I've been absent from Hubski over the last few days and it's because I've been cramming in the work to get this done. It was done for my 'collaborative project' module on my masters. My friend charles did all the visual work, with myself doing the audio and composition. Our friend Eve designed and built the skull.
I'd love to know what you think. We approached it in a way that made it a 'true' collaboration, instead of just the audio solely following the visuals. A lot of things did go wrong during this project but I reckon we pulled it off!
kleinbl00 I'd love your opinion on my sound work.
Incredible! I just made the move here from reddit, and am so pleased by the OC! Very inspiring stuff. Which software did you use for the projection/audio? What degree have you been working for?
Yea, I play trombone in high school wind ensemble/jazz band/symphony orchestra. Can't draw, although I know it's just practice and proportions for the most part. A friend gave me a copy of FL Studio Producer's edition, so I've been exploring that in my free time. I'll let you know when I create something, and I'd certainly welcome feedback.
One more question. Was the sound from the video live, or overlaid in After Effects?
Nice man, I'd be happy to give feedback on anything you throw my way. Any artists/bands you're particularly enjoying at the moment?
When we actually presented the piece the audio was played live through speakers. But yes, in the interest of sound quality, for this video the audio was overdubbed.
I've been wanting to produce edm, chillstep, and ambient. I'm collecting samples from friends in the jazz band, so that's going well. As for who I like, it really depends. I'm a big fan of Tycho, Savant, Blackmill, RL Grime, and Flume when it comes to electronic.
In other genres, Parov Stelar, Goldfish, Brandon Flowers, and Springsteen are welcome any day. I also like listening to albums of bands I've never heard of when I'm bored or at my computer.
Finally got a chance to check this out on the Genelecs and I'm glad I did. With a headcold on a laptop none of the overtones are audible.
Mostly Reaktor? or that MAX-like open-source thing with the name I always forget?
Curious about the stereo choices as getting a decent field on install pieces is tricky. That was one of my sadnesses when I went to contracting; the times you can use multichannel are truly limited. Mono, mono everywhere.
Speaking personally - taste vs. execution - I'm a big, big fan of giant stupid reverbs but I regard granular synthesis like parmesan cheese - a flavor I really like but a flavor that can only be used in certain settings and that can overpower the rest of the meal if you aren't careful. There are certain synthesis tools (Kyma, MAX, Reaktor) that do that thing really really well while all other synthesis programs don't so you find yourself with a hammer regarding everything as a nail.
I really like the harmonics you put on the fireworks. It was very musical. The glitchy stuff drew me out because it didn't seem to align with the visuals, but I'll bet the visuals were very much in flux up to the bitter, bitter end.
All in all, great stuff!
You're spot on with Reaktor. I didn't use Pure Data in this project but did heavily implement that horrible looking, offline sound tool I've mentioned before called CDP. Most of the pads were using Alchemy.
For the live installment we had a 2.1 system so the stereo field wasn't all to waste, which is good. And yeah, there was a large amount of granular synthesis in this piece. I've only really just started exploring its potential so perhaps I got carried away. Are there any particular moments where you would say it becomes obviously overpowering or saturated? Or is it more just the piece as a whole? I've also been made aware that I sometimes use the same type of reverb too much. I'm trying to work on that but my petering 2009 Macbook Pro cries at my projects already.
We approached this in quite a unique way. I gave the visual guy one minute of music initially which he followed to produce the first minute of animation. Then he went on and did an extra minute which I then followed before going on to do an extra minute of my own desire. A kind of relay, push and pull type deal, so we both contributed to the creative lead. That approach, combined with the very short time frame, did leave us with some asynchronous areas. Like you mentioned, the glitchy stuff especially.
But yeah, thanks for the feedback! I will get a Kyma set-up when I someday get my first paycheck.
You know those trills and spins you do with the grain density? If you don't have an image that matches them, they stand out. And if you looooove listening to a grain density collision, that's awesome. But if you've owned a Kyma for ten years and actively fight grain density collisions because they call attention to themselves, they don't do much for you.
Audioease had a great little plugin called Riverrun that was basically granular synthesis as effect, rather than alpha/omega. It was really handy for using GS musically without calling attention to itself. I've used it on vocals a few times, for example. They've discontinued it, but it's still available to download as part of their nautilus bundle. Not sure if it's going to nag you for registration or what...
Re: Stereo - the problem with stereo is that the sweet spot is much smaller than people imagine so for the majority of viewers it disintegrates into "left" or "right" because precedence dominates stupid quickly. That's actually the secret reason Dolby pushed so hard into Atmos: it actually allows for much better imaging for the audience of stereo signals. The whizzbang object-oriented shit is just icing. Was your installation visible only from the front? Or could people walk around it?
Talk me into Alchemy. 'cuz at this point, I have no compunctions about torrenting that shit.
I feel you. Looking back on it, the reason there's so much in this piece is probably mostly due to a bit of laziness combined with the poor time management of this entire project. 60% of material that went on to be used in this project was generated in one session about three months ago, so naturally it all came from the same sort of techniques/approach. When it came to actually getting this thing done, we had about 2 weeks from start of finish. In hindsight and looking forward, I definitely could do more to take my sounds away from their base processes.
Alchemy is really great. The company did halt business, but no-one is quite sure yet whether they've were bought out or not. I don't know much how to talk you into it as my conceptual and practical knowledge of synthesis has only recently diverged from messing around with presets. It's a pretty mega synth. To qoute SoS: "Alchemy not only features additive synthesis, but also spectral and granular synthesis and resynthesis, and sample import, along with the more typical virtual analogue engine found in most other software synths". It's really easy to get great sounds out of, pads especially. You essentially have the option to load in 1-4 sources, which could be a sample, a square wave, etc. Then you can process each one individually in a section that looks like this:
It then has the usual stuff you'd expect on a synth to treat the patch as whole. It also has a thing called the 'remix pad' which essentially a load of preset filter and envelop configurations which you mix around with on any sound patch desire.
Sound on Sound did a whole article on it, so they can explain much better than I.
Edit: Oh, and yes, people were only allowed in front of the installation. It was only shown once as well so we got everyone into an alright position before starting.
Those "remix pads" look a lot like what Kore had back before Native Instruments killed it. I loved being able to sweep between snapshots.
I think it was the "additive synthesis" angle that kept me out of Alchemy. I flirted with a Kawai K5000S backintheday but it never really turned my crank. As far as "spectral synthesis" and "sample import" I'm a staunch user of Izotope Iris which gets your weird on much quicker.
And they never released it for AAX, did they? Which means I'd have to play Bidule loop-through games.
I really enjoyed this rezzeJ, great work! It's a lot different, but it brought to mind a very, very old post by Lu in which a light show was done on Gory Castle