Sound Is Finally Over!

After speaking with Sebastian I decided not to change my sound anymore and just exported it alongside the image.

If were to do this project again I would probably try and incorporate instruments for me that's where I feel more comfortable and I believe I could make it better if I were to use them as well.  I would also use Cubase rather than Audition because like I said before I feel a lot more comfortable with that software and that software is more geared towards making music than audition is.

Other than that I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out and was probably the least intimidating of all the projects.

Time Art Practice

So after trying and failing to film my Time Art piece over the weekend (Note to self: Never assume anything, you will pick up the only cameras that don't shoot video) I felt like I should be doing something somewhat productive in regards to my twin screen projects. Now I have a pretty clear idea of what I want to do and a very badly drawn storyboard to back it up but I've never actually use the effects I'm planning to use. They seem pretty simple and I'm competent enough in After Effects now to work out problems when they arise and try new things that tutorials may not cover.

I took my own DSLR and set up the worlds worst studio in my bedroom (equipment consisting of a desk lamp, tripod and camera against a cream wall) and started filming a vague idea of what I storyboarded. I then imported into AE and just got to work, playing around with what I can do and basically doing what I wanted, my ultimate dream in life, I gave myself magical powers.

The tutorial I was following was useful for getting the idea but the guy was using stock footage that I didn't have access too so I had to play around with what I had already learnt in AE and see what happened. I ended up using partial world and a new generator I hasn't used before to create lighting effects, this added with a bit of colour correcting and a 'mystical atmosphere' called quad-toning I made it appear as if I was deflecting magic.

Whilst it sped up a lot when exporting (I still need to figure out why) I'm pretty pleased with it for a first attempt.

I then took a magic orb I created a while ago and decided to make it hover on my hand as if I was the one creating it. Here I was focusing more on making the orb look as if it belonged in the shot than the accuracy of the tracking hence why the exit is a bit dodgy but again I'm pretty proud of the result, now I only need to figure out how to add a hovering shadow beneath it and I think it'll fit into my twin screen nicely.

I'm going to keep playing around in AE with different tutorials I've found in the hopes that I can use everything in my final edit, I have the Panasonic until Friday and after speaking with Simon I think I've came up with a way of filming using just 1 camera instead of 2 - hopefully this will work. We'll see!

Mastered and Ready to g- wait.

So I finally sat down to finish my sound project, after speaking with Sebastian I only had a few things I need to change, clipping being the major one and making the sounds a bit more spontaneous in regards to panning.

Clipping was easily fixed and panning seemed easy until I sat down to do it, I based my projects off a very structured plan I had in my head and the prospect of changing that plan was actually quite daunting. When I started changing things up and playing them back they just seemed a bit 'off' to me, now in the later parts of my track this didn't bother me because that was my intention - everything is supposed to go wrong it's supposed to be off kilter a little bit. But I started playing around with just the smaller tracks that ones that are setting the beat/pace, they don't change in time they just change in position and in some cases pitch. After mastering and exporting I had a final listen to the piece before I imported it into Premier but something was missing, I noticed that in my attempt to make things spontaneous I had inadvertently taken all bass tones away from the left ear. Now whilst in my 'make things traditional' sense I wanted to go back and change it immediately but then I thought maybe this could be it's signature, something to make the piece unique?

Whilst I really don't believe that I started looking at the sources from 'Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art', maybe this is something that other people do? I read a lot around the use of space in exhibiting sound pieces and how the architecture of a room can make or break a piece of work. I listen to Le Monte Young (Mainly his non-experimental work I'm afraid, still interesting) [x x x], and rather infuriatingly couldn't find a working version of Achim Wollschieds Wallfeild a piece I think would have been very interesting to listen too especially since it's subject matter is so close to what I based this project on. I was also looking forward to hearing everyday sounds turned into tones, something very similar to what my first instinct was in regards to this project right at the beginning. The lack of video/audio documentation of any of the pieces I'm actively looking for is really annoying yet to an extent I can understand why they are not in the public domain, 'Background Noise' is a book that explains experimental sound is there to fill space rather have space to accommodate sound. A lot of the artists seem to spend more time building the stage than working on the performance which in hindsight is probably the best way to do it, if you don't know what you are working with how do you make something that compliments it accordingly.

Now I'm not sure of the acoustics of the room this piece is going heard, nor would I know what to do with that information if I had it. What I do know is that when listening through headphones the imbalance my piece currently has doesn't match the narrative I had set out for it, so I believe it's going to change.

However here is my piece as it currently stands, it will change a bit before hand in day and I'm going to try and grab another tutorial with Sebastian to see if he has anymore advice on how to improve it before hand it.

Mixing down.

Today I sat down and finished isolating all my individual sounds so I could finally start mixing my final project. I already has an amazingly drawn diagram of what I wanted and where I wanted it so at the moment it's just a case of getting everything in the right order on the screen. My original plan was to create several different multitrack mixes and then compile them all together for mastering but I can't seem to find a way to do it,  so my new plan is to arrange the different 'rooms' in different mixes and then transfer the sounds already in order into my main mix before I start scoping.

2 Multitracks come together to form the opening sequence

At the moment I'm just getting the basics down such as where everything should be going and where the sound will appear in the listeners head when they sit down to listen to it. I'm then going to compile tracks based on their position for instance the 7 main positions I have at the moment are L100, L60, L20, 0, R20, R60 and R100, however these will probably change as I still want to play around with the positions of the actual rooms rather than just the positions of the objects making the noise.

My idea for the entire sequence is to repeat the grooves complied by the noises I have from each room and gradually get higher in pitch (only 1 step at a time, as if building towards something) whilst also getting faster. Once it has reached its pinnacle moment things will start going wrong, things will go out of time, things will go off pitch and ultimately go wrong. In the background of this noise footsteps will become frantic running from side to side/forward to back, I want the listener to feel that the human doesn't belong there and that it's the humans presence in the house that's caused everything to go wrong because that's really what happens in real life and what happened in the case of this sculpture. When first built the house was perfect, structurally sound and perfectly capable of staying there for a long as we deemed it necessary it's the constant use and wear and tear of being used by people that caused the house to be condemned in the first place, if the house hadn't been condemned Rachel Whiteread wouldn't have a sculpture to show. 

To help me visualise the look of this imaginary house and where I believe noises should be coming from I've gone back to my amazing drawings with far too many annotations, this is just for me to use whilst editing and it's great for trying things out in my head (that sounds a bit weird but we'll go with it anyway!) before I try them in the mix where something could potentially go wrong.

I am making notes of effects I've tried and believe will work somewhere else in the piece just not here, for instance when editing some generic sounds from the kitchen I found a chorus effect (bass chorus) which is exactly what I'll be looking for when I a bit further into the piece and things start to go wrong.

Let's just say there is a method to the madness. 

Recording the house

Before I set out to record my sounds I did a diagram of what I excepted my piece to look like, to help me visualise it I decided that I would draw a house (because drawing is obviously my best talent) and then label it accordingly. My idea has changed a lot over the time I've been thinking about it and I've decided to stop over analysing my idea and go for what I believe is obvious but then twist it slightly. I want to incorporate the way the sculpture was made with my interpretation of what sounds the house would make. 

The idea is simple, record sounds around my house and arrange them so in a surround sound system they sit where they would be if you were standing in front of the house, these sounds will eventually become 'panicked' and speed up until they are engulfed by what is essentially concrete, diluting the sounds until all that is left is the noises from the Attic (I'm thinking a possible ghost, I haven't quite decide yet I just want something to resonate with the listener to show that it's still there, it hasn't disappeared it's just changed in state)

So I have all my sounds now, minus a few I'm going to have to source online, but other than that I'm ready to start arranging in Audition. I'm also going to try and research some sound installations online although in the past my search has been futile I'm now going to broaden my search to movie soundtracks and realistic soundtracks to see how they composed the arrangement.        

It makes noise!

I've always loved writing music and playing around with it in Cubase but when I started Music Tech (and evidently now) I do find it hard to drift away from what can be seen as traditional composition methods. For example; sitting down at piano and figuring out the key, the meaning behind minor or major, what motif would fit best? That kind of thing, but then again I've only ever composed for theatre, and pretty badly at that.

Something I've found today is that no matter what sounds I have I edited them so they fit my idea of an instrument so I could create some kind of riff or beat. Now whilst in theory this works for me I'm beginning to think I'm loosing the raw quality of the recordings by taking away their literal identity. Although trying to turn sounds from a pool table into a guitar riff and drum beat is pretty fun - at times infuriating - but still fun.

Here's a little file I created on Friday entirely out of sounds from a Pool table and some Water;

Ooooo it's a Ghost

To get a better idea of what I'm aiming for I decided to mind map every route I could think of in regards to House. I personally am leaning towards the 'Ghost' idea, the fact that the house is a ghost/memory of what once was - to do this I'm going to use the classic house noises but with a ethereal atmosphere about it.

I'm still thinking it through in all honesty, I believe this is something that is going to be made in the edit. I'm also experiencing the same thing I did in Music Tech - trying to think too logically.

When I had to produce dubstep I had a slight meltdown because the way of composing the music was completely different to classical (It doesn't use sheet music, this threw me a bit too much). I did eventually get the hang of it but getting back into that mindset is proving difficult.

For now I need to get my head around the narrative I'm aiming for and who I need to research in regards to the actual sound portion of this task - I'll get there, give it time.

House.

So I've done some reading and I think I finally have an opinion on this sculpture, although it's political as per usual. 

What I found intriguing was the fact that this sculpture's creation rendered the thing it's embodying useless. An interesting quote from Rachel Whiteread, Shredding Life; 'It raises more polemical issues in contemporary society: the right to have a home, control of property and the demise of areas of free access in the urban context.'

What I want to do with this project is embody everything about it, first impressions, political views and it's creation. I was brainstorming ideas and my first idea was pretty plain, general house sounds. Then  I started thinking about how houses are recycled throughout generations and given to different families through different circumstances.  I will then speed up the sounds and make them more and more condensed to show the over use of the property. Followed by a penultimate crash symbolising the creation of the sculpture (which included knocking down the property surround the mould) but also symbolising a tragedy in the life of the current occupants rendering the building empty. Now whilst I'm unsure of the following but I want to show the politics of the situation, the fact that they are so many homeless people in London yet they are knocking down accommodation that they could have used. Over all the ending would be a complete 360, a new family would move in and the cycle would start again. 

Hence this weird list/mind map was created.

Hopefully it will make more sense when completed.