Self Remix

For this project I chose to rework my found sounds song. I got rid of just about everything in it with the exception of the leaf blower, the squeaky floor and my cat. I didn’t change the way i had altered these. I then found new beats that I like and layered them, while moving around the other pieces until they were in a place that I liked.

In some ways this song was more validating than others, because I was working to improve something in a short time rather than creating something in a short time. I still was not completely happy with my results, but it’s at least good enough that I wouldn’t mind sharing it with others.

Making Music With Your Phone

This was one of my favorite assignments. For one thing I love playing with new apps. New is so often more fun to explore than the things you already know. For this project I downloaded 7 different apps after looking at at least 15 or 20. The apps I downloaded were Iphone versions of Take and Figure by Propellerhead, Dubstep, Babby Scratch, Keezy, Keezy Drummer and Launchpad. I played with these anytime I had a spare moment whether or not I was actually thinking about the assignment. I was playing with them so often that my boyfriend got tired of hearing them and whenever I stopped to work on something else would say, Thank goodness.

I eventually decided to use the Launchpad app. I played around with the various sound sets and decided on the House2 set. I played around with those sounds for another few days and then with a basic concept of what I wanted to do recorded an improvised song using all of the sections of sounds, the EQ pad, and the beat and wave changing pads.

This may have been the easiest song to make because I didn’t really have to make everything fit together perfectly, it just did.

Song 3

For song 3 we used “found recording” of classmates and ourselves to create a song. I had recorded some squeaky floorboards and my cat. Others in the class had recorded an air conditioner, walking down the hall, step dancing, a cash register, a friend singing overtones, and many other things. I ended up using both of my recordings, the air conditioner, the voice, a leaf blower, the step dance, and there may be one or two others I am forgetting.

I decided to try out Logic Pro for this song even though I could have chosen to do it in Garage Band. The process was a bit slower for me this time because I have not used Logic before, so I had to figure out where everything was and what does different things. I still haven’t figured all of it out, but I figured out enough to put something together. I used lots of compression, some pitch shifting, different pedals, reverb and various other effects to alter the sounds to be more musical.

I had a lot of fun with this project. The only thing I would have liked is more time to work on it, to make it better.

Peer Remix

For my peer remix I chose to use Nikki’s piano song and Laura’s midi song. Laura accidentally gave me a different song, but rather than take more time I just pulled a few things out of what she gave me and merged them with Nikki’s piece from which I just kept/rearranged the piano parts. I chose their tracks because they had aesthetic elements that I liked, but were put together differently than I would have done it myself.

The process started with me singling out each track getting rid of loops and midi tracks that I didn’t want to use then searching through the loop library to find things that I wanted to use. Initially I pulled out ten or so loops. I ended up using five consistently and taking a single beat from two others to make.

Because there was already a basic structure, after laying down a beat (the whispy, echo beat that we discussed in class as being made by eq) , I started in the middle rearranging, lengthening and shortening the piano parts. I then layered in additional elements to the beat because the first loop wasn’t heavy enough for me and I wanted more and different textures in other areas of the piece. Next I added a build up to silence followed by everything coming in at once, but quickly coming down to a less complicated sound. I also knew i wanted a drop, but couldn’t easily find one that I liked and making one was taking a while, so I next completed the ending and came back to the drop.

After asking how to best accomplish my idea, which was a drum explosion/repetition and then degradation of the piano part into nothing. I found two beats with a heavy drum beat and cut a beat out of each repeated each a bunch of time successively then added the piano after it. I ended up shortening the length of both the drum and the piano (although I probably could have shortened the piano section even more), and deleted a few of the drum beats to vary the rhythm. I then looped the piano section and using the master track features of garage band did both a time and pitch shift from the current down to the lowest either would allow. I then bounced the loop, deleted the section, time and pitch changes from the actual track, and dropped the loop in in the sections place. This did not turn out exactly how I wanted.

The only why for any of my choices was just that those were the ideas I had as I was working with the music and working with those ideas I made them sound as best I could in the time we had with the tools I was using. Overall, I liked how the piece turned out, but as usual it would have been nice to spend more time on it.

As to who should be credited for the piece, as we discussed in class that is a complicated decision. I think as long as it is labelled as a remix of Nikki’s my name could be the main name, because it is drastically different from hers, but still uses many of her original ideas. The loop I pulled from Laura’s piece was one that she recorded, but I didn’t take any thematic material from her piece, so I’m not sure I would credit her, unless I credited everyone/thing that I used a loop from.

How Brain Rhythms Are Used to Process Music

Ever wondered how your brain understands music?  Here is an article regarding some research about how we process music.

Researchers find neurological notes that help identify how we process music

New York University researchers have identified how brain rhythms are used to process music, a finding that also shows how our perception of notes and melodies can be used as a method to better understand the auditory system.

The study, which appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, points to a newfound role the brain’s cortical oscillations play in the detection of musical sequences and suggests musical training can enhance the functional role of brain rhythms.

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MUTC 101 MIDI

Whether or not I like MIDI is a bit of a complicated question for me. I don’t like what I’ve been able to do with it in class. I have an idea of what I want to do, but actually getting the loops to turn out and line up as I envision is difficult. I’m not familiar enough, nor have enough time in the tech studio to become familiar enough with the available keyboard/sound effects. I think if I had more of my own MIDI enabled equipment (keyboard(s), pedal board, etc.) I would learn to use it better and like it. I’m especially interested in the MIDI pedal board. With it you can record loops and connect them to a specific pedal and then turn the loop on and of during a live performance or recording session. You can also delete the loop and record something else while in session. The work Zoe Keating does with her board is amazing.

I also need to do more research on MIDI pre-recorded songs/loops. I don’t particularly like working with full recorded songs, because I don’t want to use the whole thing, but choosing a piece of it to use becomes overwhelming for me. I also might like it better if I incorporate using the the notation software to create some of the loops I’d like to have.

I do believe this is valid musicianship, unless you take a full song (not created by yourself) and make very minimal alterations to it. For one thing you can create/record your own loops, or complete songs, either within notation software, by recording directly from an instrument into your editing program, or notating synthesized sounds directly into your editing program. Additionally, if you use a piece pre-recorded by someone else you often are changing it in some way to make it unique to you.

MUTC 101 Song 1

Song One. Creating this song was interesting. I have tried writing my own songs in Garage Band before, but I get bogged down going through all the loops, trying to figure out the structure of the song, and how to make it interesting. Having such a short amount of time to create this forced me to pick one of the loop themes and use only a few of the loops from it.

I enjoy creating things in Garage Band and if I had more time could spend hours doing it. I did not enjoy being limited to certain loops, although I understand why we were limited.

Garage Band is very intuitive to me and provides enough editing tools that I can do just about anything with the loops and other songs that I have a desire to do. Although, I am sure once we work with Logic my mind may change. I would love to work with more diverse loops or to create my own loops to use in songs. I would also like to have more time to work out the aesthetics of the song so that it meets my standards instead of being what I had time to work through in class.

Do I consider this kind of music making to be “real” musicianship? For the most part, I would say yes. If someone is taking time and creating an aesthetically pleasing combination of loops then I think it is musicianship. On the other hand if someone drops a whole bunch of loops into tracks without considering how they fit together I would not call that musicianship. Randomization has it’s place, but, in my opinion, there has to be some degree of cohesiveness.