Robert Jepson

Found Sound Assignment: Documentation

PE1105

The piece was created from only a small bank of sounds, with focus being placed on the processing of the samples as opposed to their sonic qualities or fidelity. Four stages of audio manipulation took place over the course of the pieces development: initially, the raw material was spliced, time-stretched and processed with some basic digital effects to enhance the sound quality, namely equalizer, compression and reverb. Secondly, these sounds were effected further with focus on making them totally acousmatic. On the first sound, a train in motion (recorded both internally and externally), this took the form of reamping through an unaffected guitar amp and reverb pedal with the reverb time and damping set to 50%, and hall reverb selected. Instead of using a microphone to capture the sound, the amps line output was used: this was to create a more digital sound and to avoid any unintended contamination of the initial recording. During the reamping of this sound, there was a technical issue with a faulty wire, which was later resolved. However, at this point the amp was set to a distorted sound, with delay, reverb and chorus on full, and this created a noise that was then recorded using a phone microphone, and added to the sound bank. This sample was not effected in the first two stages. The sound of a simple vocal noise - Oop was heavily equalized to create a loud resonance, which was then enhanced by a reverb in Logics space designer that was 80% wet, with only 30% dry signal. The noise was copied, reversed, and placed directly after the initial sound, creating a swell and lull, with the envelope mirroring itself. The heavily slowed sound of a glass being flicked was run through a vocal transformer and brought to a formant level of -12. The bass and low-mid frequencies of this sound were then boosted. The attack was changed from instantaneous to gradual, using a fade in. This was inspired by Piere Shaeffers envelope manipulation of bells within his work [1][2]; the removal of the bells attack creates a very different waveform to the original sound, adding to the acousmatic style of his work.[3] The third stage of processing took the form of a live performance in order to put emphasis on spontaneity rather than sterile calculation in the pieces arrangement, a technique used by Fransisco Lopez.[4] This also allowed for the teams various sounds to amalgamate in a seamless and organic way. The setup for this performance involved a MIDI-mapped Xbox controller as the primary sample trigger, the sticks mapped to control various effect parameters, and running through Mainstage, with the various effected sounds being placed into the EXS24 sampler allowing for further time distortion of the samples. The output of this audio was then sent through a Roland Cube and wildly effected using the amps various on-board effects: flanger, phaser, chorus, plate and spring reverb and tremolo, as well as a collection of different distortions. Whilst during the performance these guitar effects were changing rapidly, the effects on Mainstage were more sporadic. The sound of glass being flicked was run through Absynth, and the sample was timeshifted even further: the starting position of the sample, the amount of sample used and the speed of the sample were all able to be modified via the controllers sticks, which allowed for grains of the sound to be rapidly repeated and modified. The sound of a moving train, now spliced to several different parts as well as a reverb-laden sound bed, was mapped to have the pitch and formants manipulated and moved quickly between several octaves. The remaining sounds used the typical EXS24 pitchbend and had their envelopes manipulated during this performance. The final stage of processing was the arrangement and some minor mixing. There was 30 minutes of material available: three 10-minute takes of different moods. The first was a dense, packed sound; the second a transition from dense to light and the final take a drone section. The final arrangement was a spliced augmentation capturing the best of these three takes, with a brief section at the end challenging the concept of

Robert Jepson

PE1105

standard musical & DAW linearity: practically all used sounds were cut into 14 second blocks and placed horizontally, as to create a wave of noise. This sound was abruptly cut using a hi-pass filter, and thus the piece concludes.

Bibliography
[1] [2] http://www.franciscolopez.net/live.html [3]

Schaeffer, P, In Search of Concrete Music (2012), University of California Press

http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/courses/g6610/fall2011/week4/simonschaeffer.html [4] http://tekstytrzecie.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/pierre-schaeffer-1953-towardsan-experimental-music.pdf Word Count: 750