Recordings, Marathons, and Synthesis

Anzac Day shortened Week 7 by a day, thus resulting in no Audio Arts class. However, I did work on some recordings I made the previous week. With the help of Andrew Georg on piano (grand), I experimented/practiced some microphone techniques. In particular, the mid-side technique was explored. I have recorded the piano in the space on a number of previous occasions and this was the most successful attempt so far. The use of a Neumann U89 for the figure8 position and a U87 for the omni were an effective matching. I had planned on using a matched pair, but could only find one U89. The brilliance about this technique is when the inverting of the figure8 takes place and a stereo split is made. The quality of sound skyrockets and combined with the omni/central placing is brilliant. Adding some EQs and slight harmonic effects I produced this recording:

Curiously, when I was trying to locate the sweet spot of the figure8, both sides of the microphone produced a sound that was almost exactly the same. Perhaps it was the song selection, but I think I managed to obtain a pretty good sound.

The sound created by Xenakis in 'Voyage to Andromeda' was not such a good sound, but that is subjective and possibly biased. However, it was done with a computer in the 1980s, and commissioned for a kite festival in Japan, so I'm happy to accept it. The voyage it took us on was disturbing, probably one I would want to forget. The journey became monotonous and lost its evocative appeal. My level of acceptance was lower when it came to 'In Flagranti' by Gabrielle Manca. The experimental bottleneck guitar seemed irrelevant to a tech forum. Wouldn't you play it to a student studying guitar or in a composition forum?

The honours presentation by Seb Tomczak was engaging. The ideas and premises behind Milkcrate were interesting. I particularly liked the notion that each Milkcrate event is like 'running a musical marathon'. The marathon would be a real struggle if it was all based on basic synthesis like the following SuperCollider examples.

 synthAM
(

//AM Synth
SynthDef(
\synthAM,

{
//Arguments
arg     carrierFreq    = 220,
carrierVol    = 1;

//Variables
var    carrier,
modulator;

//UGens
modulator    = SinOsc.kr(
freq:    220,
phase:    0,
mul:        1
);
carrier    = SinOsc.ar(
freq:    carrierFreq,
phase:    0,
mul:        carrierVol * modulator
);

//Output
Out.ar(0, carrier)
}
).load(s);

)

//Play
b = Synth("synthAM").play
b.set(\carrierFreq, 440);

The code for the 'synthAM' synthDef is heavily based on the example 'Basic AM Synth'. However, I wrote the code out in full and rejoiced when all the brackets matched up with partners. Running through code errors took some time, but these were mostly to do with commas, and semi-colons. Most of these errors occurred in the UGens section. Just in writing this code, I found that my understanding of arguments and variables, and how to use them effectively has increased substantially. The use of single-character variables is now much clearer. My 'synthFM' example was based on the existing synthDef template, but I had to work it out without an in-class example, and as a result my code-writing abilities are increasing significantly.

 synthFM
(

//FM Synth
SynthDef(
\synthFM,

{
//Arguments
arg     carrierFreq    = 220,
modFreq        = 220,
modIndex        = 900;

//Variables
var    carrier,
modulator;

//UGens
modulator    = SinOsc.ar(
freq:    modFreq,
phase:    0,
mul:        modIndex
);
carrier    = SinOsc.ar(
freq:    carrierFreq + modulator,
phase:    0,
mul:        0.4
);

//Output
Out.ar(0, carrier)
}
).load(s);

)

//Play
b = Synth("synthFM").play
b.set(\modIndex, 440);

References

Haines, Christian. 2006. SuperCollider (4). Tutorial presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, 27 April.

Harris, David. 2006. Listening (5). Workshop presented at the Electronic Music Unit, EMU Space, University of Adelaide, 27 April.

Tomczak, Seb. 2006. Honours Presentation. Presentation presented at the Electronic Music Unit, EMU Space, University of Adelaide, 27 April.