Week 9 - Vibroacoustics and Marclay Madness.

Cheers to David for some more comparative listening in this week’s workshop. Did you know there was an actor called David Harris in the 1979 film, “The Warriors”? There was also a David Harris put to death in Texas, but that must have been a different David.

Classical music remixed live isn’t exactly my forte, in fact I doubt it is anyone’s forte, yet with 6 billion people in the world there had to be someone who wanted to scratch up an orchestral LP. Christian Marclay woke up one morning and said, “Yeah, why the hell not”, and unfortunately I wasn’t there to say “Coz it’s stupid.” Although it would be questionable why I was there when he woke up anyway. We were informed in Thursday’s listening workshop (1) that this vinyl-rubbing prodigy can ‘command’ up to 8 turntables at once, which would also mean he could wash up and dry the dishes at the same time. Johann Strauss was injured in the making of the first piece (well, his artistic creation was), and not for any great reason, as the result was just a muddle of occasionally distinguishable chords and melody. While we’re spitting on history, Jimi Hendrix lost a few metaphorical limbs as Marclay scratched around on LP’s that now days would score you a couple hundred bucks at Cashies. The side comment of the piece “Play back at high volume” is a complete joke. Hendrix didn’t have that on his LP’s, he didn’t need to state it- you would WANT to crank it up! I’ll listen to music however I like, starting with turning this song down to zero.

Moving on, Pink Floyd was treated with dignity as part of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” was played from their conceptual album “Wish You Were Here”. This piece screams Floyd, with emphasis on lustrous guitar solos and typical Floyd synthesisers.

Too much of a good thing I guess, as we head back to more Marclay madness. When you thought John Cage couldn’t get any more abstract, he gets scratched into oblivion. Although the Cage did keep me moderately interested, the next scratch-a-thon involved opera by Mariah Callas. Wow. Horrible. Occasional elongated high-pitched notes plagued this concoction like urine falling into an empty bucket.

Ahh… More Floyd. The second half of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” was just that- the second half. With more singing this time around, and some organ chords in the background, it seemed more finished than the first half*.

More honours presentations this week, with Seb Tomczak and Darren Curtis showing off their wares. Seb (2) has been quietly producing an economically efficient and practically viable model for a physical to computer interactivity module. Much like IKEA, Seb has set the price of the module before building it. Now he can call it something really abstract, like BANG.

Darren Curtis (3) kept the crowd enthralled (me at least) with his research into frequency medicine, or “sound healing”. His work involves investigating the effect certain sounds have on the physiological processes of living systems, as well as studies of ultrasound, vibroacoustics and biocomputer waves. A subject that interested me greatly is the exploration of binaural beats, where two waves that would normally rhythmically cancel each other out are played individually into each ear, forcing the brain to cancel them out internally.

Comparing a dynamic microphone to a condenser was the soup du jour in this week’s…. soup eating contest (Audio Arts, (4)). We miked up a guitar and amplifier with both microphones in the dead room (from now on known as “A Room To Die In”) and recorded it into ProTools in Studio 2. Long story short, the condenser sounded better, yet playing the dynamic mic recording at the same time ironically made it sound more dynamic.

As the ProTools pond sucks us in, we realise it is in fact ‘consciousness quicksand’ (or a ‘sandbox’ to make a pun of it). Edit and mix groups were the focus in Creative Computing, which have proven to be very useful when spreading similar sound files over multiple tracks. We were also meant to make a couple more NIN remixes, which I will add this week sometime.

*Yes, yes. I know the second half is the end, so it IS more finished. Thanks for pointing out the joke.



1. David Harris. “Music Technology Workshop: Listening Workshop.” Presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 11/05/2006.

2. Seb Tomczak. “Music Technology Presentation: Cost-Effective Audio Interfaces.” Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 11/05/2006.

3. Darren Curtis. “Music Technology Presentation: Frequency Medicine and Sound Healing.” Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 11/05/2006.

4. Christian Haines. “Audio Arts: Microphone Comparison.” Practical class presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 09/05/2006.

5. Christian Haines. “Creative Computing: ProTools.” Practical class presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 11/05/2006