In our first task we had to make a movie theme and create some variations to it. A movie theme is usually short initial or primary melody in a movie. The one that stands out. A variation of a theme is a main theme but with various techniques applied to it, so each variation differs from the other. You can make a change in rhythm, play it in a different key, add some ornamentation (decoration) to it or change the melody and the overall style. That’s just few examples. I made a simple and short theme on the piano and created four variations to it.
My objective in creating this task was to clearly demonstrate different variations to the main theme. I tried to keep it simple and in the process of making it understand more how applying different techniques changes the initial feel of the theme. I wanted in some way adopt an approach of J.S. Bach in his Goldberg Variations. I studied this piece but I gained clearer understanding of making variations of the theme from an online flash tutorial by Dr. Roberta Lindsey. This tutorial really helped me to understand the principles of creating variations and gave me tips to create my own. One audio-sequencer technique I applied in this task, which I had not applied before, was a use of GoldVerb plug-in in conjunction with Channel EQ and Compressor to enrich the sound of a piano. One music technique I learned through doing this task was how to create different variations from a main theme. This task is an example of practice as research because I studied different examples of variations and then I recreated the principles in my own variations. I would give myself a mark between 60-70% for this task as I feel I clearly understood the principles of creating variations and this is evident in my task.
Word count: 210
Bibliography:
Online resources:
Adams, R. (2000) ‘Music Theory’,
Internet web page at: http://www.musictheory.net/
(accessed 2.02.11)
Lindsey, R. ‘An Introduction to Theme and Variation Form: Music For The Listener’,
Internet web page at: http://www.erikscull.com/portfolio/assets/flash/variationswcopland.html
(accessed 01.02.11)
Youtube. ‘J.S. Bach – Goldberg Variations: Aria (Glenn Gould)’,
Internet web page at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCuALWK6ZNg
(accessed 01.02.11)
I am quite excited about this module because I realised not long ago that making music for movies is really enjoyable and seems that I like it. You get much more inspiration when scoring because the visuals are giving you ideas for a composition. It is like a blueprint for your music. Seems like the structure of your piece is already imprinted in the movie, you just have to find the right sounds. That’s how I see it at the moment. Probably after this semester I will have a deeper understanding of how it works. Thanks to the soundtrack some movies have a huge impact on the viewer and are praised so much. But it’s obvious for the readers of this post anyway. My favorite soundtrack is from a movie “The Fountain” directed by Darren Aronofsky. The music is made by Clint Mansell – my favourite composer. Everybody should know his piece from “Requiem for a Dream” by the same title also directed by Darren Aronofsky. Here is “The Last Man” from the “The Fountain”. The whole soundtrack is amazing, not just this song. The movie also.
The recording session for the second track came out not as planned, yet we managed to record everything, despite the open day that saturday and some other technical difficulties later. Now we can laugh at it but then it wasn’t so funny. It was only 3 of us that day and only one person who can actually play drums and a guitar – Vladimir – a ONE MAN BAND. It’s good I came early to set up the mics and everything, so the studio was ready for our final session this semester probably.
First we had to practice and figure out the structure of the piece. We had only 5 mics that day, so we also had to figure out how to manage that session. The good thing was that Vladimir brought an electric guitar, so we didn’t need a mic for it, we could record it by D.I.
I believe the drums were recorded first. We used the same mics as for the recording of the first piece, apart from the overhead mics. Last time we used NEUMANNs, this time we in a way had to use the AKGs. Setting was the same. Again final adjustments ‘by ear’. A quest to find some blanket or something to put in the kick drum was undertaken and successful. We didn’t like the sound of the snare, so we experimented a bit with the mic placement and we managed to correct that weird trembling sound we were experiencing.
After the drums it was the electric guitar’s turn. Vladi brought an RP-1 Remote Control Processor – Guitar Multi-Effect Pedal with 127 different effects on it. Plus you could add a reverb, modulation and 10 other effects on top of that. First we recorded the main guitar melody. The the second background one with a different effect. When this process was finished and arranged in Pro Tools, Vladi put a final layer of bass notes to complete the work of a guitar in this track. After all that playing and straining the strings with his fingers, Vladi was forced to wear a glove for the rest of the evening . Yet still eager to play more.
Finally came a moment when we applied a specific recording technique when recording vocals. I wasn’t sure how am I supposed to approach it as I am not really used to singing. In the end it worked out quite good and I was actually pleased with it. We were trying to imitate George Martin’s recording technique with ‘Double Tracking’ the vocals. At first I thought to record another vocal on top of the existing one to create a stronger and richer effect, yet it was difficult to me to repeat the process, as I was very much improvising the first time I recorded it. What we finally did can be called ‘Automatic Double Tracking’ (ADT), invented by Ken Townsend. On the main vocals I applied the extra long delay (mono/stereo) and played around with the delay, depth and rate until it sounded the way I wanted. This way the main vocal sounds bigger and unreal, with the delay in the right channel a bit bigger than in the left one. I also have another vocals on top of these ones, where I’m repeating certain parts of the lyrics, this way accenting these sections and creating a clearly visible ‘not natural’ echo effect.
This technique was largely used in the Beatles album Revolver, produced by George Martin and released on the 5th of August 1966. It was claimed that on Tomorrow Never Knows there was a use of ADT technique but in fact it was a manual double tracking.
A clear example of ADT can be heard in Within You, Without You, from the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, where it was used on almost every vocal and instrumental track.
I also used Frank Zappa’s production technique that is called Re-assembly. It’s about cutting up a track or tracks and putting them together in a different order. I took the harp track that was recorded continuously by Jevgenij and I chopped it into many pieces. Then I reassembled it in a different way along the song. I did it just with one track because it was not so significant to the piece. I didn’t want to change my song that much. Here is what Zappa had to say about it in the Rolling Stone interview with Jerry Hopkins in early 1968: “All the material on the albums is organically related, and if I had all the master tapes and I could take a razor blade and cut them apart and put it together again in a different order, it would still make one piece of music you can listen to. Then, I could take that razor blade and cut it apart and reassemble it a different way and it would still make sense. I could do this 20 ways”.
This technique is used in “It Must Be a Camel” song for example:
The next and final stage was Jevgenij’s recording of humming and recording of a Jaws Harp. We also recorded a bongo on top of it but it was a ‘fake bongo’ because we were not able to find a real one, so we used a back body of a guitar for this operation. I added a little reverb and it sounds good.
Here is a screen shot of an arrange window.
I am again very pleased with the completed track. We were again of course trying to achieve the best results possible and try to get the best quality of sound. Maybe we didn’t succeed completely but I would say it’s great, considering the limited time in the studio and lacking the ‘band members’. I used some additional effects apart from the ones from Vladimir’s Guitar Multi-Effect Pedal. I applied side-chaining to the bass track so the GUITAR 2 will be more hearable. I did time adjusting for the kick and the snare to level them with the overheads. I used some EQ to make certain tracks sound richer, and compression, mainly to remove clipping after using the EQ. Reverb for the bongo to make it sound different, not so flat. Like I said before I also used extra long delay for the Vocals, and of course the limiter (MAXIM) for the master fader to set the ceiling level to -0.2db.
This song is more relaxing than the first one. It’s really uplifting, happy track that suits summertime really well. Yes, we did it a bit early .
It was much easier to record the first track as we had a whole bunch of people helping us with with it. The most difficult part was probably to book the studio for a decent amount of time. Just placing the mics to record the drums can take you a long time, not to mention trying to find the missing parts of the drum kit .
To record the drums we used 5 microphones:
- for the kick drum we used SENNHEISER e602-II, placing it well inside of the drum. Having a heavy pillow inside the kick drum is helpful to get a better, more compressed sound.
- for the snare we used 2 DPA microphones. One placed closely above, just by the edge of the snare drum. The second below.
- for the overheads we used this time 2 NEUMANN microphones, placed above the drum kit on both sides. Just as with the other mics placement the final adjustments were made ‘by ear’. We finally didn’t use the sixth mic (AKG) for the hi-hat.
Here is a close up of DPA’s placement for the snare (below).
Here is our drummer for the first Assessment – Aaron, in this general shot of the mics placement (below).
Here is a screen shot of a Pro Tools window with all the tracks. There are mono tracks created for snares and the kick. The overheads track is stereo. All the rest of the tracks are mono as well, apart for the guitar track, which we recorded with two AKG – cardioid mics with the XY recording technique (Vladimir with his Magical Guitar below).
All the instruments were recorded by mics apart from the bass guitar, which was recorded by direct input. At that time we had enough microphones to be able to record a session with all the instruments playing at once. Which means we also had enough people to play these instruments Guys had a nice jamming session. It was a guitar, bass guitar, drums and at the beginning me in the vocal booth recording on the SE Electronics, big chubby microphone. Jevgenij took over later spitting his ‘freestyle’ with a ‘G-style’ Unfortunately somehow I didn’t manage to take a picture of that.
Here is a screen shot of an arrange window with the track we recorded. I finally chose Jevgenij’s vocal to leave for my song as I am not used to sing for a rock tunes. There is only one part of my voice which I left because it is funny. I did time adjusting for the snare and the kick. Delayed it to match the overheads. I activated side-chaining for the bass track. From KICK SENDS I selected the mono bus and in bass track in INSERTS I chose the compressor. In the compressor window on the left side by the key symbol I chose the same bus as in the SENDS. You also need to click the small key button on the right side of the window by the side-chain. Then play around with the threshold knob to increase or decrease the side-chain effect. Thanks to side-chaining every time the kick appears the bass sound will be suppressed by it and will decrease its volume. I also inserted the high pass filter on the bass track, compression for the kick and the audio tracks. This recording seems to be in a good quality anyway. There is also a limiter on the master fader (MAXIM) with the ceiling level set to -0.2db, which means the volume on the master level won’t exceed that number.
In the end Vladimir played a guitar solo on top of the already recorded main guitar melody.
What we tried to achieve was to get the best results out of the mic placement. To get the best sound possible for our knowledge of mic placing and to be sure that none of the tracks were clipping. Of course the overall song structure and arranging was also important. The quality of the sound of the final product was as important as the creative expression of the musicians involved when following the set goal.
The final product is not a common rock song with an eastern flavor, a bit funky at the end, with rapping vocalist, very energetic and to me very pleasant to listen to. Probably if the guys had more time to practice this song it would be available on iTunes by Christmas HUGE THANKS to all the people involved in the making process, especially to Vladimir. His help is even more appreciated during the recording of the second track.
Today (15.10.10) was a good day in the studio. First of all because we finally had some instruments involved in our recording session, and we had a person (Vladimir) who can actually play it : ) That is a hard part when you have to make a song by recording real instruments but you don’t play any. In that case you need some help from the outside. The other good thing was that we felt like we were more comfortable connecting the mics and headphones, and setting everything up in Pro Tools. Of course we had to experiment a bit sometimes but finally all the cables were in the right places, all the right buttons pushed, and we could communicate between the studio, the recording booth and the vocal booth. Today we didn’t set up mics using any particular techniques I mentioned in my post below. We just mounted the mics to play around a bit, trying to maintain the sound at the right level (tried MAXIM – setting the ceiling level and pulling down the threshold). We recorded few sessions with Vladimir playing the guitar and Jevgenij singing. Then Vladimir was singing and playing at the same time, so he had two mics by his side. It’s not a good idea. We wanted to play and record the drums today too but there was no time to set up everything. We will have to be more precise with the mic placing and get more familiar with Pro Tools in the future, to get better quality results, but today’s session made me feel more at ease with the studio, feeling that we can make it in the time left in this semester. Next time hopefully we will do a bit more serious recording. Here are a few pictures from our jamming. Today I was the man behind the camera.
AB Stereo mic placement Technique needs 2 omni-directional microphones being placed away from each other (opposite direction). This way you can pick up a wider stereo field. You can also place the mics parallel to each other, several feet apart facing forward. This way we create a stereo image through the delay and level distance in the microphones. We have to be careful not to put the mics too far apart when recording a small sound source, as this will cause the recorded sound to have a hole in the center. This technique may also sometimes cause a phase cancellation problems, because the sound waves will arrive at the separate microphones at different times.
XY Stereo Microphone Technique uses 2 cardioid microphones placed as near as possible to each other, with 90-135 degrees spread (facing inward), and with the center of the spread pointed at the sound source. This technique causes the stereo effect from the decrease in off-axis volume. Because in this technique the mics are placed so close to each other, the phase cancellation problems are almost completely eliminated.
ORTF (Office de Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française) Stereo Microphone Technique is an opposite technique to XY. Two cardioid mics are spread to a 110 degree angle approximately 17 cm apart. This can be adjusted – whatever sounds best for your ear. This technique result is a realistic stereo field that has reasonable compatibility with mono playback. In this technique the microphones can be placed further from the sound source, as the cardioid polar patterns reject sound from behind the capsule as well as sound that come from the side (off-axis sound), which result in less ambient noise.
MS (Mid-Side) Stereo Microphone Technique uses two microphones. One (can be cardioid) is mounted to face the source of the sound. This one is the mid mic (the mic below). The other mic (above) is the side mic, and is placed at 90 degree angle from the mid one, as close as possible. This mic placing is called FIGURE-8 because it’s capturing the sound in two spheres (front and back), but nothing from the sides. This technique is creating a stereo image by the loudness or intensity of each sound in the left or right channels, not by a time delay.
On thursday 23.09.10 me – Piotr Legwand and Jevgenij were exploring the wonders of the music studio we have in our University. We started very bravely by getting the headphones and the mic from Richard – our engineer. At that time we didn’t know that his help will be needed again very soon. It was easy of course to set up the mic and connect the headphones : ) The hard part is to make it work to have a connection between the studio and the recording room. This was also the first time (apart from monday classes) that we used a music software ProTools. We were experimenting as much as we could but help was needed. After that we were ready to go. All the cables were at the right places. I am attaching pictures of it. I can’t explain in details at the moment which cable goes where but I am sure in the near future I will be much more aware of it. We set everything in the ProTools as well and we were even playing around with recording Jevgenij’s beatbox. At this time I won’t present any sample of it : ) We created few tracks and were pretending to allocate different instruments on separate track. After a decent amount of time spent on improvising and playing around with the recordings, we decided to finish our session on that day, but looking forward to get back in the studio next week. Maybe next time we will manage to record real instruments. I think the first time in the studio was very productive.
Here’s Jevgenij – the supa dupa beat maker
Microphone and the headphones connected
It’s me being crazy on the mic like Michael Bolton
Okay, so that’s it for this semester. That was fast. It feels like we were learning how to boot a server in SuperCollider yesterday and now we already have to submit our work. I’m glad in a way the time flew so fast. At least now everything is much clearer and I don’t have a feeling of going into the dark woods without a torch. It’s still not that bright to run without tripping every now and then but comfortable enough to place one step at a time. I’m not able to define yet how helpful this semester and Laptop Musicianship classes were for me, but I feel that it did make me see a lot more within the music field. It opened my eyes, introduced me to completely new concepts of music, new sounds, that to be fair I was not even aware of before or was just not trying to know it. It was disturbing at the beginning and I was even being rebellious about it. Slowly started to absorb it and either I appreciate it now or I just got used to it : ) Either way I am happy all these things were shown to me. I will soon see how these new experiences affected my music making, means music that I like to create. Because since I started this course I haven’t been making any of my stuff. I have a feeling it will have some positive impact on my work. Besides that I want to play around with SuperCollider for fun, without any pressure that I have to make a composition. I’m still a bit not in favor of it, but I got interested in this way of making music by writing a code. I will try to get more familiar with it over the Christmas time. And I need to spend some time on music theory as well. So generally speaking I SURVIVED and even enjoyed it a lot. Can’t wait for more. Until the next semester. Merry Christmas!
Today (01.12.09) in Laptop Musicianship classes we were presenting our improvisational ixi Quarks pieces in a surround sound environment. One group had already recorded their piece before the class, and they presented it for us, so before we did our recordings we already had an idea what the effect will be. We had some time to practice our improvisation, especially because again a new member joined us, so we had to share our sounds with him and sync ourselves to act as a whole again. The good thing is that Andrew, that’s the name of our new member, quickly adapted himself to our piece, so we felt like we have been practicing together before. After that we decided we are good enough to record, so we opened the recorder, hit record and performed our piece once again. Each person recorded only their performance that was playing in their laptops. Then we gave our audio to James, who put it in Logic and we were almost ready.
Then we played our piece from the main computer in the classroom, so every group had some time to transfer their piece to Logic in that Mac and manipulate the sound. Julio was showing us few different option what we can do with the sound to have it in surround. After we mixed it down we had the first chance to listen to our piece just like everybody else before. And with surround sound on that big speakers our piece sounded awesome. Some parts need to be not so loud, other need to be less repetitive but in general I really enjoyed listening to it. Some class mates did to, for the first time probably : ) Now I can’t wait to make our improvisation better and record it again properly, perfecting every sound, maybe add few more, and place it in the right channels. That will be a good experience listening to our piece in the dark again with everything sounding like it suppose to, wisely balanced and in the right place.
Listening to other group’s pieces was enjoyable too but of course I will be mostly excited about ours. Some of the other groups organized their sounds much nicer and mixed it down better. Definitely it’s MUCH more fun to play around with sounds if you can hear them on a good sound system. It’s like a resurrection for your composition. The sounds seems more alive, richer, somehow different. Seems maybe obvious but you kind of realize it when it happens. These are words of a person who definitely needs a better sound system. Over and Out.
This is my Supercollider composition. It’s not a mind blowing piece of music but I am proud of it, especially because few weeks ago I was not thinking I’ll be able to make anything in SC that I could call music. I just couldn’t figure it out. I slowly started to get things, thanks to Julio explaining it in even simpler way and some class mates. Some people don’t even know that they helped me but because of their blogs I learned some things as well. I was not using Pgeom’s so my piece is even steadier, with even pace. It’s not much dynamic. I think it’s kind of relaxing and a bit dark. I mean some bits are dark, the other brighter, happier but still kind of sad in a way. Especially the ending piano part is really positive and beautiful. When I listen to this piece I kind of have an image of a weather changing so I called it “After The Storm”. The beginning of a storm, getting worse and finally it stops and the sun is coming out, and everything is waking up to life again. Wow, I should be a poet : ) Yeah so basically it’s a basic, simple composition but it’s not too bad, and there’s a lot of changes in it, scale changes etc. I was told it’s sufficient for the SC task so I am happy : ) And here’s my lines of code below.
. Yet still eager to play more.
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