As the project comes to its practical, if not theoretical, conclusion it’s time to put the final version of the audio into the public arena. I will do that but hold on for a moment. In a future post, perhaps a couple of days, I will also explore if “broadcast” is needed to make a piece actually art but for now I will leave this post as a practical description.
Steve the artist, Dylan (that’s me and I am struggling to give myself a formal title, perhaps facilitator) and one of the initial recorders and collaborators Jake were guests on the Mid Week Drive programme on Siren FM. An arts based discussion programme where we were amongst studio and international phone guests. We talked around a number of artistic and political issues as well as reviewing each other’s work to some extent.
It was particularly nice to listen to the work of singer songwriter Kirsty Churchill as well as get the views of actress Annette Andre (Prisoner Cell Block H amongst other credits).
Steve has a long and fruitful conversation with Los Angeles film producer, director and screen writer, blogger, educationist and broadcaster! Phil Leirness. I think as we collected our post show fish and chips Steve was dreaming of stardom!
Jake, who is sometimes called Phil on the broadcast and sometime Zak! spoke about his involvement in Sound.ogg and his aspirations. Chatting with fellow guests Nick who is rock photographer (music not geological) and Cat, a publicist, seemed to give him much confidence that he could hold his own.
In true Hollywood fashion….Thanks to Alex the presenter and producer of Mid Week Drive for inviting us in, thanks to the Swan Pub for providing us with a pint of Guinness and a pint Doombar and thanks to Saxilby Fish and Chips (open daily 11.30 – 2300).
All that remains it to listen to what we said about what on the podcast.
Visiting the artist this evening proved a surprise, as always. Joss sticks were burning and the customary growing pile of plugin cables and empty cups had been cleared away. Vacuuming had been done and the washing up was neatly stacked on the draining board. “Dylan? Come in” he shouted and I could sense a happy tone. He had prepared “my chair” even removing the cushion before I had chance to throw it on the floor ( I don’t do cushions).
“My chair” is a leather office style chair where I can lean back. It’s positioned in the centre of 2 high quality speakers at just the right height to get the best effect. We chat about the Frequency Festival while I glance at the timeline out of the corner of my eye, which is open on his top of the range Mac. It’s the main reason I am there, but I dont want to appear rude!
After about 10 minutes he thankfully grows bored of this small talk and prepares to play. I settle back in the same fashion as a patient may settle for a session of hypnotherapy. I close my eyes; the lights on the modules are mesmerizing but I want to listen and be drawn into the soundscape. “It’s finished” he tells me. I get the impression that my critique of yesterday has prompted a remix. A click of the mouse and we are off.
Normally I would include the audio at this point, but not today. We are releasing it after our broadcast on Siren FM on Wednesday evening. I have listened and I think it’s damn good. I know that negates all my problems with value statements in yesterday’s post, and I will offer a more considered critique in a couple of days. However, it has movement and depth; it tells a Lincoln story which is ancient and contemporary. It’s an impression of the present and the future which has industrial strength and multicultural themes for the Lincoln of today.
For me it’s been a intellectual journey of creative discussion, but for Steve the cleaning of his work space is symbolic of finishing hard graft. Mental stress is a tiring thing and he is exhausted. As you progress through your own creative journey you will realise just how much this kind of thing takes out of you.We listen to this work with fresh ears, but Steve has been listening to this almost exclusively for 7 weeks. I will update you soon on the publication of the audio which, as the recorders of the raw material, is as much your work as Steve’s. However, look at this which is a list view of the process he has gone through to get to this point.
Order of Work:
Created project in Cubase 8 and populated with tracks, effects and processors – this to save time later and give a framework.
Listened to source material for content and quality.
Decided on base tempo considering the theme (yes this happened early on – as explained, a tempo that could be halved and still remain in the realms of feasibility).
Re-listened to material several times for ideas and identifying unusual characteristics of clips.
Made a start! This is important, even if the theme / work you start with is ditched later.
Decided to start with an ambiguous, but rhythmic opening – this stopped me ‘painting myself into a corner’, which is a possibility with such a long piece.
Started to put a loose palette of sounds together.
Decided that because of the diversity of sounds that the piece will consist of many loosely related sections, segued together using location effects and musical memes.
Continued to develop the piece, which starts to take the form of a journey as I considered the different locations of Lincoln, the social issues; particularly those surrounding the old being somewhat obscured by the new.
Dynamics start to become evident as we have the more sedentary nature of the old town and green areas, compared to the traffic, train station and hustle bustle of the shopping areas.
The opening rhythmic section and subsequent electric piano sound are echoed throughout the piece- as the work developed it started to become more cohesive, as backbone sections were fleshed out.
The mix did not happen all at once – it was constantly worked on as part of the creative, sound sculpting process.
At 25 minutes the piece has come full circle with a twist, with the Old England feel of the choirs and bells being replaced by an Eastern European / Middle Eastern themed vocal section. This signifies a diversity of cultures now found in Lincoln.
EQ refinement and more subtle mixing took place.
Ear candy added where appropriate.
Some extra link material added.
Stereo treatment applied
All tracks check individually (solo’ed) for ‘clicks and pops. Fades and fade curves honed. (some clicks and aberrant noises could not be removed, so we live with them).
Final mix.
To do – mastering.
Areas of interest:
Opening rhythm is high street ambience ‘stuttered’ by a square wave ‘tremolo’.
Lots of percussion is derived from cutlery clanking, horses hooves, construction sounds, traffic airbrakes, train noises, footsteps, raindrops and other student sourced clanks and hits.
Ambient sounds of feet in grass, birds, swans, bells, pipe organ (from Cathedral) and female(?) choir from the Cathedral are used along with recurrent bells, some natural, some re-piched to suit.
A busker is used – only one line is isolated and manipulated, tuned, stretched and re-pitched.
The train / travel section featured sounds of the station, trains, beepers, crossing point warnings and announcements.
This section also tries to highlight the emotions of coming and going. There is a hurry, a happiness and sadness intermingled, but the overall sense is one of motion and moving. Conflict and resolution.
The shopping centre section features warped voices, in-store advertising, busker, cash machines, checkouts and children in pushchairs along with snatches of conversation. The Big Issue crier is also here.
The eastern section features some think voices, some manipulated. Francesca Genko provides the voice as a Native Instruments plug-in. Much work was undertaken with the raw samples to achieve the desired result.
Some 50 tracks of audio where created, thank the Gods for mix automation!
General Instrumentation:
Found Loops (student work)
Guitar – Peavey with Floyd Rose Trem.
Roland GR-55 Guitar Synth with PRS Guitar & Hex Pickup
Eurorack Modular Synthesiser System (used throughout for sequences, bass, drums & processing)
Items used in Cubase 8 Pro:
Native Instruments Kontakt (full version) loaded with the following:
“Cantus” (monks)
“Francesca Genko” (female voice)
“The Grandeur” (acoustic grand piano)
“The Giant” (prepared piano),
“Bohemian” (percussion)
“Retro Instruments” (Rhodes Piano)
“Rides” (cymbal splashes).
Other plug-ins in Cubase:
Sternberg “Padshop Pro” Granular Synthesizer (used on guitar)
As things do each week, matters have moved on. A pity really Steve is still laid up with a bad leg in his studio because he would have loved to visit the Frequency Festival. I recommend you have a look around and think deeply about the installations. Look for depth in the meaning and as we have discussed, not just the meaning broadcast by the artist, but the way in which you put your own interpretation on a work. What has brought you to that meaning? How would that internal meaning differ if you had been dealt a different hand?
This week Steve has sent me what he says is an almost complete mix. Do you agree?
Is this better than the one he sent last week? Have a listen and either tweet, email or debate internally the attributes of the versions presented. I have reservations which I will be talking over with the artist. Is this final version overworked? It’s a conversation I had with the artist last week when he was discussing some of his thoughts on this final stage. Should the piece have been left with an “honest rough crafted quality” or does this more polished performance give the right feel? Do the additions bury the meaning too deeply and is the artist dictating too far where this piece should go and masking the early sketches and aspirations of the recorders?
Why do I mention this in the blog? Certainly not to question the artist’s considerable skill which is far more advanced than my own. No, honest critique, which is different to criticism, is the thing we need to concentrate on. You will find that as a sound artist, or for that matter any other sort of artist, the issue of “like” and “dislike” may seem simply not good enough.
However sitting in the Frequency Festival listening to a shopper bemoaning the fact that this installation “it’s not real art”
I was struck by a thought. The work in question had prompted a reaction. Intellectually deep or not this was a piece which made those people stop and comment and moreover question the meaning of the work and their part in it.
A few years ago, a work which featured a picture of Jimmy Savile and other celebrities was “defaced” The pictures of Savile were removed to “protect children”. I was outraged but the artist was delighted that their work had prompted action and that action they consider was perfectly valid. We could get into all manner of conversations about whether a painting by Adolf Hitler or Rolf Harris is any “better” or “worse” once we know the person’s true self. When I say better or worse I really mean has added meaning. I will leave that for you to debate!
Does an artist court controversy to prompt reaction? Let me ask you would you have read this if I had not being as daring with my post title as I was? Indeed in my text I am provoking reader and artist alike.
Am I then arguing for vandalising art as a valid part of that art’s journey? Think about the issues yourself, it’s a big risk and I am going to tell you not to break the law under any circumstances! However consider this, the “battle between Turkish and Kurdish nationalists, over a political Banksy in London. The work is a focus for debate, and a debate which would not be in the public arena if it were not for that battle. Look – I am not arguing for me taking the audio and randomly putting lots of noise over it in a fit of madness. What I am saying is that art should prompt a reaction and that reaction can not always be predicted by the artist or for that matter the state. Perhaps without courting comment, a piece has little meaning.
In the end I am saying that Steve as an artist will welcome comment/critique. Having spent time crafting something, a work which prompts no reaction is impotent. My comments are functionary, considering the process within my own composition paradigm and schema. What you need to do is listen to it and comment on its meaning for you as well as the way it puts over that meaning. Right or wrong, up or down, pink or blue, loud or quiet the piece is produced as a journey from the first tentative recordings in Lincoln by a group of nervous students through to Steve’s late night editing sessions. In the coming days it will be presented to you not as a work which is “good or bad” but as a representation of all our creative journeys over the past 7 weeks. What has that collaboration given you? I have no idea but as with all these things it’s not the end of the journey which is the real purpose.
Much has changed since my visit to the studio last week. The advancing autumn has prompted the artist to let his trimmed facial hair develop into a shaggy grey beard which seems to fit the way his interpretation of your sound.ogg has also filled out. Last week’s audio has been worked on and is now more than 20 minutes in length. There is also much more depth to the mix.
You will get a fuller experience when listening to it this week and although there is still further work to do you will notice more processing and certainly more stereo. There are recurring themes through the movements and while the music element is clear the individual sounds collected from Lincoln are still evident throughout. Sometimes these are buried deep in the mix and at other times quite prominent.
This mix led to a debate about frequencies and the way in which an artist will cut certain frequencies from an “instrument” to prevent that from clashing with another. Using either digital or analog processing the person performing the mix will filter out some of the sound to form “a better sound”. I was and remain artistically worried about this. Is the piece, any piece, being acoustically castrated? There is more debate to be had on this but there seemed to be solid practical reasons for doing this process.
This brought us onto the”Munson curve“! This is really interesting from the sound.ogg point of view but also to anyone interested in the way in which we perceive a music mix.
I will let you look at the technical explanation but basically different frequencies come to the fore depending on the volume the piece is played out. Wow, so if I play something loud I won’t just hear it louder but I will hear a different mix! To a recording artist this is nothing new clearly but to me it has a massive implication. An artist will use a graphic equalizer to optimise the frequencies for a certain volume but this only matters if the listener replicates that volume.
I point out to the artist that this must mean if you listen to a piece at a different volume to that which was intended you get a different sound. He smiles and says “thats why you can never get the perfect mix”. When you listen to this piece you will not only get a different volume depending on how loud you listen but you will also get a different acoustic experience. That though is nothing to the complexities of the way the mind actually interprets the sounds and makes cultural meaning. I will explore that point with the artist perhaps next week .
So that leads us to Francesca! I don’t want to spend much time on this as the website will become a list of plugins with me raving about each discovery. Last weeks it was Monks and Wind. This week it’s the voice of Francesca Genco.
How does this work, indeed how does it work, for all these vocal plugins? Francesca is invited into a studio and sings a range of phrases. These are then edited, digitised and put into a piece of software which allows anyone who “buys her voice” to manipulate all its properties. These are Pitch, Loudness, Phase, Direction, Distance and Timbre Have a look at the Simple Guide by “Catching Waves”
Steve’s use of this plug in does not offer this middle-eastern interpretation but I include it as an example of how her phrases can be manipulated.
You know that scene in Star Wars where Luke visits Yoda and comes away enlightened but not to sure what the old man has actually said; Well thats me today! Sitting with the artist and absorbing the wisdom is always a pleasure but there was some weird stuff going on last night. He was waiting for a takeaway to be delivered so he was hungry which may have explained the enhanced philosophical approach.
He has long since given up answering the door and now shouts “Is that Dylan” from his darkened den. As I approach in the gloom I see the hint of reflected coloured light with smoke making patterns in the hallway. I am 6 again waiting to see Father Christmas! The smoke is from a jos stick which is trailing vertically to the ceiling before mushrooming out and I find him sitting on the floor in front of a bank of screens with a large gin in one hand.
I have been summoned because he has something for me to listen to – the first rough edit of sound.ogg 2015. Not it all but about 11 minutes which he tempts me with but keeps putting off actually playing. More of that later.
Where the conversation does go is to the topic of plugins. These are banks of effects and instruments which you can buy for many digital audio workstations. Cubase, which Steve uses, is no exception. He hits a few keys and he shows me how to map sounds with an instrument, changing the pitch of rattling cutlery so it sounds like a tune. We chat and he tells of the advert for a tile company he did where he had to map the sounds of breaking tiles to a tune.
Then he gets really animated and with a few more clicks.. “look at this, its the monks!!” A plugin called Cantus is fired up and we have fun mapping chanting to well known songs. Ok its a bit of a laugh but it sounds great and he then teases further with a mention of using “the monks” in Sound.ogg.
I’ve found a demo on Youtube which shows a bit of how this is used. There are lots more and as always on Yotube I became absorbed in different plugins from Medieval instruments or this other one which I can’t resist “Desert Winds”.
Now the wait was over. I turn around away for the computers and face a wall where the speakers are placed on stands about 6 feet apart and at a height of say 4 feet. I sit in a chair and close my eyes. Steve explains that it’s not a finished mix but a work in progress. I can hear him shuffling and there are a couple of mouse clicks followed by a moments silence then……
Now it’s up to you, tweet your suggestions for this section to #soundogg.
Steve says he’s going to change the pace of the piece next to give it a bit of a kick this is what he has to say..
“The piece (master tempo for Cubase) is currently at 135 BPM (although of course that can be changed to whatever, whenever) *but* the underlying feel of the first 10 minutes or so is at a half tempo (so 135/2 = 67.5 BPM). The next section feels as though it is going to move up to 135 proper, this will be indicated by the use of shorter notes and a doubling of the underlying pulse of the first section. Full on techno music generally has a tempo of around 140-150, drum and bass 150-170 (but again often at half time feel), pop around 120 … you get the idea?”
We talked around a number of artistic and political issues as well as reviewing each other’s work to some extent.
In true Hollywood fashion….Thanks to Alex the presenter and producer of Mid Week Drive for inviting us in, thanks to the Swan Pub for providing us with a pint of Guinness and a pint Doombar and thanks to Saxilby Fish and Chips (open daily 11.30 – 2300).
