This page contains the assignments for the class Music Technology and Computers (Music 51, Summer 2013) at the University of California, Irvine.
Assignments for the upcoming class are posted here shortly after each class session. They are posted in reverse chronological order.
For Tuesday July 30, 2013:
Make a computer music composition using only the MuLab and Audacity software. Your piece should conform to the following criteria.
1) The composition should be 45-60 seconds in duration.
2) The primary software you should use for the composition is MuLab. There might be cases where recording, editing, and processing a specific sound may be more efficient in Audacity, either before placing the audio in MuLab or after generating a mixdown in MuLab. Feel free to use both tools as necessary, but use MuLab as your main arranging/composing environment.
3) Your composition should include at least two tracks of MIDI (with at least one synthesizer each) in MuLab.
4) Your composition should include at least one track of audio, recorded or found.
5) Any sounds not generated by MIDI should be either a) things you record yourself or b) copyright-free sounds recorded by others. Credit the source of any sounds you did not create yourself. If you enlist the help of a classmate or friend to perform sound for you, credit that person’s work, too.
6) Because of the track limitations in the free version of MuLab, you will need to be imaginative in how you combine sounds to get the full composition you desire. You may need to mix down some tracks of your session into a single audio file, then use that mixdown file as one part in a revised session.
7) Your MuLab session should take advantage of automation. The control of loudness and dynamics is an important aspect of any composition. In particular, take care to balance the different tracks so that you get the composite sound you really want, and take care that the sum of the sounds at the output is not clipping.
8) Your MuLab session should take advantage of localization of sounds within the stereo field as a useful aspect of your composition. The automation of panning in a rack provides the opportunity to create illusions of moving sound and/or stationary placement of sounds within the stereo field.
9) Use some of the provided processing effects in your session to make modified versions of sounds and/or to add interest to a sound.
10) Your composition may either be musical in a traditional sense–using predominantly pitched sounds, metered rhythms, harmonies, etc.–or it may be experimental–deliberately extending or avoiding traditional musical styles. If you choose to do something traditionally musical, think carefully what instrument sounds are available to you in MuLab, so that your musical idea is feasible with the application you’re using. If you choose to do something experimental, think of a unifying sonic concept or structural idea that will guide your decision making and help you achieve a sonically interesting result.
11) Hand in your completed composition to the EEE DropBox called “FinalProject” no later than 4:00 am on Tuesday July 30, 2013. You should hand in a single .zip archive containing a) the final mixed (and clearly named) version of your composition in the form of an AIFF or WAVE file, b) your MuLab session folder, including all audio files necessary to view your working session, c) a text document (.txt, .rtf, .doc, or .pdf) explaining your compositional goals and methods, and crediting any sources or collaborators from whom you got help or ideas, Note that MuLab saves audio in various locations on your hard drive. Take care to make sure all the necessary files are included in your .zip file. (To be sure you have done that successfuly, you might try opening your .zip archive on another computer that has MuLab, to see if MuLab can find all the necessary files when you open your session on that computer.)
12) Your project will be graded on how well you follow the above criteria, and on the degree of care demonstrated to produce interesting and attractive sound.
For Thursday July 25, 2013:
As a way of testing your historical perspective of the technological inventions and musical works discussed in the class, fill in a timeline of significant years with the events that occurred in those years. You’ll find online a list of the years mentioned in class during which an innovative technology was invented or one of the pieces discussed in class was composed. Make a copy of that list, saved as a plain text file (.txt), and after each listed year fill in the significant event for that year. Write down as much as you know about that event or piece. Start by working from memory, and then consult your class notes and the posts of this website to refresh your memory. Every year listed corresponds to an event listed somewhere on the class website. Hand in your completed timeline as a text file in the EEE DropBox called “Timeline” no later than 9:00 am on Thursday July 25, 2013.
Read the posts that summarize some of the professor’s compositions involving algorithmic composition and human-computer interactivity.
Listen to the pieces that were discussed in class, which are listed on the Media page.
For Tuesday July 23, 2013
Familiarize yourself with the MuLab audio software. Download the program, peruse the documentation, and experiment composing with it by recording (and/or drawing) MIDI data to control a software synthesizer.
If you’re feeling extra experimental, you can try designing your own sound with the MuSynth or MuX synthesizer. But at the least, try to find interesting and useful preset sounds that you can use to hear your MIDI notes. Try inserting effects in the rack to change the sound further. You can’t break anything, so try everything.
You’re not required to hand in any results of your experiments, but if you’d like to get credit for your work, and receive feedback on it, you can hand in your MuLab session file to the EEE DropBox called “MuLabMIDI”.
Read the post on “Artificial intelligence and algorithmic composition“.
Listen to the music that was played in class, which is listed on the Media page.
For Thursday July 18, 2013
Read the Soundcraft Guide to Mixing, an instructional brochure available online as a PDF document. Read at least pages 3-7, and more if you’re interested. Familiarize yourself with the common features on most mixers: line input, gain, insert, EQ, auxiliary send, pan, solo, mute, fader, auxiliary return, and main stereo mix out. The brochure introduces these terms as if you already know them, without a lot of explanation; however, there is a glossary on pp. 32-36.
Listen to the pieces played in class featuring the Minimoog and Moog synthesizers.
The Robots (1978) for synthesizers and electronically processed voice, by Kraftwerk
The Chase (1978) for synthesizers, by Giorgio Moroder
I Feel Love (1977) for synthesizers and voice, by Donna Summer / Giorgio Moroder
Duel of the Jester and the Tyrant (1976) by Return to Forever, featuring Minimoog synthesizer by Chick Corea (especially 4:28-6:04)
For Tuesday July 16, 2013
Read the post titled MIDI, which summarizes much of what was explained in class, and follow some of the links in that post. For a more official description of the MIDI data protocol, read the Tutorial on MIDI and Music Synthesis. Read from the beginning of the article through the section on “The General MIDI (GM) System”. Another (possibly more reader-friendly) tutorial that might be helpful to you is An Introduction to MIDI. Both tutorials are published by the MIDI Manufacturers Association.
You may need to do some of your own research to find literature about MIDI that is most helpful to you. Here are a few questions that you could try to answer. Can MIDI be used successfully to transmit audio? What information is MIDI designed primarily to transmit? What is a MIDI channel, and what is it good for? Do MIDI messages contain timing information about rhythms and durations? How does a computer deal with the timing of MIDI messages (in MIDI sequencer software and MIDI files)? What are some examples of useful MIDI channel messages? Does your computer have a MIDI port (jack)? If not, how does it receive MIDI information to pass it to/from applications in your computer?
Review the topics that have been covered in the past week, including terminology we’ve discussed with regard to the composition of musique concrète, some of the early history of music technology, some of the features of voltage-controlled synthesizers, some of the early history of computer music, and the digital control of synthesizers via the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI).
Listen to the music that was played in class, listed on the Media page.
For Thursday July 11, 2013
Read the posts titled “Definition of Technology” and “Music Technology in the Industrial Age“.
Listen to the recordings for the July 9 class that are posted on the Media page.
If you’d like to hear your classmates’ musique concrète compositions, you can find them in the post titled “Musique Concrète Compositions“.
For Tuesday July 9, 2013
Compose a piece of musique concrète conforming to the following criteria.
1) The composition should be 30 seconds in duration (+ or – 10%).
2) The only software you should use for recording, editing, processing, and mixing your composition is Audacity.
3) The sound sources should be either a) things you record yourself or b) copyright-free sounds recorded by others. (Credit the source of any sounds you did not create yourself.)
4) Do not use sound sources that were originally intended as music, such as singing, instrumental sound, excerpts of recorded music, drum loops, etc.
5) Your Audacity project should include multiple tracks mixed together. In addition to sounds occurring sequentially, you should use some simultaneous sounds. You might want to think about how simultaneity of sound events addresses such terms compositional terms as density, texture, and counterpoint.
6) Your Audacity project should include envelopes and volume automation. The control of loudness and dynamics is an important aspect of any composition — at the level of each event, in the mixture of sounds, and in shaping the overall formal morphology.
7) Your Audacity project should include panning. Take advantage of localization of sounds within the stereo field as a useful aspect of your composition.
8) Use at least five of the provided processing effects in your project to make modified versions of some of your source sounds. Different versions of a sound can be a useful type of variation in a composition.
9) Your project should include at least 30 edits. The primary technique you use to make your composition should be editing: as a way of modifying sounds (reversing a sound, or removing the attack, for example) creating rhythmic arrangements of short sounds, and creating new sounds by recombining small portions of diverse sounds.
10) Be careful to avoid clicks caused by careless editing.
11) Be careful to avoid clipping due to excessive amplitude. Note that mixing sounds together is equivalent to adding their sample values, so as the number of simultaneous “voices” (simultaneous sounds in different tracks) increases, the potential for clipping increases. You can use volume automation (the Envelope Tool) to shape the volume of individual audio regions, and/or you can use the Gain slider in the Track Controls area (or the Mixer Board window) to set the volume of an entire track. The peak amplitude of the entire mix at any given moment is shown by the Output Level meter. Although your composition can, and should, have some moments that are especially loud and/or soft, you want the majority of your finished composition to have a peak amplitude that is fairly strong, say, with peak amplitudes normally between -18 dB and -6 dB.
12) Although your composition can have a conceptual theme and/or a narrative basis, you should organize it primarily with an inherently musical formal structure in mind, and with interesting and engaging sound as your primary objective.
13) Although symbolic sounds that have strong extramusical connotations are allowed, they should be used sparingly and thoughtfully. Be particularly careful about using clichés (well known iconic sounds that could be considered overused and lacking orginality) and sounds that might have an unintended disturbing or distracting effect.
14) Your completed composition should be exported in the form of a stereo Ogg Vorbis file. Give the final composition file an informative name like “30secMix.ogg”. (Audacity will supply the “.ogg” suffix for you.)
15) Hand in a) your stereo .ogg file, b) your Audacity Project file, and c) its associated data folder, in the EEE DropBox called “ConcreteComposition” no later than 11:59 pm on Monday July 8, 2013.
The following pieces might serve as possible models, or might give you some ideas for your own concrete music composition. The first three are “classic” pieces of the genre, made with recording tape; the fourth piece is more recent, made with computer.
Poème électronique (1958) for electronic and concrete sounds mixed and edited on tape, by Edgard Varèse
Thema (Omaggio a Joyce) (1958) for voice edited on tape, by Luciano Berio, performed by Cathy Berberian, soprano
Revolution 9 (1968), recorded sound collage mixed and edited on tape, by The Beatles
Textorias (1994) for computer-edited guitar, by Arthur Kampelas
For Tuesday July 2, 2013
Download the Audacity software to your own computer. If you don’t have a computer on which you can install Audacity, you can use the program at the Arts Media Center or the Digital Arts Teaching Lab. (The summer hours of those facilities are listed on the Software page.)
Familiarize yourself with the basic operations of Audacity. Use whatever combination of hands-on experience and study works for you. The basics of the program are well documented in the online Audacity Manual, which is also included in the software package in the Audacity/help folder. There you can read brief descriptions of basic operations under “Quick Help: Getting Started“, and you can find more detailed descriptions under “Understanding Audacity: Foundations”. Try out the program as well, so that you get familiar with creating an Audacity project, opening (importing) audio files, recording your own sounds, and editing sounds in various ways. The next assignment will require you to use Audacity extensively, so you should get a head start by learning those basic operations of importing, recording, and editing. [UCI music professor Michael Dessen has made a couple of very clear Audacity tutorial videos that you might find helpful.]
Listen to the examples of musique concrète that were recommended in class. Those works are listed on the Media page. Take note of what you consider to be the main features and most memorable traits of each piece.
How does one analyze and “understand” such music? For one theoretical approach, watch a brief Introduction to Analysis of Temporal Elements in Music by Robert Frank and his analysis of Étude aux chemins des fer by Pierre Schaeffer.
Pierre Schaeffer himself wrote extensively about the composition of musique concrète in his Traité des objets musicaux (Treatise on Musical Objects). That treatise has not yet been published in English translation, but Michael Chion’s Guide to Sound Objects (Guide des objets sonores) is a comprehensive discussion of the ideas contained in Pierre Schaeffer’s writings. To get a sense of how Schaeffer thought about the difference between recoded sound and everyday “natural” listening, read the chapter titled “1. Acousmatic” in the first three pages of Section I of Chion’s book.
For Thursday June 27, 2013
Read the article “What is Sound?” from Appendix B of the Apple Soundtrack Pro 3 User Manual.
Read the article “Digital Audio” from Appendix B of the Apple Soundtrack Pro 3 User Manual.
Read the article “Digital Audio” from MSP: The Documentation.
Read the article “How Hearing Works“.
For each article, take notes about important terms and ideas, look up any terms you don’t know, and formulate questions to ask in the upcoming class.