johnfromnorwich
even my wife noticed the dif..
Between this, the Kreng LP and that Raster-Noton live set, my cat is in for a bad evening.
malfunction://orouboros -- my new EP
- Thread starter Fox
- Start date
There is method in the madness: this live mix of "Descent" comes with an essay to perhaps contextualise things
http://soundcloud.com/senster/02-descent
Software, subharmonics and The Birds: some context on the creation of "Descent"
The sounds we hear in the natural world are usually made-up of a combination of notes each with a different pitch; each fundamental has various overtones above it, these are often called harmonics. Subharmonic sounds are produced by undertones -- fractions of the fundamental tone produced by dividing the frequency of the fundamental "undertones”. What is interesting to me as a sound artist working predominantly with field recordings is that subharmonic sounds do not (as far as I am aware) exist in nature and have a strange, etherial, unreal quality to them, affecting the listener profoundly and in sometimes unpredictable ways.
Of notable mention here is Oskar Sala who famously wrote the soundtrack to Alfred Hitchcock's movie The Birds which used an instrument called a Mixturtrautonium. Originally devised in the 1930s, it predated Moog's electronic synthesizers by almost a decade and was developed to produce many of the expressive, warm sounds of the films of the 1940s and 1950s. Unlike a synthesizer (which would later become a more general-purpose tool), Sala's Mixturtrautonium was built to specifically produce sounds in the subharmonic region. Nobody since mastered or played Sala’s instrument and when he died some years ago, it seemed that this particular branch of subharmonics was lost.
Few synthesizers were built that sought to recreate and integrate Sala's ideas into instruments; audio effects companies like Dolby produced various subharmonic processors, but their scope was vastly simplified and their utility reduced dramatically. Subharmonic synthesizers found applications in extending bandwidth limited analogue telephone systems -- thus the whole notion of using subharmonics as a tool for creative expression was relegated to the engineer's toolchest as simply another EQ device; thus it remained largely overlooked as sound designers explored other avenues of synthesis...
That was until 2000 when an interesting rediscovery of an East German instrument called the Subharchordia. Originally developed in East Germany in 1960 at the “Labor für Akustisch-Musikalische Grenzprobleme” (Laboratory for Problems at the Acoustics and Music Interface) its rediscovery resulted in a renewed interest in the sound of fractionally-divided fundamental tones.
Despite their differences both the Mixturtrautonium and Subharchordia were large, complex analogue devices which required a great deal of (usually analogue) electronics to produce sound. Modern computer DSPs can model subharmonics very easily and indeed have found many applications in engineering and throughout the scientific research community. However, returning to audio applications, subharmonics produced on a moderately powerful laptop can be easily achieved in real-time using relatively inexpensive computer hardware using both commercial and self-written software in max/msp.
Methodology: Malfunction://ouroboros and the "Descent" phase
I started working with subharmonics for the Descent phase of my environmentalogue composition cycle malfunction://ouroboros. I wanted a great many deeply resonant cavernous sounds in this movement to evoke an empty and wrecked civilization. I wanted specifically an environment that listeners would instinctively feel was alien. For this application I chose to explore the mysterious world of subharmonics to produce a very real and visceral response in the audience. To achieve this I started with a simple waveform (in my case a basic sine wave) to which I added subharmonic oscillator software called “The Edge” (downloadable from http://www.codeaudio.com) to the send feed.
The resultant audio produced are true subharmonic frequencies, which meant they were lower than the fundamental frequency of the input signal to a ratio of 1/x. So, let's say I introduced an input signal with a fundamental frequency of 440Hz, the subharmonics produced included 220 Hz (half), 110 Hz (quarter), and so on. I further added to the effect and thickened up the sound by resampling the send feed using note replication using Supercollider -- reintegrating the sounds produced back into the return feed and mixed independently but with variable second-long delays producing an "overlap". Supercollider further layered the subharmonic oscillator's output which was adding lower frequencies in tune with the input signal.
After that I added a little echo to the individual voices so that the higher overtones had shorter decay and lower subharmonics had longer decay presence to produce the kind of time-smear one finds naturally occurring from multiple reflection points in a cavern.
The percussive beat was a recording from a train running over the tracks of Putney bridge, fed its own, fixed subharmonic process much as one would use a dolby dbx processor. Only the train sample was processed leaving the echo resonance unaltered so as to cut through the top-end of the soundfield.
To simplify the process for my live performance work I inserted a resonance filter because with the filter frequency and resonance I can more accurately pinpoint common areas that I'd like to subharmonically enhance. I also added a little compression/gate so as to not overload the PA and keep volume under control and I stretched the attack and release settings (I found sub bass is very susceptible to clicks and pops when there are sudden changes in amplitude). To ensure I was controlling the summed amplitude I placed a limiter directly after the laptop's stereo send so as to hold everything around -6dB (and not completely kill the PA) and hand-tweaked the limiter when things started getting dense or raucous.
The end result was as startling to me as I think the audience found. With a simple sinewave generator I was able to produce a yawning cavernous soundscape complete with rumbling and echo-filled chasms -- all of a sudden the composition developed a massive presence in the sub range and produced a thick resonant quality I would find hard to create live using conventional methods.
I'm hoping more people rediscover the qualities and nuances produced by injecting subharmonics creatively into their compositions; it already has many applications in foley and cinema sound design (where it is often used to "thicken up" and add presence to sounds for dramatic effect) but as a tool for creative expression, I believe it has many applications that musicians, sound designers and sonic artists have yet to rediscover and develop. The "Descent" phase is an illustration of what I was able to achieve using a laptop subharmonic processor as a performance tool to produce an end result I found interesting.
http://soundcloud.com/senster/02-descent
Software, subharmonics and The Birds: some context on the creation of "Descent"
The sounds we hear in the natural world are usually made-up of a combination of notes each with a different pitch; each fundamental has various overtones above it, these are often called harmonics. Subharmonic sounds are produced by undertones -- fractions of the fundamental tone produced by dividing the frequency of the fundamental "undertones”. What is interesting to me as a sound artist working predominantly with field recordings is that subharmonic sounds do not (as far as I am aware) exist in nature and have a strange, etherial, unreal quality to them, affecting the listener profoundly and in sometimes unpredictable ways.
Of notable mention here is Oskar Sala who famously wrote the soundtrack to Alfred Hitchcock's movie The Birds which used an instrument called a Mixturtrautonium. Originally devised in the 1930s, it predated Moog's electronic synthesizers by almost a decade and was developed to produce many of the expressive, warm sounds of the films of the 1940s and 1950s. Unlike a synthesizer (which would later become a more general-purpose tool), Sala's Mixturtrautonium was built to specifically produce sounds in the subharmonic region. Nobody since mastered or played Sala’s instrument and when he died some years ago, it seemed that this particular branch of subharmonics was lost.
Few synthesizers were built that sought to recreate and integrate Sala's ideas into instruments; audio effects companies like Dolby produced various subharmonic processors, but their scope was vastly simplified and their utility reduced dramatically. Subharmonic synthesizers found applications in extending bandwidth limited analogue telephone systems -- thus the whole notion of using subharmonics as a tool for creative expression was relegated to the engineer's toolchest as simply another EQ device; thus it remained largely overlooked as sound designers explored other avenues of synthesis...
That was until 2000 when an interesting rediscovery of an East German instrument called the Subharchordia. Originally developed in East Germany in 1960 at the “Labor für Akustisch-Musikalische Grenzprobleme” (Laboratory for Problems at the Acoustics and Music Interface) its rediscovery resulted in a renewed interest in the sound of fractionally-divided fundamental tones.
Despite their differences both the Mixturtrautonium and Subharchordia were large, complex analogue devices which required a great deal of (usually analogue) electronics to produce sound. Modern computer DSPs can model subharmonics very easily and indeed have found many applications in engineering and throughout the scientific research community. However, returning to audio applications, subharmonics produced on a moderately powerful laptop can be easily achieved in real-time using relatively inexpensive computer hardware using both commercial and self-written software in max/msp.
Methodology: Malfunction://ouroboros and the "Descent" phase
I started working with subharmonics for the Descent phase of my environmentalogue composition cycle malfunction://ouroboros. I wanted a great many deeply resonant cavernous sounds in this movement to evoke an empty and wrecked civilization. I wanted specifically an environment that listeners would instinctively feel was alien. For this application I chose to explore the mysterious world of subharmonics to produce a very real and visceral response in the audience. To achieve this I started with a simple waveform (in my case a basic sine wave) to which I added subharmonic oscillator software called “The Edge” (downloadable from http://www.codeaudio.com) to the send feed.
The resultant audio produced are true subharmonic frequencies, which meant they were lower than the fundamental frequency of the input signal to a ratio of 1/x. So, let's say I introduced an input signal with a fundamental frequency of 440Hz, the subharmonics produced included 220 Hz (half), 110 Hz (quarter), and so on. I further added to the effect and thickened up the sound by resampling the send feed using note replication using Supercollider -- reintegrating the sounds produced back into the return feed and mixed independently but with variable second-long delays producing an "overlap". Supercollider further layered the subharmonic oscillator's output which was adding lower frequencies in tune with the input signal.
After that I added a little echo to the individual voices so that the higher overtones had shorter decay and lower subharmonics had longer decay presence to produce the kind of time-smear one finds naturally occurring from multiple reflection points in a cavern.
The percussive beat was a recording from a train running over the tracks of Putney bridge, fed its own, fixed subharmonic process much as one would use a dolby dbx processor. Only the train sample was processed leaving the echo resonance unaltered so as to cut through the top-end of the soundfield.
To simplify the process for my live performance work I inserted a resonance filter because with the filter frequency and resonance I can more accurately pinpoint common areas that I'd like to subharmonically enhance. I also added a little compression/gate so as to not overload the PA and keep volume under control and I stretched the attack and release settings (I found sub bass is very susceptible to clicks and pops when there are sudden changes in amplitude). To ensure I was controlling the summed amplitude I placed a limiter directly after the laptop's stereo send so as to hold everything around -6dB (and not completely kill the PA) and hand-tweaked the limiter when things started getting dense or raucous.
The end result was as startling to me as I think the audience found. With a simple sinewave generator I was able to produce a yawning cavernous soundscape complete with rumbling and echo-filled chasms -- all of a sudden the composition developed a massive presence in the sub range and produced a thick resonant quality I would find hard to create live using conventional methods.
I'm hoping more people rediscover the qualities and nuances produced by injecting subharmonics creatively into their compositions; it already has many applications in foley and cinema sound design (where it is often used to "thicken up" and add presence to sounds for dramatic effect) but as a tool for creative expression, I believe it has many applications that musicians, sound designers and sonic artists have yet to rediscover and develop. The "Descent" phase is an illustration of what I was able to achieve using a laptop subharmonic processor as a performance tool to produce an end result I found interesting.
Have you tried Native Instruments Reaktor? I purchased a copy about 2 years ago and found it excellent fun, but at times overwhelming. As well as using the synths provided you can also download others from their website. You also have the ability to create your own synths, with many different types of synthesis available such as analogue modelling, granular, noise generators even FX processors. It’s a huge product that someone like myself will never have the time (or ability) to fully explore.
My workflow seems more productive and focused when developing software and interfaces from an idea-up. These 'environmentalogues' use field recordings (a sine wave during Descent was a radical departure for me!) thus I prefer ideas to drive the processes which I find easier to manage with bespoke code. Logic Pro, ReaKtor/Komplete, ProTools etc are awesome, huge, complex, difficult and powerful apps, but ultimately general-purpose and not at all my way of working; for me composing and software development are intimately intertwined so I end up writing/adapting specific patches using Supercollider for DSP work, max/msp for I/O arbitration and Bidule to pull it all together to realize some very specific ideas.
RickyC6
Infuriate the frog-men
Sorry for the delay I was finishing off what happens after Descent
Oh sure, I started with Punk Bass then Violin and then Jazz Bass.
I'm kind of mystified at what's tumbling out of me as well. I decided early on to be ideas driven and use found-sound rather then synthesis to produce an abstract environmental narrative. Developing this working method into my practice seems (as you rightly point out) to favour texture, tonality and timbre but there are other influences and methods bubbling under there as well.
I guess what I'm doing is responding to my ideas through the mediation of sound. I adopted the name Senster -- Edward Ihnatovicz cybernetic sculpture -- because we're both sonic explorations of terrain using human-machine interaction. My "Environmentalogues" are an attempt to explore and contextualize the notions of 'space' and 'place' using observation, reflection and performance to create a sequence of audio narratives that immerse the listener in a dynamically changing sonic environment -- which I don't know how to achieve with more traditional songwriting.
Oh sure, I started with Punk Bass then Violin and then Jazz Bass.
I'm kind of mystified at what's tumbling out of me as well. I decided early on to be ideas driven and use found-sound rather then synthesis to produce an abstract environmental narrative. Developing this working method into my practice seems (as you rightly point out) to favour texture, tonality and timbre but there are other influences and methods bubbling under there as well.
I guess what I'm doing is responding to my ideas through the mediation of sound. I adopted the name Senster -- Edward Ihnatovicz cybernetic sculpture -- because we're both sonic explorations of terrain using human-machine interaction. My "Environmentalogues" are an attempt to explore and contextualize the notions of 'space' and 'place' using observation, reflection and performance to create a sequence of audio narratives that immerse the listener in a dynamically changing sonic environment -- which I don't know how to achieve with more traditional songwriting.
Jonathan Ribee
Unavailable at present
You sound like an art student
Nerarah. Um.
I see a problem.
Fox has got the artistic descriptive language and wacky way of looking at things perfectly correct. I trust him to dress the part - sort of cool, slightly grungy but probably with a highlight of something dressy and inappropriate. Leather jacket and silk cravat. Ripped jeans and a DJ etc.
Problem is - Fox is a techy as well. First time one of his student friends has a problem with a car - can he stop himself stripping down and cleaning the distributor and fixing the timing? The correct answer would be to let one of the rough boys doing Land Management and Rugby to fix it. Not sure he's going to be able to resist fixing the problem and just standing idly by drinking Merlot and having floppy hair.
You sound like an art student
Phew. Good to hear. I do feel a little queasy when I use the word "contextualise" but I'm enrolled and ready for freshers week...
Jonathan. I've decided on tweaking the shaven-headed, black tee-shirted, black trousers with overmarsupiality look -- maintaining a vaguely teutonic schweren und technischen look (complete with smoking soldering iron) rather than the laudnum-swilling, floppy-haired, faux victoriana poncy twat look. Trade your Merlot for "whatever beer is on special at the SU bar"?
As a mature student it's probably for the best to leave such foppishness to the young turks. I'm also worryingly close to Hendon -- where all the coppers really are starting to look younger!
fox having floppy hair? Now this I want to see.
Jonathan Ribee
Unavailable at present
fox-san
Sounds excellent - a Bauhausian credibility in both the artistic and musical sense. You should also be able to gestalt with the lesbian art students who are planning on spending 3 years welding random bits of found steel together. For them I fear the floppy hair would be anathema.
Sounds excellent - a Bauhausian credibility in both the artistic and musical sense. You should also be able to gestalt with the lesbian art students who are planning on spending 3 years welding random bits of found steel together. For them I fear the floppy hair would be anathema.
Joe P
Memory Alpha incarnate | mod; Shatner number = 2
Great stuff, fox.
Any chance you can weave some Saturn sounds into the next composition?
http://www.nasa.gov/wav/123163main_cas-skr1-112203.wav
Or the Vega Pulsar?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cpY5qZLbMM
Joe
Any chance you can weave some Saturn sounds into the next composition?
http://www.nasa.gov/wav/123163main_cas-skr1-112203.wav
Or the Vega Pulsar?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cpY5qZLbMM
Joe
I think Fox has a very good point. Some artists talk about how they wrote a piece of music because “...you know, I was kind of in a dark place at the time…” when what they’ve actually done is written a piece of music that doesn’t express any real emotion but tried to do so with lyrics.
But can you explore ‘space’ and ‘place’ using piano? There are some things traditional instruments are good for and some not so good. For example, Stockhausen’s piece with them there ‘elicopters (Helikopter-Streichquartett so wikipedia tells me), what is that supposed to represent? I just think Helikopter-Streichquartett comes across as being a bit daft, but then I’m a miserable sod.
Punk bass to Jazz bass is quite a transition BTW!
But can you explore ‘space’ and ‘place’ using piano? There are some things traditional instruments are good for and some not so good. For example, Stockhausen’s piece with them there ‘elicopters (Helikopter-Streichquartett so wikipedia tells me), what is that supposed to represent? I just think Helikopter-Streichquartett comes across as being a bit daft, but then I’m a miserable sod.
Punk bass to Jazz bass is quite a transition BTW!
I believe you can. I'd sure love to try using treated and bowed piano. It's a very expressive instrument -- especially if you avoid using the keyboard.
(I'm thinking the old skool 'high concept' stuff like "Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano" by John Cage might be a candidate for study.)
Over 25 or so years it doesn't seem so rushed.
The real music of the spheres. I do rather like the phasing effect of the pulsar's spinning.
Joe P
Memory Alpha incarnate | mod; Shatner number = 2
fox,
I was thinking something along the lines of Holst's The Planets, but with sampled sounds from the various planets (cue Uranus joke) via the probes NASA, JPL and other space agencies have launched.
The huge astronomy nerd in me would be very interested.
Joe
I was thinking something along the lines of Holst's The Planets, but with sampled sounds from the various planets (cue Uranus joke) via the probes NASA, JPL and other space agencies have launched.
The huge astronomy nerd in me would be very interested.
Joe