rorotunes-blog

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Here is what the finished production of the project looks like. The exhibition was recorded by a friend and I pieced together a small edit of the whole 30 minute loop. The audio quality isn’t great due to using the camera audio. Below is a link to the music used for the exhibition.

https://soundcloud.com/rorotunes/rolumen

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Here is an explanation on how I used Ableton live and Max MSP to program the lights for this project.

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At the Crofters Rights setting up the rig for the event. There were some challenges to setting this up properly to make the lights look correct inside the inflatables and run both the DMX and power cables around the room properly, out of the way, for space to walk around and look better visually. The laptop controlling the lights and playing out the sound was placed behind the speaker on stage left, to be non-visible to the public but still easily accessible in the event of the computer malfunctioning. All the inflatables were prepared with lights and fans at the Designs in Air studio before the show to make set up quick and easy on the day of the event. More coming soon with details and video of the event running.

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Today I’ve been at the Designs in Air studio making sure my Max patch works with the lights and preparing some of the inflatable sculptures for the event on the 7th of May. Each Sculpture needs to be prepared with the light hanging correctly inside them and with the correct DMX converter to matching up with DMX channels coming from the Max patch. There are some uncertainties on how the finished product will look but we are all prepared with ideas to make this work and run smoothly.

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We have a space!

The exhibition/event will happen at The Crofters Rights. They are happy to house the project for an evening and the cost of the room hire is well within the budget. This space is ideal as it already has a good sound system for live music to work with. I have been speaking to the manager as well as taking visits to the space for measurements and having Luke from Designs in Air see the space to see what we have to work with.

Date and event details coming very soon.

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DMX Progress

I have been working on how to get my music to react with DMX lighting that will be inside the some of the inflatable shapes provided by Designs in Air. They have kindly enough let me use some of their equipment to get used to working with these lights. I have learnt a lot about how DMX data works and have created a max patch that successfully synchronised the DMX lights specific frequencies in the audio and alternatively I can control each light brightness and colour via MIDI control. This has all be been made possible by the dmxusbpro max external by Olaf Matthes.

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Music Production Experiment 7

I have been experimenting with producing music outside of the computer to change my angle and get more creative. I connected all my hardware in my bedroom and got some fun results. Though this may not be in the end result it helped me understand more about the equipment I own. There are pieces of equipment here being used that are very prominent in my production now.

Korg microKorg Teenage Engineering PO-14 Suzuki Omnichord OM-27 Yamaha RX17 Zoom RT-123 Ibanez ES2 Echo Shifter Boss DD7 Green Russian Big Muff Fuzz Clone Tremolo Pedal Clone Circuitbent Boss DS2 Roland VM-3100

Here is an audio example

https://clyp.it/oqk2o2rv?token=bde7cfee90234560660fb50d461ddfa5

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Music Production Experiment 6

Following my previous experiment recording found sound for interesting percussive elements to help further in developing my own unique sound. I have been experimenting audio with manipulations. My research led me to early examples of tape manipulation done in music concrete. The idea of a sound object and being able to manipulate that object beyond recognition in a compositional interested me. I chose to record different sounds of a glass and morph these to create a composition. I used specific tools to get a result I found was effective, Forester by leaf cutter john which processed the glass into some glitchy sounds and Ableton sampler to create most of the tonal elements.

Here is an audio example

https://clyp.it/3xzt0pmy?token=5f6d1e3d3794b56bdc4219cc79ff6d92

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Music Production Experiment 5

I have been mostly experimenting with sounds that have been colouring my production in interesting ways, but i still have been using mostly sample pack drum sounds or hardware drum machines. The whole point of myself experimenting with music production is create something unique and develop my own style of production. So I decided to take out my trusty Zoom H4n handy recorder to record some sounds in my garden that could then be processed into drums of percussive sound. Once I had recorded the sounds, processing them was quite effortless but the end creative result led to quite a simple arrangement. This is something I am going to experiment further with to get more desired results.

Here is an audio example of these sounds in a short arrangement.

https://clyp.it/iklzd3dm?token=824ff20f0cf7899881c2aeeb741f1aea

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Music Production Experiment 4

I had recently acquired Izotope Nectar 2 Vocal Processing Software Plugin and had been experimenting with different ways to use it in my production. Though it has been useful to process vocals and create some interesting harmonies which can add nice layers and textures to the music, I wanted to take using the software further and experiment with some of the features that can be used. The harmony section of the plugin was something I was drawn to which allows me to play in accompanying harmonies of the audio running into nectar using MIDI. Traditionally this is great for choral vocals, but I intended to create something less conventional.

I decided to run a MIDI arpeggiator into nectar to control the vocal harmonies. This was to create a glitchy almost broken feel to the sound. The reason I found the result interesting is because it takes a very familiar natural sound and skews it to the point of non recognition, but occasionally still hearing hints to the original sound source. I found this to be very reminiscent of early experimental works such a the work of Pierre Schaefer and Music Concrete but brought into a more digitised format.

Here is an audio example of the results from the experiment.

https://clyp.it/hr22dkt3?token=2f4ee05cb8e34d5fb93895a81a3bd412

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Music Production Experiment 3

Today I have been experimenting with collecting some glitchy sounds. After doing some research I found some interesting uses of CD’s to create small glitches like percussive skips and clicks. Two artists I looked into are Oval and Yasunao Tone. Both these artists use or should I say misuse the CD format to create or add to their music. The portable CD player I used for this experiment has up to 60 seconds anti-skip which reads 60 seconds ahead of the data on the CD to allow the music to carry on as the error detection of the CD player fixes the missing data from the damaged CD. This made getting obvious results from the CD hard. I decided to take a more destructive approach and circuit bent the player to get the results I desired. This led to glitchy and destructive sounds which I am going to incorporate into my production.

https://clyp.it/wkz4v23r?token=67befb4fea3ca178f7d235d8a1dee920

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Music Production Experiment 2

I have been experimenting with some hardware synthesis. This is to get more variety in sound and take myself out of working in the box i.e. soft synths in Ableton Live 9. Here are some interesting sounds I got from my first time experimenting with the Moog Slimphatty analog synthesizer.

https://clyp.it/qih21qyd?token=28344a716a7e4dcea0fe443c5066fdb7

I personally own a KORG microKORG digital synthesizer/vocoder which I have been experimenting with, but using analog synthesis is new to me and I wanted to incorporate that into my music for this project. I found the experience to be slightly frustrating as the slimphatty uses a digital interface to control analog parameters, which led to confusion when troubleshooting the USB MIDI control. The sound of the slimphatty was quite self explanatory as in it sounded “Phat” compared to other synths I have used. I especially enjoy the sound of the LP filter. 

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Here I have built a small max patch to control the colour of panel objects. Each Midi channel in Ableton is controlling the colour of each panel. I have done this to help understand how I control colour using MIDI sent from Ableton live. This is will all inevitably be incorporated in a Max MSP patch I am currently building to control DMX lighting using MIDI in Ableton live 9.

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I have been to Designs in Air to discuss with co-founder Luke Egan on the logistics of my project. We discussed mostly about the type of inflatables to use and how the lighting is going to work in correlation to my production. This was very useful because there were many factors to consider including space, noise floor, understanding colour values for light control through DMX and which inflatable objects I am allowed to use. From talking we have a mutual understanding of what the project is about and the key factors.

1. How many objects to be and their respective placement in the space.

2. Lighting control within the object to respond to the music.

3. The time frame to complete the work.

4. Budget.

I will be speaking with Lex the lighting programmer at Designs in Air soon about his way of programming lights, which I have heard is through PD (Pure Data) in which he is converting MIDI data to DMX data. I am interested in this because being an electronic music producer I have experience in working with MIDI and I have an interest in MAX MSP which is quite closely related to PD.

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Feedback loop signal path. Shure SM57 > MicroKorg audio in 1 (vocoder setting) > Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 > Ableton Live 9 > JBL LSR305 > Shure SM57

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Music Production Experiment 1

MicroKorg Vocoder Feedback Experiment

I’ve often had the thought that feedback gets a bad reputation in the music technology world. Feedback and be dangerous for your ears as well as damage your equipment, but when able to understand and control feedback it is quite a powerful tool. The most obvious example of this is the Delay effect. Feed-backing the original signal as a delayed rate is used in a large amount of effects such as chorus, flangers and other modulation effects. I’d also had the thought of using other audio sources to control synths through the vocoder. Most uses for the vocoder aren’t very unpredictable like using your voice for the Daft Punk effect or drums to have more a rhythmical element to the synth. The problems that come with feedback is being able to control it. By using the ADSR of the microKorg I am able to control the feedback signal through the synth as a sort of gate. I used a Shure SM57 and placed it in front of my speaker to cause feedback. From my experiment I found the feedback signal creates a natural slow attack to the notes being played that works quicker depending on the resonant frequency of the feedback. This effect creates an unpredictable and quite musical pushing and pulling to the sound. The microKorg was playing simple Sawtooth waves.

Here is a link to the audio example.

https://clyp.it/pkjlglvh?token=52863281de160df95cb3bf11602eef9d