Week 5 - Peak, Spear and Chris Williams

How about that Peak 4 user guide. 268 pages? Try reading through that in one sitting. It seems as though if you’re relatively fluent with any PCM editor, the principal options are the same. All the usual fades, amplifiers, compressors, normalizers etcetera are always present, so my experience with programs such as CoolEdit have basically given me a rundown on the important tools available. I have used it to edit songs in my music library, taking out long, boring introductions and the long silence between a CD’s last track and a hidden track. Christian help us understand the basics of Spear and Peak, which is always a good place to start. Interestingly, I have a 396kbps sound file which I have been unable to load on any media program, including Audacity and Spear. Spear is the first spectral analysis program that I’ve ever used, and I am certainly amazed at how it works. As I have already had experience in Photoshop style programs, I find Spear to be easy to manipulate.

So far I haven’t done too well in Studio 1 - I can only do what I learnt in Studio 2. Christian gave us a run down of the area much the same as for Studio 2, stating the nuances of the thru patch bay and the mixing desk. The C|24 mixing desk is pretty intimidating, as well. I definitely need some practice.

The John Cage music that we heard on Thursday was a great example of how old the ‘showing off technology’ style of music is. The 1952 musique concrete piece “William’s Mix” had a fantastic sound, and was basically perfectly edited throughout, even though it was done with a razor blade 54 years ago. Nowadays, seamless sound editing can be done by a computer-literate 13 year old, but without a computer it would have been a very painstaking process. The ‘channel-changing’ result actually made me feel anxious, with a little déjà vu of that scene from The Ring where the girl crawls out of the television. It’s interesting that Schoenberg told Cage that he had “No sense of harmony” (1), considering that his piece “101” is essentially ad-libbed orchestral instrumentation. It’s as if he decided that seeing as he has no sense of harmony, he may as well compose something that doesn’t use harmony. His experiences of Zen Buddhism seem to have inspired his efforts for creating music without using musical talent, with an example being the use of coin flipping to decide when instrumental events occur (2).

Chris Williams from ABC Radio gave some great insight into the recording and publishing process in a professional media environment. The pieces he played were pretty confusing, but I assume they weren’t completely finished. One thing I noticed was the incredible quality of the vocal recordings, as they seemed virtually flawless. One part had MIDI composed rock music as a backup to the voices, and to be honest it sounded pretty lame. MIDI is a very versatile tool, but when it comes to guitar nothing can replicate the flow and personality of the real thing.

1. John Cage: ‘An Autobiographical Statement’, New Albion Records http://newalbion.com/artists/cagej/ (Accessed 01/04/2006)

2. Andrew Stiller: 'Cage, John (Milton, jr.)', Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy http://www.grovemusic.com (Accessed 01/04/2006)

Chris Williamson. "Artist Talk - Sound Production and Direction for Broadcast." Presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, 30/03/2006.

David Harris. "Music Technology Workshop - John Cage." Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, EMU space, University of Adelaide, 30/03/2006.

Christian Haines. "Audio Arts - Studio 1." Practical Class presented at Studio 1, EMU space, 5th floor, Schulz Building, University of Adelaide, 28/032006.

Christian Haines. "Creative Computing - Spear." Presented at the Audio Lab, Schulz Building, University of Adelaide, 30/03/2006.