Tech Journal Semester 2 week 6

Forum

Tyrell Blackburn

Tyrell presented an array of compositions which he created for two different games under the employment of a games company. All of the compositions were sequenced and composed using Cubase.

The first track presented was ironically the last project he worked on with the games company. It was a children’s game based on economy. It had a very boppy Jazz feel to it although like with a lot of game music it had the potential to get annoying after hearing looped for a long time. But the way in which he varied the main theme with different voicing and arrangement came across as a good attempt to overcome this problem.

The second piece he presented was actually the first piece he wrote for the games company for an RPG action adventure games. I really enjoyed the use of 'war like' drums in this piece.

The third piece was for the same game. It made use of a very well written piano piece which included the use of various strings. The way it was written made it feel as though it was light hearted yet there was a grave seriousness underpinning it which I felt was highly effective.

The final piece was again for the same game and was experimentation in having the music being adaptive to the action of the game. By using basic harmonic structure and having the musical themes introduced being reflective of what was occurring in the game. I.e. a particular theme for when it starts to rain. I thought this was a very clever idea but being unable to see it implemented within the game it was difficult to know if it was necessarily successful idea.

Poppi Doser
Poppi presented a series of short excerpts of from various films she has created (audio and visual.)She described the music as being influenced from her studies in the Adelaide tech course and being stylistically electro acoustic music that made use of found sounds. In particular was the use of spoken word from various women she had interviewed on particular subjects in which she feels strongly about.

The first excerpt was from a film entitled "19 Parallels" The music for the film, which comprised of found sounds including recordings of her voice and an interview used within a Max MSP patch. The way in which the music accompanied visual element of the child acrobatics was highly effective. It seemed to encapsulate a child like innocence and wonder fitting to the incredible feats the children being filmed were able to accomplish.

The second film was quite intriguing but because it was just a short excerpt it was difficult to grasp as I would have like to have seen all of it and "seen the story unfold." The same goes with the audio element as it sounded like a piece that could have stood apart from the film had I the chance to hear it in its entirety.

The third piece was poppi's first experiment in rap. I have heard it before, but I am un-sure as to whether or not she has changed it from when I last heard it. It sounds as though she has made quite a lot of improvements upon it since I last heard it, it some how sounds fuller and more textured.

The final piece "I find out as I go along" of her DVD release "autumnal ephemeral" I own a CD of the music so from having had several listens to it my opinion is that it is music that has grown on me over time. I remember enjoying it when I first heard it but not to a great extent. But as I have listened to it over time I have appreciated it more. The whole collection of music has a sound scape quality that is quite complimentary of deep thought.

Josh Schulz

Josh's untitled music concrete piece set out with one intention. To make everything sound metallic. He succeeded. Aesthetically the piece was interesting and I would actually like to hear some of the sounds used in a more contemporary and context to exploit there qualities in a different way.

Albert Webster

Albert played a recording which he engineered of a Jazz trio at Uni. The Bass sounded fantastic with an effective prominence in the mix without being overbearing. The guitar sounded cool. The saxophone sounded a bit 'airy.' It did improve as the song progressed. In comparison to Tim's Jazz recording presentation it seemed to have the same sort of problems and I wonder whether sax is just a difficult instrument to record?

Workshop


Today's Improv session seemed to encounter more problems. The first 5 minutes felt really good and there seemed to be a great environment but after that it felt that we were not working together as a group and that it was almost a fight for space. Oh well if at first you don't succeed try try again.