Tech Journal Semester 2 Week 5

Forum

Tim Gabbusch

Tim's musique concrete piece presented to the forum was composed using recordings of found sounds that were mostly derivate of water sources, and recordings of synthesised sounds created using various analogue synthesisers. He then employed various tape techniques to reassemble the sounds as is typical of musique concrete. It was really enjoyable to hear what a student who was fortunate enough to use tape came up with, as it is something that I feel a little disappointed about missing out on. I really liked the extra texture of sound Tim was able to achieve by using the analogue synthesisers also.

The second piece presented by Tim was a recording of a Jazz band that he did. I liked the way he mixed it. Somehow it seemed to have the stylistic traits of listening to a good vinyl recording, with a nice 'warm' sound, but without any artefacts associated with the medium. Tim felt that the Saxophone was an element of the recording that could have benefited from some more experience on his behalf, which at the time of the recording he didn't have.

Jacob Morris

Jacob's musique concrete piece "New Surroundings" employed the use of a narrative to direct the use of sounds. I really enjoyed this story telling approach and I think that it made the piece a lot more involving instead of being abstract and alienated from the audience as a lot of musique concrete seems to be. (The alienated sound of musique concrete is actually something we began discussing in Mark Carroll’s "Perspectives in music technology history" class.)

Ben Probert

'Vocalacov', the name reflects the attitude of the piece Ben presented perfectly - very tongue in cheek, yet serious at the same time. The tongue in cheek element being Bens approach of taking whatever strange sounds he can make with his voice and using them to compose in a style of music which was taken very seriously by it's major contemporaries. The style of which was Musique Concrete. The serious element comes into it when looking at Ben's very adept and skillfull manipulation of the sounds and the arrangement of them. Something I'm sure even Pierre Henry could appreciate.

Next was a piece of music Ben wrote within the program 'Live.' Although it had elements of a basic techno piece, the sudden changes of style and mood kept it vaguely interesting. (It is important to note that I do like techno, but only if it's well made techno.)

And to finish of Ben's re'-mix of the Nine Inch Nails song "The Hand That Feeds" entitled "The bitch slap that feeds." was source of much amusement (at least to those who got the humour of it.) I think it will be the next big pop hit. :P

William Revill

"Neurotic Turbulence" was William's Musique Concrete piece, which I feel, could be best described as a Static wall of sound. (I mean this in a positive sense.) I think the fact that William approached this as a Sound Design exercise really enforced the use of sound in an intelligent way. I could picture myself in an unfolding scene of a dark and dirty part of a city.

Workshop

I think some very positive progress was made today in our improvisation. Seb and I just jumped into the deep end and started making some noise, and other members of the group quickly followed suit with an array of different software applications they had made while Tyrell jumped upon the Juno 6 and accompanied my analogue synth frenzy.