#I really want to try to play a theremin one day but unfortunately they are like 400+ dollars

[trilobi-te]

Cider and a theremin! I headcanon that he's able to play it because he just seems like that type of person.. he has those vibes......

Plus some extra doodles

Chip/Theremin rambling and doodle transcriptions below the cut. I included some explanations for the instruments pictured because I'm worried the drawings would otherwise be incomprehensible lmao

In case you can't read my handwriting: Doodle 1: Cider is saying "DANDY NO" and underneath it says *horrible theremin screaming* Doodle 2: the title says THORamin aka singing Tesla coil, and Otto is saying "Okay Cider please step a little closer to the instrument"

I like weird instruments so I assign them to fictional characters whenever it feels realistic to do so. The theremin is one of the world's first electric instruments (patented in 1928) and is played by moving one's hands around the two antennas, which are proximity sensors - vertical controls pitch and horizontal controls volume. Sound-wise, it's kind of like playing a synthesizer by hand? Also the hand gestures that are made when controlling pitch are.. interesting. (That's more or less what Cider is doing, it took an embarrassing amount of attempts to get that hand to look good enough so I just left it hhh)

Re: extra doodle 1 Touching the vertical antenna makes an unpleasant high-pitched noise (you're not meant to touch it at all while playing, just move your hands around like an electric wizard or something)

Re: extra doodle 2 "Thoramin" is another name for the singing Tesla coil, and a play on theremin and Thor (hence why it's here). It's a Tesla coil that's been modified to be a plasma speaker. I find these funny because people on YouTube always seem to be playing them in random suburbs. Just imagine looking out the window at your neighbor's yard and seeing a lightning storm set to Megalovania. Realistically Otto probably wouldn't have one (too loud, draws attention to the player) but for the purposes of The Funny™ he does now.

Something small I don't have anywhere else to bring up so I shall talk about it here: I started my Chipspeech Twitter archive project by just going through the tab on each account that says "Tweets" but it turns out that there are more tweets under the "Replies" tab that actually contain lore. So I am actually nowhere near done with this hhhhh I hate Twitter. I mean I'm still going to document everything because I want the story to be as intact as possible (including the small bits of character trivia that often show up in the replies tweets) but I am. not happy about it. I do not entirely understand the decision to put character information in the replies to fan tweets.. I mean things shared there are never really all that important, but I like weird small story details so I don't want to lose them if Twitter ever actually fully goes down. Also I am going to have to go back and put everything in chronological order (in terms of hours/minutes, everything currently is just organized by date) which means more time on Twitter. I traded efficiency for simplicity of each step in this process, which I guess was good for not becoming overwhelmed by the scale of things but it's dragging out a lot longer than I had initially anticipated. I start college in late August so ideally that's my hard deadline for this, which should absolutely be reachable but I'm still annoyed that it's taking this long in the first place hhhhhhh

[introvertguide]

The works of Bernard Hermann

In this blog, I have tried to celebrate the great directors, composers, and cinematographers of film along with the movies that they produce. I am sad to say, however, that I have spent over 3 years on this film journey and have barely mentioned the works of my favorite film score composer. I love the work of John Williams for his uplifting scores that make an audience want to cheer and I love the popular culture masterpieces created by Rogers and Hammerstein plays, but nothing competes with the psychological encapsulation of a character like the works of Bernard Hermann. I want to go through some of the movies he has scored and I feel you will be surprised how many stand out pieces he created that are part of the American zeitgeist:

Citizen Kane (1941)

Starting of strong! The first movie that Hermann scored is considered by many to be the best American film of all time. He unfortunately did not win the Oscar for this work...because he lost to himself. He won his only Best Musical Score Academy Award for the film The Devil and Daniel Webster.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

Taking advantage of both the theremin and the glockenspiel, Hermann created the first electronic sound score in Hollywood. It has a sound that defined the outer space monster movies of the 50s. Here's a little sample of the famous opening. Think of all of the movies and TV shows and video games that are set in space that have a similar sound:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYbHpXca7U0

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

I like this soundtrack because it exemplifies a love for good music without needing to put your own stamp on something that is already great. This was a remake of the 1934 film and Hermann decided to leave the original cantata that marked the film's climax as well as use the "Que Sera, Sera" song that the film was known for. Hermann was given the option to conduct his own climax score, but he recognized that it was better as it was and simply extended the length of the song to fit the Hitchcock remake.

Vertigo (1958)

Those who don't think that Citizen Kane is the best American movie generally think that this film is the best. One of the reasons that this film is so good is the score. Bernard Hermann liked to use harsh string sounds that were circular in nature to give a feeling of obsessive thoughts of a character. This is emphasized by deep brass intrusions that emphasize reality crashing in. It is truly capturing the sound of anxiety, and Hermann was able to do it effectively, over and over again. In fact, Martin Scorsese noted this as the first time he had heard a film score that truly captured the feeling of obsession. As a youth, Scorsese said he wanted to some day create a character that would fit this kind of score. Here is a sample of the theme that really exemplifies the film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kC5AzFc3coo

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)

I really like this film score because of how it fits with the Ray Harryhausen created monsters. It is so different from the internal struggles that Hermann captured for Hitchcock and instead accompanied the very outward struggle between man and mythical beast. It really captures the toil and desperation that a human would have facing off with a mythical creature. The vast range of instruments used to capture the essence of every monster is phenomenal. My favorite is the use of the xylophone during the duel with an animated skeleton:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5cLIrGuoVY

Psycho (1960)

One of the best known film scores of all time, this film owes a large part of the success to the score. The famous shower scene was supposed to be silent, but Bernard Hermann convinced Alfred Hitchcock otherwise and added that famous violin sting that mimicked the stabbing motion. There are few people in the world that can even compare with Hermann's ability to capture mental turmoil. A perfect match with Hitchcock's style, it is no wonder that Hermann scored a total of eight of Hitchcock's films.

Twisted Nerve (1968)

You might not know this movie or the soundtrack, but if you have ever seen Kill Bill Vol. 1, then you probably remember that horrific whistling of the one-eyed nurse sent to kill the bride. It is not the whistling per say, but the music that it is played over it that is so unnerving. It is dissonance on purpose and this might be the most effective use of it in a film that I know of. It is the embodiment of a dream turning into a nightmare and it is amazing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1NN9rnNpEQ

Taxi Driver (1976)

This was the last work of Bernard Hermann and a dream come true for Martin Scorsese. The director and composer worked together to make that obsessive sound that worked so well for Alfred Hitchcock. With the combination, they successfully brought Travis Bickle to life and made him fully psychotic. That is one hell of a final work.

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There are other works by Hermann not mentioned here that are fantastic, but trying to include everything would be an incredibly long post (the guy was a really prolific writer). I highly suggest checking out YouTube and searching Bernard Hermann scores. There is a lot of content and I am pretty sure you will find something great to add to your music list.

[zaynadanm-blog]

AES 2017

This week, I attended AES at the Jacob Javits Center

Wednesday:

On Wednesday morning, I was up bright and early to pick up my registration before my first event. 

9am: The first event I attended was “Crash Course in 3D Audio”. Going into the conference, my knowledge of 3D sound was extremely limited, so I thought this would be a good way to learn the basics of the subject. From this talk, I learned that there are 3 types of audio: Single Channel, Binaural Stereo, and Ambisonics. At this point, all the information was going over my head because I was a bit late to the room, and I had absolutely no idea what was going on. Luckily, this was corrected as the day went forward, and I now have a better understanding of these terms. 

10am: At 10am, the exhibitions opened, and I went and walked around before my next event. Funny enough, I ran into the Hear Now Festival booth, and met Juan and a Tisch professor who’s name I believe was Ellen. Juan told me about the Binaural event Cynthia mentioned to me last week, and I added it to my schedule.  

10:15am: The next event I attended was “Will VR be a game changer?” I had a lot of hope for this panel, but unfortunately it was very dry and I didn’t get much out of it. I was also getting hit with a crazy wave of sleepiness, so that could have contributed as well. 

10:45: “Audio Tools for Immersive Audio” was more interesting than I thought it would be. It overlapped with two other events I wanted to attend, so i ended up hopping from one to another. This panel took a step by step look at the tools to create immersive audio, including Pro Tools, and one that I’d never heard of called Sound Particles. The man that was demoing the software, Nuno Fonseca, was the same man that spoke this morning at the first lecture I attended. As he was explaining the software, he began using the same terms as this morning (Ambisonics, HTRF, etc), and I finally began to get a grip on the terms I’d heard earlier. Not only that, his software looked DOPEEE.

11:15: “Creating Sounds from Scratch” was one that I’d wish I’d had more time for, but am also not worried about that because the two speakers here were just plugging their book. Aka, I can go and read the book and learn everything that they talked about at the conference. In the 15 minutes I spent there, however, I did learn a bit about the history of synths, and learned about an instrument called the Moog Theremin. It’s an instrument that, based on the position of your hands to the machine, becomes higher or lower in volume, and higher and lower in pitch. Your left hand controls the volume, while your right hand controls the pitch. The closer you get, the softer the volume and the lower the pitch, and the further, the louder and higher pitch. 

11:30 “Spatial Music: Producing, Performing, and Publishing Music in 3D” was where everything really came together for me. I finally understood that channel meant that there was one sound, coming from one location, coming from one speaker. I learned that Binaural sounds usually entailed measuring at person’s head relation transfer functions, or HRTF, because everyone has a unique measurement, like a fingerprint, and what sounds like the back of the room to one person can sound like the left of the room to another if the HRTF is not the same. I also learned that Ambisonics in the 1st order include sound from up, down, left, right, the 2nd order included another 5 microphones, and the 3rd order included another 7 (unless the point was that after the first order you keep adding microphones... every presentation included this diagram: 

). After that, the speaker, who works for a sound company called Ossic, went on to explain some case studies that his team had done to record 3D sound with a microphone that had 32 microphones built into it. This was mentioned to be earlier, but understanding what it was now and seeing it in context really helped. 

He then went onto explain companies that offer stereo sound (Soundcloud, apple music), 1st order ambisonics (Youtube) and high order ambisonics (Envelop, a new venue in CA). In an ideal world, he said, every company would offer high order ambisonics through their platform. 

After 12:30, I had another 3 events, but two of them were not in the places they were supposed to be, so I ended up walking around the exhibition. I saw a lot of cool products, and booths, such as the Black Magic and Cannon booths, and then decided that I was in the market to buy a microphone. I won’t be buying one now, but with that in mind it make testing all the mics more fun. 

The final panel I was planning on attending was back in the basement, and I was barred from it. Confused why, I asked the guard, and she said that I had a green badge, and not a pink or grey one. Turns out I shouldn’t have been able to go to any of the panels in the first place. So, I decided I would try again on Thursday morning to go to the panels I wanted to attend, and if I was barred again, come back on Friday night for the special event that the Hear Now Festival was putting on, since I could actually attend that one because its a special event. 

Thursday:

On Thursday, I officially came to the conclusion that I would only be able to go to special events panels. I had wanted to go to a podcasting panel in the morning, but the guards were up, and I, unfortunately, had not gone through with my plan to photocopy my badge and make a pink version so that I could attend more panels. 

Luckily, there was a special events panel going on at the same time, so my trip uptown had not been in vain. It was called “Bearing Witness: The Music of Star Wars--Archiving Art and Technology. 

The panel was what you’d expect a panel about archiving be-- really dry with the occasional cool fact or moment. For me, those moments where when they played the uncut version of a number of Star Wars cues. They had been cut for the movie, but the entire track had been released for the soundtrack because the composer “wanted to create a listening experience.” It was pretty cool, but two hours was a long time to hear about how they transferred tapes to digital and how the software was out of date, etc. 

Friday:

On Friday after class, I attended my final AES 2017 Event. Funny enough, it was called, “Audio Tonight: A Story-Tellers Cabaret” and featured a short story, VoiceScapes Audio Theater, "Mark Twain", and Binaural Shakespeare. 

It was a really cool experience. I’d never heard anything Binaural before (except binaural beats) and when your eyes were closed, it really did feel like the actors were moving around your head. It was really cool to hear this in action after learning about it all week. Not to mention how awesome everyone’s voices sounded.

Overall, this was a really fun week, and it culminated in the best way at the Cabaret.