Week 11 - Whittington's Wit and Other Alliteration

David Harris was not available this week to contort our classically trained ears, so I just walked around Uni hitting things with a metal pole and pretended I was listening to Stockhausen. I may have hit a car.



Stephen Whittington presented an interesting array of research that he has conducted over the past couple years (1). Of particular appeal to me was the “globalisation of consciousness” idea, which essentially refers to the expansion of world-wide communication over the last 50 years and its affect on society. I had never given much though to times before telephony, and it was quite a revelation to me that the advanced forms of communication that we use every day are in fact creating a world with similar views, ethics and opinions. I am curious if this will somehow lead to a united world, however the results are more likely represented in this still from Futurama, a cartoon set in the year 3000.

There was no Creative Computing this week, so I had to be creative all on my own. I ended up performing some Albanian Monk style vocal sub-harmonics for fellow student and future Dictator of Earth John Delaney. I sounded quite convincing after some layering and stereo hall reverb, and I can’t wait to hear it after fellow ‘sub-harmonicist’ Patrick McCartney records his part.

Audio Arts was cut off at the head with Christian not being available, yet we somehow remained alive for the class, just like a chicken would. Much like a sound engineering headless chicken, we all ran around trying to record a classical vocalist singing part of an oratorio. To my dismay our group used 4:1 compression with an instrumental compressor, so I sat in the corner and sobbed quietly while the operatic dynamics were molested and unhealthy results were recorded. Thankfully, this class demonstrated an approach to vocal recording that I will not imitate in my Audio Arts project. I will now briefly brief you on my brief of this sound engineering experience*.

I have recorded a band called “Behold The Sun”, which I luckily contacted through Ailese Millington. I was hopeful that I would not have to record one of the “Alternative” Uni bands, with the clichéd rock instruments of drums, bass, guitar and vocals, so I was grateful to discover Behold The Sun consists of a drummer, singer/keyboardist, flautist, and violin/trumpet player. A genre of ‘difficult to describe’ was the icing in the cake, so I was very excited to record them. I extensively prepared the first recording session, with special attention on micing techniques for violin, trumpet and flute. I made a mic list with exact positioning for each instrument, and on the day I had all microphones plugged in and sending signals to a prepared ProTools session with all tracks named and microphone placement, type and polarity commented on. I will do this for every future recording session I organise, as it was only 45 minutes from when the musicians arrived to when I started the first recording with optimum signal levels. I imitated this procedure for the second recording session, however this time was all overdubbing. While I cannot relive my whole fantastic and horrific story within the confines of this blog, I will make it available on my backup blog, so read if you care. Note that by entering said site you have agreed to my emancipation from any repercussion or persecution I may be liable to as consequence of the actions or opinions transcribed within. This, my friends, is a Catch-22.

*Here we are again. Rather that making up crap, I have used an adverb, a verb transitive and a noun in a grammatically correct phrase. Here is the same sentence with synonyms: “I will now concisely inform you on my synopsis of this sound engineering experience.”

1. Stephen Whittington. “Music Technology Presentation: My Life As A Not-Dead Person” Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 25/05/2006.

All pictures were found the lazy way: Google Image Search www.google.com