutes of each i prefered and mixed them a bit.

once i had mixed them i then converted them into 5.1 and automated the panning using the touch tool in logic.

i then took them into uni and checked that the panning was what i wanted, and luckily i got it exactly as i wanted first time and then i did a bounce of each piece and that was that

well, to warn you briefly now, this is gonna be a long post!

i have alot to add to my blog as for a while it wouldnt let me sign on which is rather irritating but i have been typing out my blog as normal anyways and this is what i have been typing,

on top of this someone very close to me developed bowel cancer and so alot of my time has been taken up looking after him and helping him through such an ordeal so on top of not being able to sign in to blog thats made it hard to up to date blogging.

to begin with i will paste my M4DM bloggings in this post

so since the last post i have pretty much done the majority of the years work,

i have decided on submitting my music for film task, along with my music for advert task and the Jitter task as required.

although as of yet i havent been able to start all 8 tasks i have completed the submission tasks and have simply have to write them to DVD ready for submission.

i will now explain each task and what i have done for them, and in the case of the non-submission tasks, what i have done so far.

Assessed Tasks

Advert Music

To begin with this task i decided to do something a little bit out of the ordinary. it had come to my attention that some of the most eye catching and memorable adverts always seem to be car adverts. so after sifting through a numerous amount of car adverts i had found an old advert for Volkswagen’s own brand insurance that was offered to new customers when they bought a new VW car.

I chose this advert not only because it made me laugh when i watched it and i instantly liked it but as a plus side it originally had no music at all so any music i would then be able to write for it would be 100% original and completely un affected by any previous music written for the advert.

i began by studying the advert, and after about 5 viewings i decided to go with a slightly exotic style of music as it seems to be set in a place that is surrounded by palm trees and on a coastal region of some sort.

after deciding what style i would write the music in i then decided how i would go about creating the structure of my piece. as the structure of the advert seems to be quite repeptative i decided that my music would follow this quality of the advert, although my music does change intrument slightly it is the same melody throughout except from the jingle which is played fully at the vital point of the advert and then in a very simple form at the end of the advert.

i believe the music i have created plays on the comedic effect of the advert very well as well as making the viewer believe it is set in an exotic location, so in conclusion for this piece i believe i have composed music that is suitable for the advert and at the same time memorable enough to serve the advertising purposes of the video.

Persona video task

For this task i chose the begining section of the persona video.

i chose this part of the video because to me it felt like there was a lot of room for building up the atmosphere and really going all out and putting lots of effects and crescendos and sound effects etc.

for this piece i began by using a synth that had a natural build up that i found fitted the piece almost perfectly, so i recorded a chosen note using this synth along with another sound effect synth to fill out the piece a bit more. i then went on to work out how i would create the sudden burst of energy as the build up climaxes and goes into a film reel type of situation, so i found another synth that creates hits and then recorded this to create the climax of the build up.

after watching a few other students pieces i decided not to use the classic film reel sound for the next scene and instead found yet another synth that was rythmical and could be programmed to fit the speed of the video. after recording this synth and moving it around to fit the video i then got to work on having a background noise for the quieter section of the video that in turn leads to the end of the piece.

i managed to find a sound effect synth that almost sounds like a wildlife sample but is actually a combination of high notes and low notes to create the effect of wildlife. for the very final scene, in which there is a machine that appears to be doing something, i used an audio sample of machinery moving, to create the feeling of the machinery working.

this then signals the end of the piece.

i believe the music i have written for this piece suits it well, as it has the correct crescendos where they are needed and all of the sounds fit the videos sense of rhythm. on top of this i feel the synths i have chosen play on the darker feelings of the video.

Jitter Task

I will admit i was stuck on what to do for this one. having not really used jitter before it was relitavely new territory for me.

i have used max/msp in the past but never jitter, so it was like getting used to a new aspect of something you’ve seen before.

i began by looking through some of the tutorials to find something that interested me and that i could either use aspects of or develop upon to create something thats my own.

i will also admit now that my jitter patch is also very simple, there isnt alot to it.

once i had found a tutorial that caught my eye i opened up its patch. for this task i chose rotating video.

once i had studied this patch i began to think of ways i could manipulate it more and make it even more interesting. so i managed to connect the rotation values of the video up to the outputting values of a random object that would randomly output numbers in the range of the rotation values of the video, i also connected this up to the same metronome that was controlling the chord sequence of the sounds, thus making the video controlled by the sound.

Un-assessed Tasks

Music for Animation

For this task i decided to do a classic cartoon that i personally love.

i chose a Tom and Jerry episode, specifically “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse” because there is alot of opportunities to make your own sound effects.

due to it being a cartoon the sounds you can use are almost endless as there is no physical objects and it can be percieved as part of the music.

i had previously studied tom and jerry a lot and found that a classic traite of the cartoons is for the music to act for some of the sound effects as well as there actually being some real sound effects in there as well.

unfortunately i didnt get as far as writing any music properly, as i had decided on my assessed tasks and concentrated on those.

Music for a painting

I must admit that this task was never really a huge interest point for me, i’m not sure why but i just dont find it at all motivating or interesting, so unfortunately i only really got as far as choosing the painting and setting up some tracks in logic and then creating a half finished, very basic piece of music for my painting.

the painting i had chosen was a painting called “my wheel” by a little known painter called Chidi Okoye. i chose this picture because it has very bright and outstanding colours thus making it open for the use of contrasting and bright tones and instrumentation.

unfortunately it didnt get finished.

Music for Film

For this task i have chosen a scene from the popular film Transformers.

The scene i have chosen is the scene in which the main character see’s his car transform into a robot for the first time.

this was a rather difficult scene to co-ordinate sound effects to as there is a lot of mechanical sounds that are required. never the less i muscled on and was able to find some free samples from the internet (not the best quality samples but it was all there really was) that were close enough to what i required and then once i had placed them where i wanted them in the piece i began to edit them, changing EQ adding effects and generally sorting out levels on those that required it.

Jitter Task 2

I have to admit i havent actually started this task and havent particularly put a great deal of thought into this task, altho i would imagine i would probably do something along the lines of my last jitter project but maybe have it so that the position of the video determines what sound is played.

i have a couple of ideas i just havent been able to put them into practise just yet.

if i manage to get a little something done then i will post it up on here.

Foley Task

Unfortunately this is another task i havent actually done much for, due to the fact that i have partly done it as part of my film music task, i just havent actually finished it yet.

altho so far i had already gone out to get a recording for the level crossing scene of the transformers scene i had picked, i had also managed to find a car sound and amongst other things created some mechanical sounds by editing other sounds i had recorded.

altho it is not a finished piece yet, i will still upload it onto my blog.

NOTE: tasks are stored at home and so will be uploaded to the blog tonight, this is a notification that they will be put up on here!!