Music For Digital Media Introduction

So Christmas and New Year came and went before I’d had a chance to catch my breath, now it’s almost February already. After a successful first semester there will be a lot more blogging this semester as I have two modules that need blogs. First up Music For Digital Media.

Module Description

Music for Digital Media allows students the opportunity, with the aid of appropriate technology, to compose and realise original music to accompany a film. Students will become familiar with the different roles of music in audio post-production of film. They will develop an understanding of film cues, hit points, underscores, musical anticipation and heightening of dramatic tension. They will also begin to understand the narrative (diegetic) and atmospheric (when used non-diegetically) role of music. Students may either work with supplied material, or with other students undertaking complementary work within related media production modules. A range of techniques will be examined, together with a consideration of approaches to film music composition from selected commercial and non-commercial film composers. A related element of the course deals with the issues surrounding the creation of audio content for videogames. An exploration of the evolution of related technology and its aesthetic implications is complemented by practical explorations of audio and music for games. Interactive and Dynamic Audio are explored and students are guided through creative responses to key videogame genres. These approaches will be assessed by undertaking a series of practical exercises designed to acquaint students with a variety of film scoring techniques as well as an overview of contemporary trends in game audio. The module portfolio is accompanied by a brief critical evaluation that should place the student…s work in the context of current trends in film music writing as well as providing a basis for the student…s own criteria and judgement. The skills acquired in this module should provide a good basis for further exploration into the videogame industry which is now a significant employer of composers and sound designers.

Assessment Details

Tasks are expected to be quite short, at minimum 45 seconds., at max 2 mins.

Each task must be accompanied with a short critical report stating clearly (use these headings):

1. What your objective was in creating the score (your ‘auto-brief’).

2. The visual elements you wanted to highlight and why you chose them.

3. What well known composer’s approach you decided to adopt and how you modified it to suit your piece. Or, if you feel your approach is totally original, then explain what makes it so. Please reference the films on DVD as shown in the ARU Harvard referencing style.

4. Note one particular audio technique you applied in this task which you had not applied before.

5. Note one particular music technique you learned through doing this task In your view

6. How is this task an example of practice as research?

7. Autoevaluation: what mark would you give yourself for this task and why.

All blogs must be complete before the final submission. (Wednesday 11th MAY)

Second Studio Project Mixing

After finishing my recording, I had to figure out what other production techniques I wanted to use on the track, as well as the John Wood technique for Guitar, the Reverse Reverb (that I still intended to fit in to the piece, more on that a bit further down) and the ADT in a previous post.

In a previous post I said I was going to cut up the Viola and use lots of different takes, well it didn’t really fit any criteria so I had to think up a new idea of how to use it. So I came up with idea of Phasing Viola’s, which comes from Steve Reich’s Process Music, which came about by accident on the track ‘It’s Gonna Rain’ when he made two tape loops as identical as he could and because of human error with tape machines, on playback they slowly started to go out of time with each other, thus creating phasing and other famous tracks such as ‘Come Out’ and ‘Piano Phase’. So I decided to incorporate this into my piece as it felt like a good way of breaking down the piece into a new section.

To make the piece Phase I used the Elastic Time function, to slightly stretch out several sections, so it began to sound in Phase quite quickly, as our criteria does not allow us more than a 6 minute piece of music, so a 20 minute Phasing Viola’s piece inspired by Reich was simply not an option.

A short extract of the Phasing Viola.

Then I came up with the idea of using Frank Zappa’s technique of Reassembly to keep the listener interested, as the track up to a certain point just follows a normal structure. Adding to the Viola Phase, I started cutting up the vocals and added Delay to over-exaggerate the Reverse Reverb on them. Then I added the Bass from the Verse and reversed the Guitar so it is accented on bars 1 and 3 rather than 2 and 4.

This becomes more apparent when I add the Drums to the mix, I have cut up a part that has 2 snare hits and is repeated twice, one after the other, so you get the tat-tat in the middle. I have aligned the Drum sample in time with the Reverse Guitar hit, so the Bass feels slightly disjointed. Right at the end I have taken one Snare hit and looped it 4 times, to build the piece up back into the Chorus.

This is the Reassembly from when the Vocals come in.

Now with my production techniques sorted, I went on the mixing the track…

Firstly I added some Lo-Fi to the 2nd Guitar Track in the piece to give it a nice warm, distorted feel underneath the piece, as well as being able to sound crunchier than the main Guitar.

And this is what it sounds like…

I used Side-Chaining on the Guitar to Compress the level when the vocals come in, but in there were parts where the attack of the Guitar came back into the piece too quickly, so I automated the Threshold so it stopped sounding stuttered.

As mentioned earlier and in a previous post, I had used Reverse Reverb on the Vocals and had intended to automate it so you could hear the attack only, by automating the volume I was able to control exactly the points where you could hear this channel.

As the Vocals were the same during both the Verse and Chorus, Gareth gave me the idea of adding an extra delay to an Aux track and a longer Reverb time to ring out the Reverse Reverb, thus providing a notable change for the listener.

I used a Side Chain on the Bass to compress the sound whenever the Kick Drum came in, because the Bass has a full deep sound, the Kick adds too much low end, so by compressing it the Kick is able to come through.

Finally, here’s what it sounds like after all my meddling…

Second Project (cont.)

So I was helping Andrew Hosker record his track and we had a little bit of time left over, so he kindly offered to record Bass for me right then and there!! Top Man!!

When we were recording Bass for his piece he set-up a really nice sound through the Behringer amp, and I decided for time’s sake and because my 2nd piece is a lot heavier in style, to use this technique. To create this sound we used a e602 to capture the Lower end Frequencies on the Driver of the amp and a Neumann just below the tweet to capture the Mid and High end Frequencies.

First an example of the e602.

And here’s an example of the Neumann

A few days later it was my Studio Session and I roped in (not literally roped) my Viola playing housemate Jules to come lay down the final part of my recording. I used the Loop Recording technique to get as many Viola takes as possible as I intend to cut them up and use several different takes.
But because people had already booked out microphones for Saturday and Sunday, I was left with limited choice, which as it turns out wasn’t such a bad thing after all.
I used two Hebden Sound Mics which are Cardiod, one pointed at the fretboard to pick up fretboard and higher frequencies and one pointed at the bridge to pick up the bow and lower frequencies.

 

 

 

 

Here’s an example of what it sounds like…

Now all my recording is done. Time to mix…

First Studio Project Mixing

I like the dry versions I have recorded, but to make them sound better I had to use some Plug-ins…
Referring back to the notes for this project, we are limited to High Pass Filters (HPF), Compression, Time Adjuster and Side Chaining on the tracks, and the Maxim Limiter on the Master.

Because I used two Bass Drum Mic’s in the piece, there was an  abundance  of Kick in the mix, so to combat this I put a HPF on the  Kick. As you can see from the Plug-in opposite I’ve filtered out the  Low Frequencies up to 98.9  Hz.

 

 

I have used Side-Chaining to compress the guitar when the vocals come in, so I have a clearer vocal line in the mix. The Release time is set to 97 m.s. so the guitar doesn’t come back up to full volume too quickly and doesn’t stutter.

 

 

I have set a very slight HPF on the vocals to take out the very low Bass Frequencies that manifest when using the studio because of the Generator room next door.

 

 

 

Here’s what the track sounds like after all that…

For both projects we have to use Maxim on the Master Fader, Maxim limits the levels so they do not peak, and for this task we have to limit them to 0.2 db. We then move the Threshold down (e.g. -6.4 db) to Compress anything that goes above this volume, whilst at the same time the Plug-in allows you to increase the loudness of the audio whilst maintaining the same peak level.

 

Here is a sample of the above file, but using Maxim

 

Trent Reznor Stylistic Study

Trent Reznor (or Nine Inch Nails as the name he releases most of his music under) is one of the most influential producers of the 1990′s. In his teens and early twenties he was involved with Synth based bands, and found employment at Right Track Studios and after hours at the studio began to create music under the name of Nine Inch Nails.

Things to look out for in Trent Reznor productions:

• Vocals sound very close and very dry
• Mashing up sounds in background – dry one moment, reverb the next.
• Stereo widening.
• Textural production – Looping lots of Guitars, a sort of wall of sound.

NIN – The Day The World Went Away (1999)

 

“What I wanted to do with this album was to make it imperfect. I wanted it to sound harsh and unsure of itself” Reznor on With Teeth (2005)

Something Reznor uses in Pro Tools is Looping Recording over and over, this enables you to record multiple takes without stopping. This is how you do it…

• Loop recording – Highlight area you want to record in to
• Options menu – Loop record (or alt L) (Puts a loop arrow on the record button)
• Select pre-roll (if you can’t find it open side bar and get it to open expanded transport)
• Set a pre-roll time to prepare before the recording begins
• Create New Playlists with every Looping – Main menu – Preferences – Operation – Tick ‘automatically create new playlists when loop recording’
• Press Record and do as many takes as you want.

Pro Tools Grid

Grid – Certain note values dictate how you can move the track
Slip – Moves a track wherever you want.
Shuffle – Throws earlier or later?
Spot – Used to place things at a particular point – Click on it and you can tell it what bar/wherever you want it to be. Good for using in films, for when you want it to play at a specific points.

Automation

Automation is a very useful in all forms of composing, and within Pro Tools you are able to automate tracks to change their Volume, Pan, and any Plug-in that may have been assigned.

• Select Track – Click the drop down menu where it says ‘Waveform’ Click – Select ‘Volume’
• Pencil tool (f10) – Click and hold – Square wave – Volume – You’ll get square wave pulses in Volume.

Automation mode is normally in read – but there are different modes, for example latch.
Latch mode will record movments in faders or pan whilst you are playing back.

To edit specific Plug-ins.

• Choose Track and Plug-in
• To assign a parameter click Ctrl, Alt + Cmd and select which parameter you would like to automate
• This will now show up on the track’s drop down menu where it says ‘Waveform’

 

Second Project

So Late one Tuesday (or Friday) night me and Mr Hosker descended through the Winter darkness to start on my 2nd Studio Project. The initial problem I had was that the song I was about to record had been written about two or three days before hand, so I spent the first hour and a half figuring out the structure of the song.

Finally though I made a decision and went ahead with recording. I  decided to use the vocal booth and 2 SE’s to record a very close miced  guitar. Using the idea of Nick Drake’s producer John Wood who  recorded Nick against the wall of the studio (although the reason is  because Nick was in such a fragile state of mind he didn’t want  anyone to see him play).

And this is how it sounds…

So Moving on from that we set up the drums in the Glyn Johns Technique, and used almost exactly the same mics as in the first project, with the exception of only one bass drum mic this time.
e602 – Bass Drum Mic
SE Electronics – Hi Hat
DPA’s – Above and Below Snare
Neumann’s – Overheads

As with any song you’ve only just written it was hard going at first to figure out exactly what I wanted, so it took a few more takes than I would have liked, but now I have about 6 or 7 playlists worth of Drums to use when trying to mix.
This is what the Kit sounds like together, with the Time Adjuster on…

Finally I recorded myself singing words that had been scraped down on my Macbook at god  knows what time in the morning whilst in the writing mood. Again when you haven’t arranged  a song, you’re not exactly sure how and where you want the vocals to sound, so quite a few  playlists later…

I used two microphones to record the vocals, an SM58 and the SE Electronics. I wanted two vocal tracks so I could try out the Reverse Reverb effect on one and see if it worked in the mix.

Here’s what the Original Reverse Reverb Sounded like…

And here’s the Reversed version (so the vocals are actually forwards) so you get the Reverb attack starts before the Vocal line.

Now after using this technique, I realised that within the mix the words would be difficult to hear and I felt this wasn’t how I envisaged using the technique. So I created another Aux track and put the SM58 vocals through it.

As you can see on the plug-in on the left I have added Short Delay II to the Aux track, using the rate, depth, feedback and mix, I have added slight differences in what was the same vocal track, thus creating my own Automatic Double Tracking.

There is still a place in the piece for the Reverse Reverb effect, I am going to use it to build up each vocal line, an example of what I mean occurs in the Radiohead song ‘Everything in it’s Right Place’

Second Project – Ideas…

So, now I’ve written a song for the 2nd Project, I’ve got to come up with ideas to fit it into the assessment guidelines (which isn’t something I usually have to do when considering an arrangement).
I’m pretty set on the idea of recording the guitar using the technique used on Nick Drake’s Pink Moon album. But other than that I’m pretty stuck.

On the one hand it would be really cool to emulate one producers techniques to create a song in the style of George Martin, Zappa, Eno, Reznor or Spector. But I think using a variety of different techniques from each producer may be more beneficial. It also means I can experiment with the ideas of many producers, and take the bits I like and leave the bits I don’t.

I certainly want to use Zappa’s Re-assembly or Xenochrony, because it’s a fantastic idea to pick apart songs and rearrange them in obscure ways. I think the Reverse Reverb is also pretty likely considering how obsessed I have been with Reversed sounds since I was about 16.

Here is a Nick Drake song I’m looking to emulate the guitar from

 

First Project (cont.)

So we headed back into the studio for more night time recording…

My dear chum Mr.Hosker was kind enough to play Double-Bass for me.

I chose to record with the e602 at the f-hole of the Double-Bass to pick up  the low  end,  and the SE Electronics to pick up the high end and fretboard  noise. I’m happy  with what  I’ve got recorded, there is a really nice  contrast between the Guitar sound  and the Bass  when both are in the mix,  without adding any plug-ins to improve  sound quality.

I have 3 examples of what the Bass sounds like, the 1st is of just the e602, the 2nd is  of just the SE and the 3rd is of the fuller sound it has together.

 

Vocals – I continued with my SE Electronics obsession and  used this Mic to record the vocals. Nice  and easy mono  track with a Pop Shield. I even remembered all the words to my own song. First  Project recording finished.

Frank Zappa Stylistic Study

Frank Zappa was a composer, singer/songwriter, electric guitarist and record producer. Over his career he invented numerous techniques in the studio, these are only a few…

• Reassambly Technique – Many mixes of many tracks. Producing Stereo mix downs on reel to reel. 5 track recorder. and then chopping the stereo tracks together from all different versions. making a collage.writing orchestral scores, limited by analog technology, on no budget.
• Recording wild – recording with 2 separate machines (this example is 4 track for the band and 2 track stereo for the solos), with all the solos recording separately to the band. making a catalogue of solos so he could choose which parts to put into different tracks.
• Xenochrony – Taking parts from different songs and arranging them into other songs they were not originally recorded for. Frank Zappa – Friendly Little Finger (Zoot allures)

The Bass and Guitar recorded together. Then moved to a completely different track and the Guitar solo comes from a different song.  Frank Zappa – The Ocean is the Ultimate Solution, Bass and Guitar from ‘Friendly Little Finger’

 

Double Tracking Examples

I found some examples of Double Tracking by some of my favourite artists online.

Bon Iver – For Emma

Sufjan Stevens – Sleeping Bear, Saint Marie

Elliott Smith – Rose Parade