A video of this class is (or will be) posted at: http://echo360.uml.edu/heines2016/comp-mued2120.html
Related reading for this class: Audacity Guides
Audacity projects consist of an index file whose name is in the form ProjectName.aup and a directory tree whose name is in the form ProjectName_data.
data directory treeThe data directory tree typically has a subdirectory named e00 which then has additional subdirectories named d00, d01, d02, etc.
D:\> tree
Folder PATH listing for volume D
Volume serial number is 22AD-F14A
C:.
+--MyProject_data
+--e00
+--d00
+--d01
+--d02
+--d03
: etc.
In the dnn subdirectories you will find many files with extensions of .au and numeric names like this:
09/20/2009 06:19 PM 1,060,956 e0000007.au
09/20/2009 06:19 PM 1,060,956 e0000028.au
09/20/2009 06:19 PM 1,060,956 e0000041.au
09/20/2009 06:19 PM 1,060,956 e0000042.au
09/20/2009 06:19 PM 1,060,956 e000004c.au
: : : : etc.
Do not delete the AUP or AU files until you have completely finished editing your sound file
See the What You Are To Do section in Assignment No. 2
You may also include snippets of additional sounds, such as those that you can find for free at
Reference: The Digital Musician by Andrew Hugill © 2008 by Taylor Francis Group
This creative studio technique can produce some surprisingly useful musical results. It can even be undertaken in real time as part of a performance.
Take a sound with a clear decay and reverse it. Now apply EQ and other filters to modify the reversed sound until it becomes musically interesting. Finally, re-reverse the sound to discover a new timbre.
This technique can be repeated and adapted for both composition and performance. There is even a conceptual aspect: imagining the reversed sound and the re-reversed
sound.
“Cut-up” was a well-known technique in literature in the 1950s. The “beat” writer William S. Burroughs famously used it many times. Its origins lie in the Dada movement that emerged around the end of the First World War. The Dadaist Tristan Tzara created a Dada Poem by drawing words randomly from a hat. Burroughs and his contemporaries applied the same techniques to phrases and sentences, attempting to break up the linearity of both literary and journalistic texts.
The technique has also been used in music: David Bowie and Thom Yorke of Radiohead have made many of their lyrics that way, and Genesis P-Orridge, of “Throbbing Gristle,” has made it into a whole philosophy of life and art. “Dub” reggae and other remixing genres deploy it as a key musical technique. It has even become an e-mail “spam” tactic, using randomly generated cut-up texts to get past certain types of spam filter.
Take a short (under one minute) piece of music or a recorded sound. Use the computer editor to chop it up into small segments. This can be done so it makes musical sense (i.e., by phrase) or randomly. Now, chop up the segments again. Keep chopping until the segments, heard individually, fail to evoke the original music. Now assemble a random playlist and play back the segments one after another in any order, but with no time gap between them. Observe the differences from the original.
This may be de-composition, or even re-composition. It is hard to resist the anarchistic feel of brassage as an activity. However, once below the level of recognizable musical phrases, this exercise starts to acquire a very different quality. New sounds can be discovered this way with persistence and a good ear.
On the face of it, this is quite a simple project. However, it has the potential to develop into an entire extended musical composition. It will require some audio editing software ware, but this need not be particularly sophisticated. Some of the free downloadable software will do perfectly well.
Find a sound with a natural decay (e.g., a gong, or a piano, etc.) and use digital processes to extend its length to at least twice its original duration, without losing interest in the sound.
This is more than just a technical exercise. The last part of the instruction contains a hint of how this could develop further. Keeping up interest in the sound implies some amount of transformation or development in what is heard.
Morphing is more usually found in animation, video and photography, where software enables one image to morph with another. In digital audio, a morph is a more sophisticated version of a cross-fade, in which the content of the two sound files is actually intermingled during the intermediate stage. This project, however, concentrates on the perceptual, rather than the technical aspects of a sound morph.
Take two recorded sounds, such as a hi-hat hit and a snare drum. Using any available tools (pitch shifting, time stretching, etc.) operate on one of the sound files only until it sounds as nearly as possible like the other. This may involve repeating the sound numerous times. Then do the same with the other sound file.
This is a fairly laborious exercise, and morphing software can perform what would be probably a more effective and smoother morph between the two files readily enough without all the effort. So why undertake the task? Because the aural awareness and understanding of the acoustic content of the sound it will produce will be invaluable. There will also be a spin-off benefit in understanding the time-based processes. Ask the following questions: Is there an obvious point in time at which the character of the sound changes? Can this point be moved? Is the point the same for other people?