Today, many young avant-garde composers continue to explore and invent new techniques to create and define electronic sounds at IRCAM using new softwares like MaxMSP, Supercolider, CSound, Arduino and Spectral analyzer while the commercial music industry churned out tons of new synthesizers, digital audio workstations (DAW), virtual software instruments (VST) and huge libraries of samples. But why didn’t any avant-garde composer try using the latest commercial synthesizer to create new sounds for their “art”?
In order to create their sounds, both the commercial and avant-garde composers have to understand the science of sound synthesis. Joseph Fourier, a French scientist, discovered that “no matter how complex any sound is it could be broken down into its frequency, components and, using a given set of harmonics, it was possible to reproduce it. ” From the harmonics series, one could create different waveforms by combing different partials. The basic waveforms are the sine, square, saw-tooth, triangle and noise wave.
The sine wave consists only the fundamental tone. The square wave consists of the fundamental tone and all the other odd-numbered partials while the saw-tooth wave consists of all the even-numbered partials. In order to create more complex waveforms and timbres, both composers have to combine these basic waveforms using additive, subtractive, FM, sample or granular synthesis. The most commonly used method will be the subtractive synthesis. It combines 2 or more waveforms, passes them through a filter then amplified them using an amplification envelope.
The Essay on Sound Waves Wave Intensity Ear
Sound Waves Waves are disturbances that travel through a space while changing its matter. A sound wave is what allows us to hear sounds. It is created by vibrations, which are made by the movement of matter. Sound waves must travel through a solid, a liquid, or a gas. The more tight the particles, the faster the wave will travel. This would mean that a sound wave travels fastest through solids and ...
Reason, one of the most commonly used DAWs by electronic producers, comes with a few synthesizers, Subtractor, Malstrom and Thor, which work in a similar manner with some variations. To demonstrate the basis of sound synthesis, I have generated a series of sound samples under the label of SINE 1 to 6 using the DAW, Logic Pro 9. SINE 1 is a pure sine with no other alternation. SINE 2 has an increased in its attack and release time and hence cutting away the accent. SINE 3 passes through two effect filters to create the chorus effect.
With the same sine wave, SINE 4 to SINE 6 demonstrates how a Dubstep composer creates a sub-bass sound using EQs, distortion and phasing effects. To create beats and patterns in dance music, these DAWs companies also created digital versions of step-sequencers, which were commonly used by early DJs. Reason comes with 2 different types of step-sequencers: the RPG-8 Arpgeggiator and the Matrix Pattern Sequencer. Using another variation of the sine wave, I have created the “arpeggios” demo track.
By playing only the root note on the keyboard, the RPG-8 Arpgeggiator will do an arpeggio run of the chosen chord for as long as I held this single note. By recording down the notes that I was performing on my keyboard onto Reason’s sequencer, I changed the sound source to the thunder’s sound and generated another variation of the original “arpeggios” track: the “arpeggiothunder” track. Unlike the RPG-8 Arpgeggiator, the Matrix Pattern Sequencer will not automatically generate these chord notes.
However, I can generate chords, scales or even melodies by manually inputting the notes and rhythms that I want it to playback. In the “Refined pattern” track, I generate an F Major melodic pattern by using the Matrix Pattern Sequencer with Subtractor as the sound generator. In these demo tracks, I have demonstrated how simple it is to create something that sounds so complicated using the commercial DAWs. Using all these digital software, an electronic producer can easily create countless timbre variations of the same motive or melody using different sound sources or waveforms.
So an electronic artist has to express his own uniqueness by creating his own signature timbre through the different combinations of waveforms. After contralto, Christine Miller, demonstrated the tone test in the hall of the Montclair club on September 17 1915, vocal performance with an electronic accompaniment has since become today’s performance standard. Not only so, composers have further expanded the possibilities of the human voice with inventions like the Vocoder, Vocaloid and Autotune.
The Term Paper on Unit 30: Digital Graphics P1, M1
The Role of Components within a given computer system in the Production and Manipulation of Graphics Introduction: In this assignment, I will explain the role of hardware and software components within a computer system. Furthermore, I will explain how they relate to digital graphics.I will also recommend suitable components for Cambridge Industrial Design. (P1) I will then compare the limitations ...
With all these digital manipulations and alterations of the human voice, we have already grown accustom to this new digital aesthetic. The question regarding the need of having a real human singer is already outdated in our times. Skrillex, one of the leading Dubstep composers, have demonstrated in his music that his listeners have already come to accept the digital replacement of the real human voice. It is because in Dubstep music, the composers do not try to replace or mimic the expressiveness of the human voice. They seek to create music using of the aesthetics of the digital voice.
Instead of using the latest Vocaloid, Skrillex and other Dubstep producers actually used the backdated Text-to-Speech (TTS) technology to generate their vocal materials. In the “Speech Synthesis” track, I used the online AT&T Natural Voices demo to generate the text “I want to touch you, touch you like this. ” into digital speech. Using Logic Pro’s Flex Time Function to adjust the placement of words to be in sync with a certain tempo, I made it “sing” by passing the speech through a harmonizer, which allows me to choose the scale or chord. I can also adjust the pitch in terms of semitones and cents.
Then in the “spacey speech” track, I generated another speech using Mac’s Voiceover function and created the “spacey effect” that is commonly found in dance music using reverse reverb. In both of these tracks, I came to appreciate this newfound aesthetics of the digital voice when the composer no longer need to worry about losing the human expression in the voice but seek to push and stretch the limit of a human voice. By combing all these demo tracks, I created the final track using two of the most controversial and also most commonly used techniques: Sampling and Slicing.
The Term Paper on Digital Natives
In a two-part series entitled “Digital Immigrants, Digital Natives,” Marc Prensky (2001a, 2001b) employs an analogy of native speakers and immigrants to describe the generation gap separating today’s students (the “Digital Natives”) from their teachers (the “Digital Immigrants”). According to Prensky, the former are surrounded by digital media to such an ...
I downloaded some field recordings from the Quiet American website as my samples. Then I sliced, distorted and morphed them until they were beyond recognition. Some of these original tracks can be found in the Sampling folder. Using a drum loop that was included in Reason, I distorted, EQ, adjusted all the parameters and change the slices to create the rhythm that I wanted. This was a new technology introduced by Reason in which the user can edit or change the loops by adjusting the individual slices. So a recorded real drum loop can convincingly be adjusted to play another rhythm.
The slicing technique might not be something new but the reason why it is so popular with today’s Dubstep producer is the new ability to stretch or shrink audio without changing its pitch. There are many Youtube videos, which demonstrate this ability using the Paulstretch VST, and one of them is the slowdown version of Coldplay’s Viva La Vida (http://youtu. be/avI2aqQSQX8).
This version of Adele’s Rolling in the Deep also demonstrates that we can also speed up any audio track without making the singer sounds like a chipmunk (http://youtu. e/CNAB9JwUu9c).
From 02:30 to the end of the final track, I demonstrated this new technique by slicing up the “Refined pattern” and “arpegggiothunder” tracks to compose something different. The large variation of synthesizers, step-sequencers, voice synthesizer, harmonizers and digital techniques like sampling and slicing used by commercial composers shared the same root and understanding of sound as the avant-garde composers. However, unlike the commercial products, the software used by the avant-garde composers required a lot more time and effort.
In MaxMSP, the composer has to build his own waveform and synthesizer from sketch while the commercial products provide all the necessary technical and interface building with some predetermined limitations. This user-friendliness somehow created a framework that limits the boundaries for creativity. Because of the different ways the waveforms are being combined, each synthesizer in Reason has its own unique sound. Sso it is not really possible to create the same sound using Subtractor, Thor and Malstrom. Until Reason released their next version of synthesizers, the user is limited to what these three synthesizers possibly can do.
The Term Paper on Sound Effects Image Music Create
How do sound and image combine to make meaning and what other potential functions of sound are there? Motion pictures and television are audio-visual mediums and so of course engage both our visual and aural senses. The meaning and emotion of a piece is commonly thought to come from the image and that the sound at best just duplicates the meanings from the image. For example Aaron Copland has said ...
The predetermined limitation is probably the reason why avant-garde composers chose not to use commercial products to create their art. These limitations could be imposed by industrial standards and were designed solely for the purpose of creating electronic dance music. However, with the efficiency of these commercial products, this should not stop one from further questioning the creative use of such limitations. There are composers who seek to use their inventions to create something artistically novel but there are also some who could create something novel out of what is already available.
Debussy and Ravel did not invent something new from the start but they borrowed what was available to them, they were able to artistically reinvent something new out of it. The iPhone itself was not a new invention but like what Steve Jobs said, it is a reinvention of the phone and the iPod. Like what Sergei Diaghilev commented on Ravel’s La Valse, “it is not a ballet. It’s a portrait of ballet”, with the use of dance music techniques and software, am I only limited to creating dance tracks?
