For my final project I entered the intro of Coldplay's Clocks into the score. I experimented with different instruments and octaves for the melody. I then used ultradrum to lay down my basic drumbeat and varied it for different parts of the song, as to not be too repetitive. I used rewire to add a new instrument to reinforce the melody with an synth pad.
I used the AutoFit Filter Mode on the drum machine to add variety. Panning is used extensively with synth as is the dB Warp. A bitcrusher was used on the main intrument/melody towards the end of the song, and I really like the effect and tweaked it quite a bit. I experimented with some pitch shifting using wave editor, but unlike my other project, I was unpleased with the results so I justed used the program to equalize and fade out. The spectral sweep in the midle of the song is slightly modified using frequency.
I feel that the project show development on my part, but it is not a total success. I am still a bit vague on mixing and was not as comfortable using Logic as I was with Reason. With further experimentation I am sure that I can make more accomplished pieces. I don't feel as though my piece is highly dancable, however this was not a goal starting.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Blog 4: Kirill's Assingment 4
The frustration that Kirill expresses in his description is evident in his Assignment 4 piece. The assignment does not fall into either of the specified music categories, jungle or trip-hop, instead the clip is decidedly techno. How ever it is an odd experimental - read mutant - form of techno. Combining loops that seem to have nothing in common with one another to produce a befuddling piece of schizophrenia.
On the brightside, the piece is fun and shows a thriving imagination. I can't wit to hear his final project.
On the brightside, the piece is fun and shows a thriving imagination. I can't wit to hear his final project.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Friday, November 7, 2008
"Music was born free; and to win freedom is its destiny."
"Music was born free; and to win freedom is its destiny."
In Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music Ferruccio Busoni, an early prophet of electronic music from whom the above quote was taken, wrote, “I almost think that in the new great music, machines will also be necessary and will be assigned a share in it.” He was certainly right in his assumption; electronica represents the dawn of a new æra of music. Electronica, electronically generated music, is both highly accessible and personal; it represents a revolution, a renaissance if you will, of how music is experienced.
As Dr. Juraj Kojs, Postdoctoral Associate in Music Technology and Multimedia Art here at Yale, brought to light in a recent interview, “When you think about music history, music is very old and electronic music is quite new.” He went on to say that electronica “technically started with the beginning of electricity,” but technicalities aside, one can trace its roots back even further. Dr. Kojs begins the history of electronica with Guttenberg’s printing press, “the first advanced mechanical system that stimulated society.” Indeed, the media blitz caused by the sudden accessibility of text brought the mediæval æra to a close, parallels the growth and rapid spread of electronica today. By which I mean that both media level the playing field in their respective realms.
“Once sound was separated from source, music traveled across borders and spoke across generations as it never had.”
- Ken Jordan, Stop. Hey. What's That Sound?
Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville’s phonautograph, which marked the first time in history that sound was recorded, and Edison’s phonograph, which made playback possible, ushered in a new way of interfacing with sound. With the invention of magnetic tape, came a new way of manipulating sound. Musique concrète, spearheaded by Pierre Schaffer in the late 1940s, was founded on the principle that all sounds are musical. A typical musique concrète piece may have any number of sounds, from breathing to spinning saucepan lids, interplayed with traditional musical sounds. At around the same time, elektonische musik, was a differing approach to the new medium. Instead of incorporating sounds from the world, musicians like Karlheinz Stockhausen used purely synthesized sounds. Despite major differences in philosophy, both electronic music styles harness the invention of the tape recorder to reshape music with various editing techniques used today including echo, looping, reverb and sampling.
“Human culture is always derivative, and music perhaps especially so.”
- Daphne Keller, The Musician as Thief
It is sad that the regular sounds of industry that inhabited Guttenberg’s workshop are lost to us forever. Had they have been recorded, they would have been transformed easily into electronic music. For the cleft between sound and its source is nowhere so great as in electronic music, due to electronic musicians’ use of sampling. The technique of sampling enables any sound to be music and any person to be a musician. “A New Way to Say Hooray”, a track from Shpongle’s Tales of the Inexpressible, is a good example of the former; it incorporates a lecture from Terence McKenna, the sound of buzzing flies, birdcalls, children’s singing, and many other samples to accurately reproduce a DMT trip. What results of this mixing is something totally new and highly listenable. Moby reflected in an interview with Lucy Walker that “sampling is overcoming my weakness and liabilities.” He goes on to explain that sampling allowed him to overcome his poor singing voice and to reuse sounds created by previous musicians in order to improve the quality of his music. In the same interview Moby discusses the egalitarian nature of electronic music, stating “anyone with access to a computer can make music now.”
"‘When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake.’ said Plato out of Pythagoras. He disapproved of changing the mode of music because it meant destabilization of the older society. But when people began moving to a different rhythm, that affects the whole body and thinking process and a new consciousness rises.”
– Allen Ginsburg
Much of what one hears on the radio today sprung from the search of countercultures for their own music. As Dr. Kojs explains, “In general, any genre [of electronic music] started in subculture. Any genre needs to start somewhere, and that somewhere is underground.” Disco came into being in the 1970’s in such a way; it sprung forth from counterculture. Its overtly sexual messages and get-happy themes spoke from and to the gay pride and women’s liberation movements, as well as the African-America and Hispanic communities and it was “not originally thought of as popular music.” It employed a steady four-on-the-floor beat to create a steady beat which allowed anyone to be a dancer. “No lessons require, just step on the dance floor and lose yourself in the music,” disco declared. Through the use of new technology, drum machines, disco re-imagined the human body into what Dr. Kojs calls “a cyborg pleasure machine” , it was the rallying point of a new culture, complete with its own forms of dress, dance, and drugs. As is the case with most counterculture, disco was later co-opted by mainstream society, but it was only after the ‘79 Disco Demolition in Chicago that disco was dead.
From its ashes rose two new forms of EDM (electronic dance music): House and Techno in New York and Detroit, respectively. Along with them came rave culture which was new and hot in the 1990’s. Sadly, “Now when [one] look[s], ten years later, there is nothing new about it,” lamented Dr. Kojs. As evidenced from a recent Armin van Buuren show I attended, I would have to agree with him; both forms of EDM, and their younger cousin Trance are alive and well, but rave culture is lamentably dead. With the exception of the small cliques of jumpstyle and liquid dancers in the back of the venue, there was little to differentiate the trance crowd from a pop or rock music concert. EDM has gone the way of disco; it has been too commercialised. When asked if raves were yesterday’s news, Dr. Kojs chuckled and replied, “That’s a good way to putit.”
“The relationship between electronic music and the listener, based on the technology that we have, is very personal.”
- Juraj Kojs
Fortunately, EDM does not encompass the entirety of electronica. In recent years, the subgenres of electronica have exploded, blend the barrier between acoustic and electronic and between foreground and background music. New technology enables music to cross genres barriers like never before, creating a storm of portmanteaux; folktronica, funktronica, and livetronica, to name a few. This trend shows not only the influence of music upon our lexicon, but also indicates a shift of “a lot of electronica artist turning back to acoustic instruments.” The blend of live human performance, along with loops and samples, gives the music a human touch. Improvisation is encouraged, fostering a dynamic and interactive experience to which a DJ show cannot come close.
Perhaps Dr. Kojs’ postmodern views toward the future of music are right. When asked what direction electronic music was taking, he mentioned that “ what is really interesting is music that is on the threshold between music and silence. It has nuances, detail, and delicacy.” However, I see the future in fusion genres like Livetronica, the mix of jam music and electronica. It is an example of a culture that is still young enough to be fresh. Go to a Pnuma Trio, Sound Tribe Sector Nine, or EOTO/Zilla show, and there will be no mistaking the crowd for that of an average rock concert, in that audiences are diverse and engaged. Drugs are present, but they serve as enhancements to the musical experience because they break down the barriers between ego and music. You’ll get the sense that the audience is really at the show to enjoy the music, to be apart of something new.
History, tradtion, and classical music – are there words related?
Who decides what is or when it is – is it you or them?
- Daniel Bernard Roumain, What One Must Do
It is only through technology that music will ever be free. Electronica causes us to question the very definition of music. It challenges traditional forms of music and should make you one stop and think, stop and dream. As technology advances, the line between acoustic and digital has already been wiped away. Now the power to sample, remix, and mash the old and the new sounds of the world, both human and digital, has begun to break down the barrier between art and life, and I think there is something intrinsically good in that.
In Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music Ferruccio Busoni, an early prophet of electronic music from whom the above quote was taken, wrote, “I almost think that in the new great music, machines will also be necessary and will be assigned a share in it.” He was certainly right in his assumption; electronica represents the dawn of a new æra of music. Electronica, electronically generated music, is both highly accessible and personal; it represents a revolution, a renaissance if you will, of how music is experienced.
As Dr. Juraj Kojs, Postdoctoral Associate in Music Technology and Multimedia Art here at Yale, brought to light in a recent interview, “When you think about music history, music is very old and electronic music is quite new.” He went on to say that electronica “technically started with the beginning of electricity,” but technicalities aside, one can trace its roots back even further. Dr. Kojs begins the history of electronica with Guttenberg’s printing press, “the first advanced mechanical system that stimulated society.” Indeed, the media blitz caused by the sudden accessibility of text brought the mediæval æra to a close, parallels the growth and rapid spread of electronica today. By which I mean that both media level the playing field in their respective realms.
“Once sound was separated from source, music traveled across borders and spoke across generations as it never had.”
- Ken Jordan, Stop. Hey. What's That Sound?
Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville’s phonautograph, which marked the first time in history that sound was recorded, and Edison’s phonograph, which made playback possible, ushered in a new way of interfacing with sound. With the invention of magnetic tape, came a new way of manipulating sound. Musique concrète, spearheaded by Pierre Schaffer in the late 1940s, was founded on the principle that all sounds are musical. A typical musique concrète piece may have any number of sounds, from breathing to spinning saucepan lids, interplayed with traditional musical sounds. At around the same time, elektonische musik, was a differing approach to the new medium. Instead of incorporating sounds from the world, musicians like Karlheinz Stockhausen used purely synthesized sounds. Despite major differences in philosophy, both electronic music styles harness the invention of the tape recorder to reshape music with various editing techniques used today including echo, looping, reverb and sampling.
“Human culture is always derivative, and music perhaps especially so.”
- Daphne Keller, The Musician as Thief
It is sad that the regular sounds of industry that inhabited Guttenberg’s workshop are lost to us forever. Had they have been recorded, they would have been transformed easily into electronic music. For the cleft between sound and its source is nowhere so great as in electronic music, due to electronic musicians’ use of sampling. The technique of sampling enables any sound to be music and any person to be a musician. “A New Way to Say Hooray”, a track from Shpongle’s Tales of the Inexpressible, is a good example of the former; it incorporates a lecture from Terence McKenna, the sound of buzzing flies, birdcalls, children’s singing, and many other samples to accurately reproduce a DMT trip. What results of this mixing is something totally new and highly listenable. Moby reflected in an interview with Lucy Walker that “sampling is overcoming my weakness and liabilities.” He goes on to explain that sampling allowed him to overcome his poor singing voice and to reuse sounds created by previous musicians in order to improve the quality of his music. In the same interview Moby discusses the egalitarian nature of electronic music, stating “anyone with access to a computer can make music now.”
"‘When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake.’ said Plato out of Pythagoras. He disapproved of changing the mode of music because it meant destabilization of the older society. But when people began moving to a different rhythm, that affects the whole body and thinking process and a new consciousness rises.”
– Allen Ginsburg
Much of what one hears on the radio today sprung from the search of countercultures for their own music. As Dr. Kojs explains, “In general, any genre [of electronic music] started in subculture. Any genre needs to start somewhere, and that somewhere is underground.” Disco came into being in the 1970’s in such a way; it sprung forth from counterculture. Its overtly sexual messages and get-happy themes spoke from and to the gay pride and women’s liberation movements, as well as the African-America and Hispanic communities and it was “not originally thought of as popular music.” It employed a steady four-on-the-floor beat to create a steady beat which allowed anyone to be a dancer. “No lessons require, just step on the dance floor and lose yourself in the music,” disco declared. Through the use of new technology, drum machines, disco re-imagined the human body into what Dr. Kojs calls “a cyborg pleasure machine” , it was the rallying point of a new culture, complete with its own forms of dress, dance, and drugs. As is the case with most counterculture, disco was later co-opted by mainstream society, but it was only after the ‘79 Disco Demolition in Chicago that disco was dead.
From its ashes rose two new forms of EDM (electronic dance music): House and Techno in New York and Detroit, respectively. Along with them came rave culture which was new and hot in the 1990’s. Sadly, “Now when [one] look[s], ten years later, there is nothing new about it,” lamented Dr. Kojs. As evidenced from a recent Armin van Buuren show I attended, I would have to agree with him; both forms of EDM, and their younger cousin Trance are alive and well, but rave culture is lamentably dead. With the exception of the small cliques of jumpstyle and liquid dancers in the back of the venue, there was little to differentiate the trance crowd from a pop or rock music concert. EDM has gone the way of disco; it has been too commercialised. When asked if raves were yesterday’s news, Dr. Kojs chuckled and replied, “That’s a good way to putit.”
“The relationship between electronic music and the listener, based on the technology that we have, is very personal.”
- Juraj Kojs
Fortunately, EDM does not encompass the entirety of electronica. In recent years, the subgenres of electronica have exploded, blend the barrier between acoustic and electronic and between foreground and background music. New technology enables music to cross genres barriers like never before, creating a storm of portmanteaux; folktronica, funktronica, and livetronica, to name a few. This trend shows not only the influence of music upon our lexicon, but also indicates a shift of “a lot of electronica artist turning back to acoustic instruments.” The blend of live human performance, along with loops and samples, gives the music a human touch. Improvisation is encouraged, fostering a dynamic and interactive experience to which a DJ show cannot come close.
Perhaps Dr. Kojs’ postmodern views toward the future of music are right. When asked what direction electronic music was taking, he mentioned that “ what is really interesting is music that is on the threshold between music and silence. It has nuances, detail, and delicacy.” However, I see the future in fusion genres like Livetronica, the mix of jam music and electronica. It is an example of a culture that is still young enough to be fresh. Go to a Pnuma Trio, Sound Tribe Sector Nine, or EOTO/Zilla show, and there will be no mistaking the crowd for that of an average rock concert, in that audiences are diverse and engaged. Drugs are present, but they serve as enhancements to the musical experience because they break down the barriers between ego and music. You’ll get the sense that the audience is really at the show to enjoy the music, to be apart of something new.
History, tradtion, and classical music – are there words related?
Who decides what is or when it is – is it you or them?
- Daniel Bernard Roumain, What One Must Do
It is only through technology that music will ever be free. Electronica causes us to question the very definition of music. It challenges traditional forms of music and should make you one stop and think, stop and dream. As technology advances, the line between acoustic and digital has already been wiped away. Now the power to sample, remix, and mash the old and the new sounds of the world, both human and digital, has begun to break down the barrier between art and life, and I think there is something intrinsically good in that.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
Overheard Through the Walls of the Invisible City
Boomp3.com
The lyrics of this song come from Frank Bidart's Overheard Through the Walls of the Invisible City which reads:
. . .telling those who swarm around him his desire
is that an appendage from each of them
fill, invade each of his orifices,--
repeating, chanting
Oh yeahOh yeahOh yeahOh yeahOh yeah
until, as if in darkness he craved the sun, at last he reached
consummation.
Until telling those who swarm around him begins again
(we are the wheel to which we are bound).
The lyrics of this song come from Frank Bidart's Overheard Through the Walls of the Invisible City which reads:
. . .telling those who swarm around him his desire
is that an appendage from each of them
fill, invade each of his orifices,--
repeating, chanting
Oh yeahOh yeahOh yeahOh yeahOh yeah
until, as if in darkness he craved the sun, at last he reached
consummation.
Until telling those who swarm around him begins again
(we are the wheel to which we are bound).
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