Browny_God

I really enjoyed Laptop Musicianship. It has definitely been the best module so far. My reason for saying this is as well as learning excellent programs such as IXI Quarxs, we really have been given total creative freedom.

Along with this I have met some great guys and had a lot of fun. I also want to take this opportunity to thank the course for adopting this way of learning (blogging). It really is great and also good use of common sense to use the biggest network system on the planet (internet), to help learn, have fun and communicate with fellow class mates even outside of university hours. It really has been the best experience using such a useful learning strategy.  

On top of all this I have to Thank Dr Julio d’ Escravan.

Never before have I witnessed so much enthusiasm towards a persons work than with Julio. It really does make the whole course not only work, but also buzz with great attitude when the guy pushing it along has overflowing passion and enthusiasm for their chosen subject and who shares their knowledge with the young musicians and pupils very willingly. Well done Julio for making a great module and idea very accessible and enjoyable.

Cheers.

Finished Final Piece!!!

Its taken a while but its finally finished. I didn’t actually get to perform my piece live to the class, but this is a rough mix of what I was trying to achieve.

The piece has morphed and changed a little bit to my original concept. First of all I was looking at ideas of individualism, independence and using your initiative. My choice to leave the group and work on my own to better my learning was an important one. It got me thinking about trying to convey this idea in a musical way.

My initial idea was to begin with a sound of confusion, people laughing all around noises, and spoken words such as ‘errmmm….’ And ‘Im not sure…’ being the focal point of the piece. This would then slowly change into sounds of inspiration and ideas. I wanted to show this by having positive, epic soundscapes along with inspirational figures (Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther king, Ghandi etc) giving sounds of memorable speeches.

I related this idea back to my personal life. I then thought about the reasons why I might have felt confusion and dependence on others (like my first efforts with my first group performance). As with the start of all good student lives, mine started with a lot of partying. I was missing lectures left, right and centre and struggling to keep up with the work load. If I’m honest, my blogging has suffered along with this and I am currently frantically trying to catch up with work I should have already done!

My point is that I’m really privileged to be doing such a course as this one yet I still go out and party hard enough for my work to suffer. This then influenced my thinking about escapism. I felt more strongly for this idea than my first one so the piece became a transformation of confusion and independence to  escapism and acceptance of truth.

The piece starts with one of the scariest pieces of music I’ve ever heard, called ‘the dream of Jacob’ by Pendereki. This sound I used to create an atmosphere of disorientation and confusion.  I then play samples of spoken words from a film called ‘Human traffic’. The scene is all about escape and the use of drugs to achieve that feeling where other things do not matter. The atmosphere created by the music tries to show that this feeling of escape, isn’t real. This then builds up to a point where the thickness, volume, layers and concept of the piece peak. At this point I used a sample of a heartbeat and a synth from logic that sounds pure and heavenly, to start to transform the piece. As the heartbeat and pure sounds fight off the dream of Jacob, voices of Muhammad Ali, Billy Connelly, Martin Luther King and other influential figures talk over the increasing sounds of inspirational strings and synth.

I suppose then, my interpretation of the pre-score I created is partying is fun, but I want to achieve good things in the real world. I would be interested to hear other people’s interpretation of escape vs. Truth.

By the way I used a thing called ‘Freecorder’, which is freeware available for download on the web. Its really good for recording sound of any media streams on the internet. Film quotes, music anything. I’m trying to find a way to record my soundcard so I can record any sound made through my laptop, anyone know how?    

Rough Mix Final piece

Here’s the score for my second performance.

 I’m really happy with it, and with the way it can be taken on many different levels. I think it is a lot more interesting than my first score and if I were to continue scoring pieces of music I’d written then this is defiantly the way I would approach it.

Another point to make is that in working in this way, you can actually create the score before even hearing the music. I did this on purpose as I wanted to create an idea before even beginning to search for possible sounds. I believe this avoids gathering samples and stretching them to fit whatever ideas you have developed. In this way no one sound is meaningless.

After scoring the first performance, the group I was working with decided that they wanted to make adjustments to the first performance, understandably so, as the first recording of our performance was very rough. However already working on my own performance, I didn’t really have time to go back over the first performance, so this score (below) is my score of the first recording of the performance.

(picture of first score technical difficulties)

I wanted to keep the score simple really just to save time if I’m honest. In this way, the score is fairly accurate, although I have used symbols for certain samples which for the purposes of someone else who has never heard the piece before, would not be able to re create to any real degree of accuracy (exact pitch, timing parameters etc).

I don’t really like my version of the score. It lacks a lot of things such as great accuracy, character and creativity. However since starting to look at notation, I have actually began to believe that peoples work should not be mapped to this degree of accuracy. It captures your creation and sets it in stone. It’s like artists of today who perform covers of other artists work and copy it exactly, I find this pointless.  Or better still when a band plays there recorded C.D. live and play it note for note so as it could almost be a radio playing not a band.

Our own interpretations to a rough outline of structure create interesting free flowing streams of freedom, allowing individual ideas. This is much more interesting my friends. Therefore I will see to it that my next score is for you, me and even anyone who does not know a thing about pitch, rhythm, timbre, modulation etc.

Lecture over.

 After our first performance, I realised that although I had enjoyed the experience of working with my friends, I had tended to rely on the others for inspiration instead of using my initiative. This also reduced my rate of learning as I couldn’t manipulate the whole process and therefore did not understand as well as I should. So for my next performance, I intend to write and perform my own audio concept.

Although I am enjoying the new capabilities of IXI and SC, on reflection of our last piece, I feel that it only really offers interesting sound. This is a good point; however I have always maintained the view that if you haven’t got anything to say, don’t say anything at all. The last piece was a successful showcase of some of our explorations of new sounds but the piece doesn’t offer anything in terms of concept or meaning. This is a very, almost crucial element for me as an artist.

My next performance will be based on these ideas of audio concepts with real world meanings. In taking the initiative to produce work on my own, I have inspired a concept which I hope to base the next piece of music on.

This week we started to think about notating our live laptop musician pieces. In research for this topic we looked at examples of previous composers attempts to notate their works. I was particularly impressed with Legeti notation for glissandi. I think the use of shapes and colours this way and to this degree of accuracy, really gives the listener more idea about what they are listening to. Our group all agreed this was the best way to notate our piece after looking at other example such as 360 degree scores and concluding that they were in practical.

 Another idea we formed was to have rough musical notation along side the coloured shapes to give fellow musicians and also traditional musicians a chance maybe for the first time to understand our piece.

(Above) Example of legeti’s style of graphic notation. Y-axis represents pitch, X- axis represents tone duration and colours and shapes show changes in timbre.

 When listening to Legeti’s work, synchronised with his graphic score, the level of accuracy is astounding. It really gave my brain more control and clearer conceptions of the sound. I think this is a good way to introduce experimental music to new comers who are sceptical to these kinds of ideas about music.

 (Above) A more general approach to graphical notation. Tone is still indicated in duration, pitch and timbre using the same methods as ‘Glissandi’, but not as entirely detailed.  

 I like this idea as it gives the re-creation of the piece a chance to vary without making the piece totally random. Maybe it could produce entirely new experiences to a piece of notated work without destroying its original sound or concept. Put simply, the performer can interpret the piece’s form in their own way.

found this video on youtube, its got some good advice from successful laptop musicians and also some nice quirky dancing from some fairly happy people…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZL-j5JUMX0

Getting to grips with IXI – Ok so this week I’ve been getting to grips with IXI quarx. First impressions on the software are pretty impressive. 

Individually we downloaded the free software and under instruction from Julio, began loading simple samples into the buffer pool within IXI. From here the samples could be manipulated in numerous ways using the in built instruments and effect generators in IXI. Initially I could not get all of the instruments to play any sound, but after some perseverance, I was soon making interesting sounds.

I particularly liked the ‘Soundscratcher’. It works by showing a visual representation of the loaded sample, and then using the mouse; you can click or drag the cursor over any part of the sample. This gives the effect of reversing, speeding up or even holding continuous tones of any frequencies produced by the waveform pattern. 

However we are only producing very simple sounds, but with the use of our own samples predict that some interesting sounds capes could be produced. I particularly liked manually reversing drum loops with the sound scratcher as this involves a good level of skill to produce accurately. Maybe a better hardware device could be produced for this to give more control over the sound than the mouse. 

Unfortunately my obsession with the sound scratcher this session limited my use of the other instruments available, which I intend to familiarise myself with in the coming weeks

Anyways looking forward to messing around with this alien technology, my guitars looking a bit old in the corner now….