OrdScape Kitchen

The idea for the Fort Ord soundscape spawns from a memory I had recently. I went out on a bike ride to explore about 10 months ago and ended up out in the abandoned barracks hidden in the hills of the old army base, right on the shore of Monterey Bay. These “caves” are 30’ wide, 50’ long, and a 20’ dome ceiling, giving it a tunnel shape that is closed on both ends. There are about ten of them and they are completely empty. I walked inside and clapped because I just knew it had to sound cool. I found that the room’s reverb lasts at least 10 full seconds with any decently loud transient. I instantly knew that when I went in there and heard the rooms sound, I wanted to record something there someday. The electronic music assignment of composing music from sounds recorded on Fort Ord was just the thing to use. The cave, and sounds from my kitchen on the fort as well, ended up being the perfect blend that I needed for sounds that I had imagined for this project. I wanted to capture the sound of my everyday life living on the fort. In my process not one musical instrument was used, and 22 non-musical sounds were voiced into musical instruments. Our main goal was to advance the unapparent rhythmic properties of non-musical found sounds. We followed Stockhausen’s process of Structured time, splitting sound, multi-layered spatial composition, and tonal equality. We also incorporated the 7 traits of electronic music. I wanted a truly industrial timbre with some of the snare drum sounds I was thinking of, inspired by Shaeffer and Stockhausen’s making sense of the world’s everyday industrial qualities. Inside this particular cave, there was what appeared to have been a piece of roof from and old shack, a wavy metal type roof. This piece was old and rusty. I grabbed a stick, hit it one time fairly hard and let it fully decay before making any unwanted noise that may be recorded. I also dropped it, and dragged it. These became the 2 industrial snare drums. I walked around and looked for other things to throw inside and came up with a rock, piece of tile, a heavy metal pipe, and a piece of animal bone. These were used as glitch noises. My footsteps were recorded in the building when moving around. The pigeons up at the top inside became unnerved, hooted and flapped. Both of those were used for spatial atmospheric effects. I cleaned off the grille of the mic with my hand and that was used as a record scratch sound. From the kitchen we used the dishwasher and garbage disposal, which are representative of industrial synth noises. Grains of rice and sugar were dropped on a metal cookie sheet and used as hi hats. The depressing and release of a toaster was recorded for a spring sound. The ignition on the stove was recorded as a click instrument. A microwave beep was put into Ableton Live in a sampler and spread out a MIDI controller. We backed off the attack to give it a soft hit, then added reverb and delay and played variations of a G major chord. My foot accidentally bumping into the oven and tapping my shoe on the ground became the kick drum sounds. Overall we recorded about 45 minutes of material and condensed it down to 4. We chose the best sounds, which were all one-take-wonders! So what we had was what we got, and I think it was used well. This piece of music definitely ended up capturing the soundtrack of my typical daily life here in Monterey… Awesome.

This week Garrett and I have made quite the progress on our Musique Concrete project. Here is a brief list of things we used to record and the sounds that we captured on and around Fort Ord:

Recording Fort Ord – Electronic Music Experiment

Recording in Logic 9 using 3 microphones:
-Shure Beta 52 large diaphragm dynamic kick drum mic
-Shure Beta 58A small diaphragm dynamic vocal mic
-Shure Beta 57 small diaphragm dynamic instrument mic

Sounds recorded inside the house on Fort Ord:

-Dish Washer

-Dropping Rice/ Sugar on a metal cookie sheet

-Hit cookie sheet with plastic stick

-Scraped cookie sheet with plastic stick

-Foot bumping into the oven

-Vacuum

-Stove Ignition click

-Microwave beep

-Stove Fan

-Garbage Disposal

-Toaster pushed down/release


Sounds recorded inside a 20x50ft cement half-cylinder army barrack out by Monterey Bay.

This tunnel has an awesome natural reverb, ranging 8-10 seconds in length!

-Pigeons hooting/flapping

-Various items thrown on the floor:
-Tile
-Wood
-Bone
-Metal pipe
-Firecracker

-Rusted sheet of metal scraped across the floor
-Footsteps on the floor


After getting the sounds captured in logic, I cut the sounds we wanted and edited them down a sample that could be placed into Ableton Live so we could line up the transient. After getting everything lined up and doing about half of the arranging in Ableton, we moved 18 stereo tracks back over to logic to be further manipulated and effected. Over the past few days I have been doing a ton of arranging/mixing and I cannot wait to show it in class. When I first heard early electronic music in this course, it was hard to make sense of. Now, after creating something like Cage and Shaeffer did back in the day, it is much easier for me to point out types of sounds and the ways they have been effected from their original state.

Cody and Bernie: MIDI

Midi is a communication protocol that sends control messages to computers. MIDI is capable of varying instruments, tempo, and key with a few clicks. File formats are small and universal. It is the most popular formats used to share compositions and arrangements. MIDI was introduced in 1984, and before then synthesizers couldn’t communicate with computers. MIDI was designed for connecting and controlling synthesizers, and linking computers to synthesizers. Data that computers can send to other computers, when it leaves the computer and goes into a drum module or keyboard with contained sounds in them. Dave Smith was the driving force behind the generation of MIDI in 1981. Connected the Prophet 600 to the Roland JP-6 in 1983 to demonstrate MIDI. 1991 General MIDI was created to make MIDI compatible with just about every interface and computer. MIDI software: Sibelius, Protools, Logic, Cubase, Digital Performer, and others.

Shaffer started out in 1943 collecting gear. He started recording with turntables and cutting records with a disc lathe at RTF studios. He recorded found sounds, in reverse, and using animal voices and natural sounds to give us a new perception of music. GRM was the first studio dedicated entirely to electronic music. Tape was a new medium at hand, and the audio fidelity was much improved. He experimented with variable speed tape machines.
John Cage got in with the Barrons in New York at their studio, and experimented and recorded with them, using homemade loudspeakers, oscillators, and sound wave generators.
Squarepusher is an electronic music artist, born in England in 75. He got tired of gigging and started buying DJ gear, including a sine wave generator and the Roland TB-303 - transistorized bass. He uses real tape machines with the software Reactor.

Will and Daniel: Piezo Pickups

Studied the effects of peizo electricity, led to smoke detectors, and sonar technology. Once the discovery was made it was very easy to make these, and American was secretive as compared to Japan, Piezo are used in the musical worlds’ in the 1960’s, before that instruments had to stand by a mic. Now pickups allows processing of sound right form the instruments, transducing vibrations into electrical current. Piezo pickups are good at natural sound reproduction, they are very small in size, and work by attaching to any sort of vibrating surface or instrument. They are resistant to feedback, Contact mics. Modern applications: amplifying guitarist violins, typically string instruments, and they can be alternative to mics. Piezos pick up sound differently than a mic. They respond to vibrations from contact with a surface, not by changes in atmospheric pressure. Non-musical uses, science and medicine to detect brain activity, door bells, smoke detectors.

Nick and Cynthia: Magnetic Tape

Mediums before tape: Grammophone and the phonograph. Plitzfreumer invented magnetic tape. Tape began with a plastic base with iron oxide coating to preserve recorded audio. New editing techniques and manipulation of sounds became possible. Tape changed performances and revolutionized the beginnings of broadcasting, and also led to digital recording. Wire recording was a low quality technology, and was non linear unlike tape. Tape recording allowed users to drastically manipulate sound with speed, reverse, echo, and delay. Tape thickness was eventually reduced over later developments. The Stancil Hoffman was the first magnetic tape recorder. Tape spawned developments of multi-track recorders. Ampex is the industry standard for tape and digital image processing. Tape enabled modern perspectives and processes of recording. Tape forever changed recording and editing audio. Introduction of tape made it possible to reverse and loop sounds. Ampex 4 track machine AG 440B, Line amplifiers on top correspond to a track Put tape on supply reel, and feed to take up reel. Tape effects are achieved with the use and manipulation of the playback, record, and erase head. We need to envision tape as occurring over time. Echo can be achieved by feeding the record head back into the input, and creating a distance between the playback and record head. Tape loops are possible by cutting and reconnecting the tape around a 3rd wheel. With tape, speed and pitch are linked, so slowing down a recording would result in everything detuned. Varispeed is voltage controlled. Tape is a physical medium, and cutting tape in different angles will create fades, blends, and or instantaneous entrances. Tape is subject to demagnetizing and can erode over time, losing the quality of the audio. Tape machines and their components need to be regularly cleaned, and machines would need proper calibration.



*All my Moog notes were not recovered when my computer died. I am having notes emailed to me so I can write on him...

Alex Vittum is a music composer, drummer of many styles, and an electro-acoustic enthusiast. He even teaches woodshop to elementary level kids. He studied free jazz, afrocuban percussion and handdrums. His most current project is called Prism, which is his solo electro-acoustic project for percussion. He uses the software MAX MSP to create software synth presets. These presets are triggered by the audio that is received from the microphones set up on the drum kit. On the drum kit on top of the bass drum, he had a board with FSR’s, force sense resistors. These pads are velocity sensitive, and send MIDI information to MAX MSP. He links his custom presets to these pads and triggers them throughout He has been studying this idea for a few years. In his ideas he sought 3 components to process from percussive elements: timbre, amplitude, and frequency or pitch. Today he used some small condenser mics. The two inputs split into 4 channels, allowing him to set any parameter to be affected by a delay or other modulation and record to those four channels. A certain section of the audio would loop on each track, and with a designated loop time. He works very closely with Don Buchla in creating and inventing hybrid modular synths. Being close to a city with a happening music environment really gave Alex perspective and relativity on what he wanted to do when he went to grad school at Mills. It is also important as a musician to surround yourself in a community of people with a wide range of backgrounds. The 3 pieces that he performed were amazing, and I am inspired to take my electro-acoustic interests and approach to the next level of processing.

Tape echo, reverb, tape loops, tape speed.

The song Rain by the Beatles was recorded with a fast tape speed, a higher tempo, and a higher key. They did this with the bass, drums, and guitar. Then they rewound and slowed down the tape and recorded to vocals over the slower version.

In the song When I’m 64, they recorded it slower, and in a lower key. The sped up John’s voice so he sounded younger.

Transistors:

These take the place of vacuum tubes, and they are about the size of a tictac. People have developed miniaturized electronic devices with very little weight. The process of making them is highly automated, and this makes them cheaper to buy because everything is done by computers and merchandise isn’t hand made. There’s no arm up period for transistors, they have a lower power dissipation, and put out less energy (heat) than say tubes. They are highly reliable, and have an extremely long life. Some transistors can last over 50 years and they are insensitive to mechanical shock and vibrations. They can be called microphonic tubes.

The RCA electronic music synthesizer: This synth was used to compose music. Then Olson and Belar began to use it for sound generating and modifications. It was used as a means for preprogramming basic properties of tone, pitch, timbre, amplitude, envelope, glide, frequency filtering and reverb. All these parameters were preprogrammed on a punch card. The synthesizer was called Mark I. The output was direct to loudspeaker or turntable lathe. The Mark II had 1700 vacuum tubes, weighed 3 tons, was 7 feet tall, and 20 feet long. Waveforms to choose from were saw tooth, triangle waves, envelope shapers, frequency filters and reverb.

The Buchla synth replaced the RCA in 65.

Timbre distinguishes sound from different instruments. The same note sounds different on a bass versus a trombone because of the harmonic overtone series.

Cage strived to extract the emotion out of the music and emancipate it from western theory concepts.

Cage determined 5 components of sound:
1. Frequency – how often vibrations repeat throughout the process of compression and rarefaction.
2. Amplitude – is measured in dB, and refers to loudness.
3. Timbre – how we perceive a waveforms complexity, and color.
4. Duration – instruments have a limited ability to sustain sound, but electric instruments have an infinite durations and their duration can be used as a key element in composition and arranging.
5. Envelope – the attack, decay, sustain, and release of any sound

Synths generate different types of waves: Sine waves contain no harmonics. They are a smooth waveform and produce one tone. Square waves and Triangle waves contain only odd harmonics, giving them a more buzz like tone. White noise is random signal, what sounds like static on your TV.

Electro acoustic music – music that integrates sound from the natural world, with audio processing as well as synthesized sounds. People put much research into acoustic electro music and some devote their whole lives to the study.

The multiple vibration phenomenon consists of partials overtones and harmonics.

Electronic music was the 3rd stage of the aesthetics of music (said by H.H. Stuckenschmidt) – 1. Vocals 2. Instruments 3. Electronic Music ...The production of sounds started to become further away from the body.

7 traits of electronic music:
1. sounds sources of electronic music are unlimited, you can sample, and also sine waves… composer can invent sounds that do not nautrally exist in nature, or radically alter sounds that are natural to crate new instruments

2. Electronic music can expand the perception of tonality, and relinquishes music from the western traditional rules. All sounds carry equal importance

3. Electronic music exists in a state of actualization. Stravinsky talks about potential music and actual music, Score vs the execution of a performance. Elec. Music usually defies scoring because it can be composed live. The other issue is there isn’t a formal way to score a piece of electronic music. Scores can be used for future performances, by either graphic or western notations.

4. el emus has a special relationship with the temporal nature of music. The plastic (flexible, elastic, compress) nature of elec mus allows a compoers to record all values associated with sound, Pitch timbre, and an evelope can be recorded taking b=place over time The ability to modify a sound by time and pitch is one of the most fun

5. Electronic music itself becomes a material of the composition. The type of composition allows users to delve into the physics of sound.

6. Electronic music does not breathe, it is not affected by the limitations of human performance. Complex rhythm and speed are not an issue.

7. Electronic music often lacks a point of comparison with the natural world. This provides a largely mental and imaginative experience. Electronic music is disassociation with the natural. Listening requires intellect and imagination to interpret what is heard, and provokes the listener to derive meaning from the re-interpretation of unnatural sounds.

Tape composition methods and techniques:

Most modern recording practice and techniques are rooted in the classic tape studio and are still very similar. Shaeffer, Henry, Cage, and Varese: this type of composition liberated them from scoring and notating parts, which is super time consuming. Tape embodies both space and time. You can see the physical space the sound requires to be produce and unfold. This resonates with our perception of time as humans. Technology levels all characteristics of the physics of sound, because you can speed up and slow down a sound on tape. Chords become rhythms, and rhythms become drones. Duration, pitch and color are now all interchangeable.
Since all rooms have a resonant characteristic, the room will highlight the particular frequencies, and the formants of the room are emphasized.

Exam 2 was this week… And I chose 3 questions to answer on John Cage, The Mellotron, and Musique Concrete. I studied for this exam by reading the chapter, and making notes of the key people and points. As I came across person, I would write down the year they were born, and a few key things that they did in their lifetime. After reading over the notes I took, I got together with Taylor and we quizzed each other on the facts,, asking the questions we thought might be on the test. I felt pretty prepared for this exam, and my study techniques really helped me understand and remember the material.