Tech Journal Semester 2 Week 4 Submission

Forum

Henry Reed

Henry played a piece entitled 'Lucky' which was written in dedication to his grandfather. "'Lucky' Jack Reed worked for Eastman Kodak before becoming an aerial photographer in World War 2. He was shot down over the Pacific, but survived and was eventually rescued.#1"

Henry used SuperCollider3 to create a "pastiche of synthesised sounds and variable rate samples.#1" The samples used had a very direct relationship to the story of his grandfather. From the sound of a photo being taken to the distant rumble of machine gun noise. This 'telling of a story' through the music created a brilliant aesthetic. I could see a movie of the events unfolding in my head as the music progressed.

I think I would of still found the piece enjoyable without the story, but the story put the sounds in context that greatly enhanced the accessibility.

I also enjoyed the fact that due to what Henry described as 'controlled randomness,' different versions of the piece can be created every time the program runs through.

Mathew Mazzone

Mathew presented 3 pieces to the assembled forum.

The first piece was written for a 'running scene' of a video game. He used the program Logic exclusively for this piece. Various synth sounds were used to create the mood, including a very nice sounding piano melody. While some very clever sound manipulations which made the sound of rain and various other environmental sounds which created a brilliant atmosphere to the piece.

The second piece was written using sample loops and the occasional sound from Reason within the program Live.

And the 3rd piece was written with Pro Tools and Reason. I would describe it as an ambient drum and bass piece that utilized the vocal styling of a female Jazz voice student. Matt commented that he would of liked to have done more with the vocals, but was only able to get one quick take to use in the piece, which is a shame. I can see a lot of potential for the piece to have a much more prominent vocal element.

Daniel Mutagh

Daniel played a piece that was Co written with his other band member in the band "Enemy Of?" It was a heavy metal piece in which the band used an electronic drum kit that Daniel fed into the program "Drum Kit from Hell Superior." He then edited the sound to fix the timing etc. The piece was incredibly well mixed with a very 'clean' sound. This resulted in a very high definition sound. The faults however as commented on by Sonia, there was a distinct lack of 'bottom end.' Daniel accredited this to two things. 1. The overall mix needed to be fixed and 2. He was still learning to get the right sound from the drum program being used.

Workshop

In today's improvisation session we started to get into making music. Well attempted to. It is still in its beginning stages, and we were all doing our own thing to a fair degree, but I don't see this is a negative. I more see it as figuring out how each of us wants to approach this before we come together. I really enjoyed playing with the Jupiter 4 and working in conjunction with seb manipulating the sounds on his laptop. I have suggested the idea for next week that he writes a patch to create a rhythmic sample loop of the sounds we make so that there is a basis for the other members to work with. A 'bottom layer' for the rest of the group to add there individual layers too, creating a sonic texture of sounds. Seb likes the idea, as does tyrell but I am yet to speak with the rest of the group to hear what they think of the idea. Overall I'm very excited. :)







References
#1 Henry Reed. "Lucky, Henry Reeds Technology Forum Presentation Lecture notes." presented at University of Adelaide, 17 August 2006.