BA SOUND ARTS
For my audio paper I have been researching audio within VR and more precisely clubbing and the rave scene within VR. I am going to be doing research into mainly VRChat which is one of the largest leading platforms on VR because of it’s endless possibilities.
I have found out about various online digital Virtual clubs that host monthly events. The ones that mainly excite me are Shelter and GHOSTCLUB.
GHOSTCLUB is a Japan based club
Ghost was released 1984, “I made this work because I wanted to try out the idea of floating images in midair that had come to me when making Thunder. The entire work was shot frame-by-frame with long exposures. I filmed this in the company dorm I was living in in the middle of the night after I had come home from work, and thought I might die from what had become my daily pattern of sleeping for two hours in the morning then going off to work.” – Takashi Ito
Sound was done by Yosuke Inagak. The sound in Ghost is beautiful, it is very grainy and filled with ambience. It consists of a lot of beautiful sweeping droning pads that almost sound like they’re clipping. It also contains natural sounding sounds such as the sound of rats squeaking which can’t be seen on screen.
The film experiments with ” the most basic dimensions of cinematic illusion, such as space depth, lightning and movement, to create a visual feast that seems to touch on the horror genre”.
https://letterboxd.com/film/ghost-1984/
http://thesoundofeye.blogspot.com/2010/07/takashi-ito-ghost-1984.html
“The single frame, varied and repeated, combined to grant the inner eye the illusion of motion. This photographic essence, this basic cinematic unit, is Ito Takashi’s obsession, and the beginning of our voyage through his oeuvre: The single iterative frame as the artistic element of space-time, and the source of the cinematic alchemist’s mastery over his art. It is an art on the frontier between stop-motion and motion, between the stillness of the photograph and the action of the motion-picture.” https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/ghosts-of-time-and-light-the-experimental-cinema-of-ito-takashi
Stalker –
part one – starts with ambient droning pads, based upon roadside picnic, sound by V Sharun, conductor E.Khachaturyan. middle eastern style sitar and flute first scene doesn’t include music which creates lots of silence compared to the previous introduction scene, doesn’t really have a musical score, mainly just on screen sounds, the film has created very genuinely a artificial place and appears very authentic, repetitive noise of the train going down the tracks, has off screen sounds that i couldn’t make out what they represented
off screen wolf scream, mostly dialogue in beginning, off screen squelching foley in mud, already having watched a quarter of the film I am not blown away by the sound it’s very minimal and silent at times , it makes the film feel very natural, first signs of music, psychedelic jangly song.
part two – birds chirping, natural water sound even though neither can be seen on screen, piano keys, metallic footsteps
the zone – let’s good pass and bad di
reading –
starts with ambient droning pads,
based upon roadside picnic
sound by V Sharun, conductor E.Khachaturyan.
middle eastern style sitar and flute
first scene doesn’t include music which creates lots of silence compared to the previous introduction scene, doesn’t really have a musical score, mainly jsut on screen sounds, the film has created very genuinely a artificial place and appears very authentic, repetitive meditative beat of the noise of the train going down the tracks, has off screen sounds that i couldn’t make out what they represented
off screen wolf scream, mostly dialogue in beginning, off screen squelching foley in mud, already having watched a quarter of the film I am not blown away by the sound it’s very minimal and silent at times , it makes the film feel very natural, first signs of music, psychedelic jangly song.
part two – birds chirping, natural water sound even though neither can be seen on screen, piano keys, metallic footsteps, water droplets,
many silent parts within the film
it took me multiple watchings and sit downs to complete the film, I found it to be a chore to watch, I think this was mainly because of the loose plot and the whole existential aspect of the film.
“you were talking of the meaning, of our life, of the unselfishness of art, take music for instance, less than anything else, it is connected to reality, or if connected at all, it’s done mechanically, not by the way of ideas, just by a sheer sound, devoid of any associations. and yet music, as is by some miracle, gets through to our heart.
long drawn out scenes that could be half the time,”
the film made me think about how i could use silence within my work and how not every second of the score has to be filled with sound or dialogue.
because in my opinion there’s not much visual stimulation
sand dunes – metallic psychedelic music starts and stops
the zone – let’s good pass and bad die
The audience for my audio essay is going to be people that are interested in the online rave scene, this is going to be people who interact with the internet daily and also who have access to Virtual Reality. The target age for my audio essay is going to be 15-25 year olds as I think anyone younger than this wouldn’t be interested as they will not be allowed to go to events in real life and anyone older would not be interested as they have spent most of their lives clubbing in person and may be opposed to doing it virtually.
Glossary of terms-
VR – Virtual Reality
Oculus – A company that releases VR headsets.
Anime – a style of Japanese film and television animation, typically aimed at adults as well as children.
Rave – “a lively party involving dancing and drinking.”
Playlist –
My subject for my audio paper is VR Rave Culture. I want to introduce it to the audience with the voices of people who participate in these events and what they enjoy about them. I will introduce the topic through talking about how COVID and the new development of easily accessible virtual reality headsets such as the Meta Quest VR have made access to VR the easiest it has ever been and has sparked a new interest in an underground virtual reality club scene. I am going to be using text to speech to protect the users privacy and to help them stay anonymous.
creating fm synth using pure data- I hadn’t used pure data before this lesson, I had dabbled in python and terminal but was always felt that coding was too hard and always felt like there was a gap in my knowledge that had to be filled before I could start doing it.
free as in speech and beer
“Free software means that the users have the freedom to run, edit, contribute to, and share the software. Thus, free software is a matter of liberty, not price. We have been defending the rights of all software users for the past 35 years.” – Free Software Foundation
Gaze –
The Nine Muses –
Blackboards –
John Akomfrah – he is invested in the sonic, explained an experience he had listening to BBC 3 which changed the way he viewed the sonic and time. The Nine Muses, used BBC television clips looking at the west midlands, working with BBC archive material, he’s interested in exploring the archive and looking at the relationship between asian and black migration to the west midlands, he strips the soundtrack k of the archive material and re-contextualises the work, recorded over the white BBC perspective and re-recorded and changed the narrative of the footage.
Acousmetre – a kind of voice-character specific to cinema that derives mysterious powers from being heard and not seen. The disembodied voice seems to come from everywhere and therefore to have no clearly defined limits to its power.
Cinema Verite – Jean Rouch, Cassavettes
Syncheresis – The forging between something one sees and something one hears.
Laura Mulvey – Female, Male Gaze spectator and spectacle, object and objectified, voice and voiceless, representation and otherness.
We need to talk about Kevin beginning of film – sound of bow being pulled back and arrow shooting, visuals of La Tomatina represent the events that take happen within the film, there are screams under the sounds of La Tomatina, scene outside the house represents the end.
sound engineer for film from France, he was recording direct sounds (sound with camera), posted his work on freesound it was important for him to share his sounds and to know he wasn’t the only one doing what he was doing.
Last night I attended an event promoted by Snap Crackle and Pop, the lineup was Helm, Container and Cube.
The night started off with Cube doing an audiovisual experience, he played tracks off his Mac and used an Sm57 for vocals which mainly consisted of sort of spoken word. The visuals behind him were the highlight of the night as they fit perfectly with the mood of the set. They consisted of pictures of Jay-Z doing the illuminati hand sign to pictures of people washing their hands. The visuals matched perfectly with the BPM of the tracks and were very hypnotic.
The next performance was by Container, this set was very straightforward and intense. He was playing part of his tracks off of cassettes and was improvising the rest with hardware.
The final performance was from Helm who was doing live synthesis and improvised playing, his set was very ambient and dark, I think his set should’ve been first as it was underwhelming as the last set.
Ableton LINK allows you to connect devices to Ableton and match the BPM so that all devices will be synced in time. Ableton LINK has many IOS apps that are compatible from big synth brands such as Moog and Korg. In my final piece I could implement a recording from iPhone into part of the track. I downloaded a few of the Moog apps such as the Model 15 which is a modular synethesier replication, the Animoog Z which lets you do multi sensory music production, the Moog Filtration which is a realtime audio filter and effects engine and the Model D which is a MiniMoog engine.
Studied music at Princeton university,
Pallazo Gundane (2017) – Subject matter of charity singles, music singles that are made to raise funds for charity, Do they know its Christmas, charity singles continued to be produced in Asia until early 2010’s but died off in 2000’s in Europe, created a story about a man working on oil rigs who thought he had a platinum charity single that he imagined he toured the world with
Models as representation of reality and approximation of the world aka science fiction. Dragon fire breath super size trumpet, nano trumpet.
VCV rack is a plug-in that replicates eurorack and can be used within DAWs.
Eurorack – modular synthesis
Kraftwerk – Autobahn :
Parts of a subtractive synthesiser – LFO , Filter, Envelope, Oscillator, Waveform
Robert Moog was an East Side “engineering physisict and a pioneer of electronic music”. He is the founder of the brand Moog which have been releasing synthesisers since the 1950’s. The brand and the creator have inspired countless artists both present and past.
Subtractive synthesis is just one method of synthesis, it consists of an audio signal that is put through an oscillator into a filter then amplifier.
Attack Decay Sustain Release – Envelope
He is a performer and artist Based in Tokyo, he primarily uses sound within his art but also incorporates other elements into his live setting such as light, electricity and movement of objects.
I listened to his release called Kachi Kachi which inspired me a lot within my outside of university music production. He made the sounds within the track with hand crafted instruments which consisted of an electro-mangnetic relay combined with a variable timer circuit that controls the frequency of the clicks. Moments on this track made me think of the sound of an indicator clicking in a car and I thought that a car indicator could make an interesting sample so I used it within my work.
Something that can be used as the raw component for a piece of music, sampling,
musique concrete using tape machines to record sound objects, manipulating them and rearranging them. using blocks of sound.
took lots of found sound, removing them from their context and creating sounds with them.
Removing the attack of a recording of a bell you get a completely different sound.
Start to discover and reveal what’s inside the sound
Pierre Henry – L’Apocalypse de Jean
Further research – Pierre Henry, Pierre Schaffer,
Glossary –
Serialism – Method of composition using series of pitches, rhythms, dynamics, timbres and other musical elements.
Beep: A Documentary History of Game Sound:
Audio is always the stepchild that needs to be there which is very important but thought of as last, Audio has always been viewed as the ugly step sister of video, Winning of game signaled as ringing of bell which rewards player, signs placed ontop of machines that called them music machines. Music players inside the games were cheap versions of music boxes, pinball visceral experience, bells on table to make ding sound to make it more exciting, chime units and bells to reinforce excitement of playing, games were electromagnetic, early80s pinballs went solid state and used micro processors, modern machines would play movie sound on theme of machine, space invaders, increasing speed and pitch of aliens coming closer to base would trigger tense and on edge emotion, operators would crank up sound to attract players into the establishment, public space is an acoustic war zone, sound design is to fit into tiny window as noises in arcades make the sound muddy, analogue audio, taking diode reversing it, adding current to it, driving square waves crazy (Square waves are the most simple thing you can do with digital technology), 3 sound channels, limitations, sound effects would take up one of the 3 channels, limitations breed innovation, arpeggiate notes at fast speeds to recreate chords, sound and music had to be programmed into the games using code, composers wrote down notes then took that and turned it into a system that started with 0 and ended with f, music was code and numbers, primitive, Q-bert, TIA Atarti 2600, challenge is trying to create something musical with the Atari, NES could only use 3 electronic sounds for the music split them into bass, melody and part of chord or just bass and 2 sounds for melody, concept of loops in game music you have to fit the music onto small memory so you have to use loops, Commodore 64, FM sound chips marble madness first game to use FM, SEGA Genesis had FM synthesis, Soundblaster sound card 9 voice FM synth card no effects, general MIDI, instrument chosen by composer will play back on multiple devices, MT-32 made for desktop music making, write music in 4 different versions (1 note versions, 3 note versions, etc), general midi emulation tones for the fm sound cards, sound canvas, SNES had samples with more than 1 channels 100K storage, Octamed, melodies were short and popped in and out of chords that were playing, composers began to change the constant looping of video game audio’s past by muting loops and letting them reintroduce, lucasarts introduced iMUSE which was used with monkey island 2 which came out in 1991 was done so well that no-one noticed, MIDI changes triggered by actions in-game, CD-ROMS introduced which also had memory limitations which would force the audio to lose quality or to change bit rate, Xbox had 5.1 surround sound, Facebook game audio and the App Store
Beep DVD Extras:
Ryu Umemoto Japanese composer, Dynamic interactive music systems, Video game music needs to tell the story on its own narrative, chance Thomas, music systems, wwise, Music needs to create a sonic world, studied Python, hardest part of game audio is getting work,
Penny arcades / Slot machines – Pinball,
Ludic – showing spontaneous and undirected playfulness, Adaptive – capable of, suited to, or contributing to adaptation, Interactive – allowing a two-way flow of information between a computer and a computer-user, responding to a user’s input
Further Research – The Sound Handbook by Tim Crook. The Game Audio Tutorial Book by Dave Raybould and Richard Stevens, Playing With Sound by Karen Collins, Gamesound.com
Above is the Ableton file for the track, the track has 12 layers, it was made
Artwork ideas / experimentation with Nvidia’s GauGan2 –
Psychoacoustics is the psychophysical study of acoustics, it is about how we perceive sound and
“Due to our hearing limits, you may find that high-passing frequencies around 30 Hz brightens a mix by removing unimportant low-end information that is hard to perceive, although this is not always the case. Increasing that filter to 50–60 Hz, while reducing the high-end to 10–12 kHz, will make mixes and instruments sound “lo-fi,” replicating the poor frequency response of old recording technology.”
https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/psychoacoustics-how-perception-influences-music-production.html
“Pauline Oliveros was one of the true giants of 20th century music. She was also one of our great teachers. She continued working, with boundless energy, well into the 21st century. On the dark day after the US presidential election of 8 November, two weeks before her death at age 84, she was teaching karate to rattled undergraduate students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. (The undergrads, according to Oliveros’ PhD student Andrea Williams, had trouble keeping up with their octogenerian professor; Oliveros was a black belt.)”
Reading this article on Pauline Oliveros has inspired me to experiment with tape looping and repetition.
Sonic Meditations –
Kurt Schwitters – The greatest sound poem of the 20th century