Yesterday i submitted my Workshop Sounds piece.
In my class at WAAPA, we were required to complete a project on "sound objects." The assignment was not aloud to have a distinct rhythm, melody or musical direction. Quite a strange premise to me and most of my classmates. I really had to allow myself the space to think outside the box, and then the idea came to me. Only months earlier i assisted a friend of mine with a project on his film course. I helped with doing sound on the set of a short film. There i learned about atmospheric sound and the purpose for capturing it, and some of the problems that come up when recording sound for a film. One of the issues was unwanted sounds making it into the recording, and how difficult it can be to remove those sounds. My idea for workshop sounds was to create an environmental atmospheric sound, without any accidents or unwanted sounds making it into the mix. To achieve this i recreated a handful of recorded sounds on synths. the first step was to record the sounds in my old workshop at WA Industrial Chrome Engineers. I called my old supervisor and organised a day to go visit and collect a bunch of sounds. When i arrived everyone was really helpful with what i was doing. everyone remained as quiet as they could as i was recording and respected the process without me even needing to ask. I did my thang, recorded the sounds, thanked my boss and took off to make a start at recreating the sounds. Now that i had a good collection of sounds, it was time to analyse them. I started by putting an EQ on the recorded tracks to work out roughly what pitches and harmonics were sounding off. Once I had that, I subbed those pitches into an empty MIDI track and cycled through plugins until I had a sound that closely resembled the recorded sound. when i had a collection of 10 different ideas, i arranged them to tell a short typical story that would naturally occur within the workshop. Clements machine would pretty much work non stop, the air compressor would cycle through three different phases, and then random sounds occur like a hammer or a forklift reversing and taking off. Then when a large barrel drops it worries clement, he turns off his machine to check it out for a moment, then when he see's its all good, he restarts the machine and keeps working.
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Stereo use of space in a mix: ________________________________________________________________________________________________ LEFT CORE RIGHT <<<------------------------------------------------------------------Strings/Pad--------------------------------------------------------------------->>> Triangle Shaker <<<--------Piano------------------>>> <<<-----------------Organ----------------------------->>> [Distorted guitar] [Distorted guitar] Bass Kick Lead Snare Vocals High tom Mid tom Mid tom 2 Floor tom ________________________________________________________________________________________________ *reverb gets stronger as the sound gets farther away *The use of ADT (artificial double tracking) can be used to make a mix wider. This is where you add different effects to each side of a sound source. *Things flow more naturally from left to right, if there is a moving sound it might work best moving in that way. *These rules aren't concrete and can be broken if the song calls for it. File formats and standards: Sample rate relates to how many samples per second gets recorded from a sound source. Bit depth relates to the dynamic range at which these samples can be recorded. The recording device will use both of these as a kind of grid to plot the waveform of the sound source. Each blue dot resembles a single sample. the minimum standard sample rate is 44.1k which means it take 44100 samples per second. The reason why this is the minimum is because people can hear frequencies up to 20000Hz, and to complete a cycle it needs to move above the line and then below the line. To successfully replicate sounds in this frequency you need to get at lease one sample above the line and one below. This is known as the nyquist frequency. Fletcher Munson Curve:
the low end and the high end will appear to turn down more than the centre frequencies when you turn down your mix. This should be considered when mixing and its existance means that reference tracks are essential when making a mix. After all, how can someone trust their ears when our ears make certain frequencies disappear more when the whole mix gets turned down. Within every acoustic sound, there are the building blocks from which we call music. A strange concept to be sure, but filled with wonder and mystery. The overtone: sound waves will commonly produce multiple frequencies of sound when created. It is rare for a sound to not resonate overtones. the amazing thing about this is that its all mathematical! To understand this we need to have another look at frequency and how a chromatic scale is built
It was an early morning, as i sat in my aural class in week 1, excited to begin a new journey, i was awake and ready to learn. the teacher was discussing tuning and pitch and mentioned that some piano's are tuned at a slightly lower frequency in order to replicate historical music. It confused me that at some point we had decided to change the frequency of our A note.
In a lot of earlier classical music, The "A" notes frequency would be tuned at 432 Hz, but as my Aural teacher explained to the class, the "A" in more modern music would be tuned at 440 Hz. For a moment I remembered a conversation i had only months ago with a stranger about note frequency, and how there was a frequency that was apparently able to heal the human body. Intrigued I began my research to harness the power of the healing note, and incorporate it into my music. In order to truly understand how 432 is believed to be a healing note, we need to take a gander at Schumann Resonance. The Schumann Resonance is the frequency of electromagnetic waves that circle around the earth between the earths surface and about 100 kilometers above, created by numerous thunderstorms around the world. This frequency resonates at 8 Hz. more information can be found in the link below. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/gallery/schumann-resonance.html So what has this got to do with the tuning of our "A"? fantastic question! 432Hz is divisible by 8, This tuning relates to the "heartbeat" of our planet. It is known as scientific tuning, and is believed to resonate with our human bodies. https://attunedvibrations.com/432hz-healing/ So why on earth do we tune our music at 440Hz now? I've read a few conspiracies that suggest that Nazis introduced this tuning to cause some kind of manipulation over the population, To make the masses feel more anxious. https://jakubmarian.com/the-432-hz-vs-440-hz-conspiracy-theory/ Regardless of the truth behind this conspiricy, I'm intrigued to test this theory in my own music, in my next song i will attempt to harness the power of the healing note, so that my music can truly resonate with my fellow humans! |
AuthorMy name is Daniel Ohm and this section will include my research into music theory, experimental ideas, Mixing techniques and lessons learned from creative forums and musical endeavors. Archives
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