Today we built a very simple electroacoustic oscillation using the battery, speaker driver and paper clips. It’s good to know that hacking technology is not as incredibly complicated as I thought it was.
Next week we worked with breadboard and built more complicated electronic oscillator circuits using some capacitors, resistors, led lights, pressure sensors and orange (acting as capacitor I believe).
As I am a complete beginner in electronics, I prepared this very simple guide to what’s what
Different types of capacitors.
Capacitors exist to store an electric charge or energy. They can then release the charge or energy when it’s needed. In the electroacoustic circuit, they indicate the frequency of the sound (higher capacity (larger capacitor) – lower frequency – lower sound). Capacitance is the measure of how much electrical energy is stored in an object, such as a capacitor used in an electronic circuit. The unit for measuring capacitance is the farad (F), defined as 1 coulomb (C) of electric charge per volt (V) of potential difference. Resistors
Resistors literally resist the flow of electricity, either to limit the current for a given applied voltage (electrical pressure) or to allow a certain voltage (pressure) to build up when a given current flows. They consist of insulating materials (like ceramic) that lower the ability of electrons to flow on the surface and therefore slows down the current. Resistance is measured in Ohms.
Potentiometer is simply a resistor with a 3rd connection that can be moved to any point along its length, which means it can be controlled and changed.
In her talk from 2016 Holly Herndon, an American composer, touches upon her process, laptop music and performance, the need for contextualising work, government surveillance and many more interesting topics, that I believe are very relevant for many working with sound.
I relate a lot to Holly’s position on the process as a fuel for artwork itself. The process that reveals more possibilities and therefore makes our work malleable and flexible during its creation, rather than thoroughly planned and structured from its beginings.
I use that method while working on my pieces and also trying to learn some new skill during the process.
Holly also talks a lot about how using the laptop as her instrument has been problematic in different environments and how she had to often justify her artistic choices depending on what her practice was, wether it was related to academy or to her private performance. She called her laptop the most intimate instrument and I agree with this statement on every level. The talk and the experiments I did inspired by Holly and new Ableton techniques below:
https://soundcloud.com/user-795369879/hoho
Her groundbreaking editing methods came from the experimentation with different mediums and not obeying the pressure. The way she plays with human voice and digital possibilities of Ableton and Max for Live, gives the possibility of classically sounding vocals and ultra-modern breaks and folds of digital sounds to merge into one strangely chaotic and harmonic in one creation.
Construction of entertainment in capitalistic world.
Cinema functions (social, sociological): role models, shaping society, reflection
AUTEUR THEORY – the director, who oversees all audio and visual elements of the motion picture, is more to be considered the “author” of the movie than is the writer of the screenplay. In other words, such fundamental visual elements as camera placement, blocking, lighting, and scene length, rather than plot line, convey the message of the film
How do we understand the structure of certain music. cinema?
synthesised, immitated and recorded sounds (16 speakers)
Boids algorithm – often used in animation (I.e. Lion King, early video games)
Used in electroacoustic music 1.Separatio, 2.Alingment, 3.cohesion – with these 3 rules and without a lease a beautiful patterns can occur
“Jasmin flower town”- look at the website fo lecture
Harmonics ——- Rationality (links)
Hiding the messages under the layer of humour and other elements in the performance
Process:
Material will guide your process, writing document to yourself (loose notes that don’t have to be smoothly written, it’s just to communicate ideas and thoughts to oneself); using a chip tune, adding new layers, rationlised and also crazy and vibrant
The trumpet model is the only instrument that you can render locally (offline), giving the extreme parameters to modelers,
materials- making a commentary about them, adding your own inspirations
idiomatic – using, containing, or denoting expressions that are natural to a native speaker.‘he spoke fluent, idiomatic English’; appropriate to the style of art or music associated with a particular period, individual, or group.‘a short Bach piece containing lots of idiomatic motifs’, using contradictions and completely unlatching elements to create bizarre results, stressing the bizarres of it,
How to address the vibrance of what’s around us in relation to academic
In recent years, sensory ethnography has emerged in response to the way that anthropology has represented its human subjects in media, primarily through film. This new discipline, which has its roots in field recordings, sound art and ethnographic films, tries to develop a way of approaching anthropology’s social concerns, maintaining its methodological imperative to clearly and accurately represent its subjects, while at the same time acknowledging that the audience for such research also makes up part of the meaning that it creates. In short, sensory ethnography is an attempt to resolve the subjective, artistic approaches needed to make effective and engaging work out of empirical data, at the same time as accurately representing its observations.*
*source:https://monoskop.org/Sensory_ethnography
In my understanding sensory ethnography is using methods based on the senses as a main determinant. In can be successfully applied in sound studies, considering the plurality of the resources, tools and different platforms to make, share and listen to the sounds.
An important aspect to mention is the digitalisation of humans lives and culture and development of digital humanities. Humanities are now applying digital techniques to archives and collections that are vastly larger than before. These methods enable ambitious projects to be created with interdisciplinary teams that are brought together to work on complex projects.
continous voltage controled oscilator that gets pitched through one octave standard
next we use a voltage controlled amplifier which takes that signal and can quiet or loud, depending on the control voltage that goes into it
gate – a note on event with sustain to create an envelope control voltage that goes into the VCA to tell it to shape the volume of the signal.
Examples: Unipolar modulation that is positive – view in SCOPE :one pole, above the treshhold.
LFO‘s (low filter oscilator) can work as analog signal trigger / clock / gate
The basic patch, as its name implies, allows for control of three essential aspects of sound utilizing the three main signal path modules:
frequency (VCO) – voltage controlled oscilator – initiates the sound wave and controls its frequency and determines the initial timbre, which is determined by the waveform option selected
timbre (VCF) – voltage controlled filter. VCF filter module shapes the timbre via the filter type chosen, the initial c.o.f., the amount of Q*, and the movement of the c.o.f. over time as controlled by an envelope generator. —- The filter’s cutoff frequency (c.o.f.) is the point a specific frequency component would have lost approximately half the power (−3 dB or .707 RMS) of unaffected frequencies, often referred to as the half-power point.
amplitude – VCA (voltage controlled amplifier) shapes the amplitude of the sound (its beginning, change over time, and end).
*degree of boost or cut and the width of the peak or notch is controllable with the ‘Q’ setting (sometimes labeled as bandwidth (BW))
Polyrhytmic noise from Ukraine. Revolution in the sound.
I am from Poland and the current situation in Ukraine is touching me deeply for many different reasons. I discovered Kateryna Zavoloka a while ago and revisited her work when the war escalated, looking for some sort of relief…. even though it sounds ridiculous.
Zavoloka (full name, Kateryna Zavoloka) is a contemporary experimental and electronic music composer, sound artist and graphic designer from Kiev, Ukraine.
The word zavoloka means deep fog and also maverick in Ukrainian . Zavoloka’s main interests in music are to mix ancient Ukrainian traditions with modern electronic music technology. She combines melodic experimental electronic music with self-recorded Ukrainian folk music.
Together with Dmytro Fedorenko (Kotra), she’s a part of Cluster Lizard.
In 2014 Zavoloka published an EP inspired by the Ukrainian winter revolution; the music oscillates between electronica and industrial rhythms made of samples of beaten metal.
“Volya (Freedom) was inspired by the Maidan winter revolution in Kiev in 2013 and 2014. During the street riots I asked myself, What can I do here as an artist? So I started to audio and video document. I recorded metal rhythms when activists were banging on burned police vehicles. When the police were beating activists, people were banging faster.”
The feeling i get listening to this piece is overwhelming, it hits all my sad buttons and just make me want to cry. It also has so much power and strong energy I have never experienced from any other sound work I just wish this was only a relict of the past for the people of Ukraine.. unfortunately it’s not.
As a child i attended music school. From the perspective of time it seems like I learned a lot theory, including musical notation, but there was no much of a creative space for the students.
Musical notation is the type of graphic scores i know very well and the connotation i have is a strict, framed or even restricted performance of music. When asked to produce an alternative music score (non linear) I was pretty excited as I like visual arts. But the final result was rather dull. I found it difficult to imagine the music and put it on paper, using a method that I have never even though off.
It was also hard for me to read the scores of others and perform them. While performing, I just tried to recreate the feeling i got looking at the picture, but to be completely honest I stopped looking at it and just went with the flow of others rather than followed the score.
I think those difficulties are manifesting because graphic score is in itself a limitation, and if it’s lacking a precise explanation on how to perform it ,then it’s just unreadable (unless that was the aim of an author).
Perhaps it would be easier to do it the other way round? To write the music that is being heard or have already been heard?
I have a love-hate relationship with the concept of the graphic scores. On one hand there are some amazing examples of writing and reading alternative music scores, like Cathy Barberian :
On the other… I don’t think I will be using it in my work any time soon.
Listening to the recordings of our graphic score jam I felt like most of the time it was pretty chaotic and did not seem like performers were reading any score. I can’t recall all of them but I remember the one I performed with few others and I have to say that it seems that everyone was a bit lost.
History of the sound art as we know it today is undoubtedly intertwined with the history of electronic music. Since recording and editing of the sound became possible, those recordings became a very maluable and in a way, endless source of material for further sonic explorations.
A very interesting example of an early experimental electronic pieces that was composed for 5 speakers is Karlheinz Stockhausen’s: Gesang der Jünglinge (1955/56). It features human choir and electronics, and was originally utilised through 5 speakers located across the concert hall.
I came across Polish Experimental Radio Studio – opened in 1957 in Warsaw, and formally closed in 2004. PRES can now be recognised, among those from Paris, Cologne, and Milan, as one of the first studios devoted to musical experiments in Europe. It was the first such institution established in Eastern Block. During its 47 years of activity, PRES has been responsible for numerous productions important for contemporary music and been the most important cultural institution in Poland, considering the growth of electroacoustic music globally. The studio has become an incubator of the most forward-thinking ideas about sound and music of the twentieth century.
One of the people working in the studio was Eugieniusz Rudnik. Some call him a phono-poet and I think this name is very accurate. He was an engineer who worked with many great composers in Poland and abroad. He started playing with tape recorders because he, as he said in one of the interviews, was bored. He became a pioneer of electro-acustic music in Poland.
His incredible collages of rejected and unwanted sound objects cut out of many different tapes, became symphonies forcing the listeners to experience sound and music differently, revising their ideas about the world and emotions.
His lack of classical music training and great technical knowledge, gave E. Rudnik the ability to make something completely outside musical norms yet extremely original and fresh. He is a great inspiration for me. Here is one of my favourite pieces of Runik called “Gilotyna”
A very popular technique used in musique concrete is repetition. I experimented with it by cropping a 2 bars sample from one of my recorded jamms. I then played it on a loop and added layers of the same sample played in 4 different BPM
In the other example I played one short loop on repeat, changing few parameters on the way to get a bit more texture (I can’t remember what the parameters were)
https://soundcloud.com/user-795369879/texious
Architecture and sound
Structure-born sound (traveling through walls, floors, rooms) and airborne sound (when we stand on front of the loud speaker).
sound art is concerned with examining not only all apparent sounds of the environment, but all unapparent sounds as well
Sound and privacy
There is something unsettling in a thought of using other peoples voice recordings. Picking up peoples mobile phones conversations may be a bit much, but also opens up a conversation about privacy of the sound. What is private and what is public?
Do I have a right to record people as they pass by me on the street, or the sounds coming from outside my bedroom window? I live opposite the school and most days the noise is just unbearable, why wouldn’t I then have a right to record those disturbing voices and use them somehow? I work a lot with field recordings, and they often include random peoples voices. I tend to edit those sounds quite heavily and give them another meaning, therefore i abslove myself from all the guilt..
First recording is a part of a filed recording i made while walking ariound Peckham.
The other recording was inspired by the art work of Scanner (aka Robin Rimbaud) who did numerous recordings and performances picking up people’s cell phone conversations using a scanner, which he would mix in with electronic music. I used an old walkman tunning radio and run it through volca modular
I left filed recorder on the window sill and captured the moment when kids are being picked up by their parents after the classes. I modified it using korg monotron ribbon mini synthesizer.
