the music of sound

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amo, amas, amat… I studied (and I use the term loosely) latin for two years at high school & all I can remember is how to conjugate the verb, but its cinema that I love and here is a brief list of six films that I love dearly and which have profoundly influenced me…

Wings of Desire (1987) by Wim Wenders started it for me in many ways – it was the late 80s & I was at university studying a subject I didnt actually enjoy, let alone wish to pursue as a career & a good friend of mine who was taking german film studies suggested I skip my lectures & come see this film… & thank god I did! It was like someone switched on a light – until that point my idea of film was entirely Hollywood based & I will be eternally grateful that fate lead me to this film. I watched it again recently & it effected me as powerfully as the first viewing… it was also truly resonant to last year visit Berlin for the first time & stumble across locations from the film. Here is a link to the official site and an unofficial site plus a link where you can buy a copy on dvd and the trailer:

Next was Down By Law (1986) by Jim Jarmusch It was about the same time & I totally fell for the pacing, fantastic score by John Lurie & charismatic performances by Tom Waits, John Lurie & Roberto Benigni. Buy a copy on dvd here. or watch the trailer:

Wreckmeister Harmonies (2000) by Bela Tarr was a much more recent discovery, as in this year & thanks to an interview with Gus Van Sant or I may never have discovered the genius of Bela Tarr, master of the long take & truly balletic cinematography.Interview here or buy a copy on dvd here or watch the trailer:

Amelie (2001) by Jean-Pierre Jeunet wasn’t the first film by this brilliant french director that I had seen – i loved Delicatessan & even more so City of Lost Children, but Amelie (& Audrey Tatou) has a charm all her own – it made me want to visit Paris tomorrow… dvd available hereor watch the trailer:

3 Iron (2004) by Kim Ki Duk intrigued the hell out of me via the description in the film festival guidebook: ‘a film with only six lines of dialogue & yet a crystal clear story’ This film is pure genius and it has led me on to discover & thoroughly enjoy many of the Korean directors other films, in particular Spring, Summer Autumn, Winter and Spring Again. Buy a copy of 3 Iron on dvd here or watch the trailer:

And lastly Tony Takitani (2004) by Jun Ichikawa
While researching my first trip to Japan a few years back I googled contemporary Japanese fiction & discovered the truly amazing writer Haruki Murakami and have since proceeded to read & enjoy every book he has ever written. Tony Takitani is a short story of his & represents the only work that he has ever allowed to be adapted for the silver screen. And what a film it is! With a fantastic minimalist piano score by Ryuichi Sakamoto this film is incredibly moving & a true expression of the elusive power of cinema. There is an interview with Murakami here, reviews, excerpts & an audio interview and the dvd is available here or watch the trailer:

There is a common thread to these six films, and its about the human condition… and its sad but true that thirty seconds emotionally engaging with any of these is worth more than $200 million of the cold hearted visual effects/action driven inanities marketed by Hollywood as this seasons next block buster wannabe… but hey thats just my humble opinion, to each their own! But if you are reading this & agree or disagree, please do reccomend me a film or six?

Do icebergs sing?
Do electric sheep dream of rechargeable batteries?

Between July and November 2002 researchers picked up incredily clear acoustic signals when recording seismic signals to measure earthquakes and tectonic movements on the Ekstroem ice shelf on Antarctica’s South Atlantic coast. The sound waves from the iceberg had a frequency of around 0.5 hertz, but if you’d like to listen to the sounds pitched up into human hearing levels, have a listen to this recording as a .WAV file. Tracking the signal, the scientists found a 50 by 20 kilometre iceberg that had collided with an underwater peninsula which it was slowly scraping against it. Check the bit three minutes into the file – that iceberg was angry! Read more here

“The soundtrack for Forbidden Planet (1956) is today recognized as the first entirely electronic score for a film” – I’m quoting from The World of Kane a great blog (retro candy for your eyes and ears) that recently posted a tribute to Louis and Bebe Barron, pioneering american avante garde composers. The article includes some great mp3 samples… check it out here and heres the trailer – nostalgia alert!!

Culturally & musically Gamelan is incredibly interesting & beautiful music…. friends returned from a holiday in Bali recently & aside from successfully avoiding stupid drunk Australian tourists they recounted the most amazing tales of gamelan performances that they witnessed… If you are unfamiliar here is an unsteadi-cam video of a gamelan performance:

I just love the hypnotic nature of the rhythms and the group tempo shifts… Here are some performances of gamelan music from central Java in the style of the Keraton Surakarta, recorded in the Museum of Ethnography Nusantara in Delft, the Netherlands;

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And here is a link to 16bit 44.1kHz .WAV individual samples from the same instruments (which are over 200 years old) plus a zip compressed 50MB file of the entire sample collection – read more here.

Well to be honest this short film is actually called ‘One Apartment and Six Drummers’ but in all reality (well reality as I know it) it could equally be called ‘One Apartment and Six Foley Artists” but hey, who can blame them for the taking the path more likely understood by the audience? Either way its a genius piece of film making….

But before you push play, one word of advice – unless you are young & require instant gratification I would advise against watching it on youtube – I have a theory everything on youtube is 2 – 6 frames out of sync and in this case it makes a mockery of the painstaking work that went into making this film (& its true of ALL film if you ask me, but millions of people watch cable TV out of sync every day so who am I to complain, right?) Anyway if you would like to experience it as the film makers intended please go to one of my favourite short film blogs No fat clips!!! and download a proper in-sync copy for yourself You owe it to your senses!

And believe you me; brushing your teeth will never be the same again, let alone walking the dog….

If you work/create your art in a ’sound studio’ then you will appreciate your work is only as good as it sounds on someone elses sound system… and one of the keys to insuring it translates well, requires a short stint of right brain, analytic exercise…. ie calibrating your monitors!

While this might sound like an expensive activity requiring someone wearing a white labcoat, in all reality with a tiny investment you have the skills available yourself & I seriously encourage you to use them…. Take me for example – whenever I took my 5.1 mixes or predubs to a ‘proper’ mix facility I kept discovering it sat best in the mix with an 8 – 10dB cut.. But why? I now have 100% hindsight and can say the the simple answer out loud – its because I never lined up my monitoring level!

So whats the process?
Well, in a nutshell it is incredibly easy and to help remove any blocks I will explain it in a few very easy steps:

Step 1: you need an SPL meter (SPL = sound pressure level)

I bought mine off trademe (the NZ equal of ebay) for $50 – thats mine pictured above – it looks a lot like a retro ray gun but it has two essential features – a calibrated microphone and an SPL meter. Apparently RadioShack make an affordable model (Radio Shack SPL meter#330-2050) – mine is a Bruel & Kajer… and yes, I was instantly attracted by the fact that the same company make microphones I can’t afford to buy.. c’est la vie

Step 2: Next you will need some calibrated pink noise – this bit is easy, towards the end of this little rant I will link you to a site where you can get some, for free even!

Step 3: play the pink noise from your speakers; LR, then Centre, then surround LR, then subwoofer.. Each time holding the SPL meter about where your head would be when you are mixing and for each speaker verify that the SPL level is the same…. for me working on films that level is 85dB, which is QUITE LOUD ACTUALLY!! But the crucial part is that the level is consistent, from LR to C to sLR to Sub… and ONLY then will you know a pan around the speakers SHOULD equate to what you will hear in another studio and/or listening environment. I only say SHOULD because this process doesnt take into account the colouration of tone through the size and acoustic properties of the room in which you (or they) are listening, but you can’t account for that necessarily – you can ONLY account for your own space. So best sort out your part in the equation – its the least you can do!

So anyhoo…. go and have a read of this link – yes I know it is via the Digidesign users forum – but that doesn’t mean you have to buy anything, it simply collates some of the best advice that I have found on the interweb on such matters….. and it links to a bunch of PDF documents (AND the calibrated pink noise files) that will explain it all more technically than how i have here, but that isn’t the point;the point is that you NEED to do it and all up it shouldnt take more than 15 minutes… and if you work in 5.1 its more important than your next deadline!
Well, almost….

So next step in the world of calibration is….. sync!
i know!
the anticipation is killing you…
but if you work in post just keep any cyncism for afterwards ok?

Check out this clever bit of rhythmic editing,
using a red bull can as the only source…

i’d prefer a V myself but hey….

If you are one of those die hard Tolkien fans without a sense of humour then please don’t watch this…. but for anyone else this is a brilliant & very funny parody of Lord of the Rings by French & Saunders, with more than a few gentle jokes about New Zealanders… I laughed myself silly when this was on TV here a year or two ago, check it out:

flippitygibblit

For obvious reaons (maybe) I am eternally fascinated by the visualization of audio. Whether its immediate, high resolution & technical or processed & interpretative. The primary historical term seems to be synaesthesia but almost everyone these days suffers (or more likely enjoys) it to a degree. Whether its one of the many itunes visualizers (blink, blink, blink)

or technically correct (& aesthetically pleasing) DAW monitoring tools (blink, blink)

or even programs that allow sound to traverse the audio/visual paradigm (blink, blink, blink)

It all sources back to the core; sound as a physical (& thereby visual) expression and U.S.O. highlights some incredibly beautiful, contemporary work reminiscent of the coincidental byproducts of a physics lesson:

and some Dr. Hans Jenny cyma(n)tics:

Recently fueling my fascination has been the release of Apples visual effects/motion graphics software Motion v3 previewing at NAB, especially the new Audio Behaviours. Watch the little demo movie or read about it but it would seem the essential features are illustrated in this screenshot:

If you import a soundfile into Motion you can now use a spectrum analyser (the x-axis) & signal level detector (the y-axis) to provide a control signal to any parameter in use visually in the current visual composition. A while back I bought a copy of SoundKeys for After Effects with the aim of sonifying some music/sound but I never knew After Effects well enough to become intuitive with it, whereas Motion is much more familiar ground.
‘Syaesnethesia’ – sounds like a country I will be visiting soon….

A while ago I posted a few photos of my lovely old baby grand piano, which I prepared after being inspired by seeing Fred Frith playing guitar….. At the time I said I would post a few recordings from it & here I am, finally getting around to it!
The best thing with a prepared piano is that every note sounds entirely unique & is malleable in a way that softsynth programmers can only dream of…. I have purposefully left the highest & lowest octaves untouched, but there are some beautiful sounds to be found between…

I especially enjoy the look on peoples faces when they sit down & try to play it like a normal piano! Technically the piano is a percussion instrument but with a bit of physical alteration that aspect becomes accentuated ie I can’t help but find rhythmic loops on it, inevitably destined for slicing & re-ordering but trance/dry mouth inducing loops nonetheless….

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This bit of the keyboard I started calling my Thomas Newman suburb, as somehow an alligator clip or three was creating semi-dischordant harmonies, even when playing a single note:

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These few notes are good examples of note/buzzy resonance combined

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And this is like i dont know what – scrapey abrasive tones?

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Apart from sifting through the recordings for samples (rich pickings indeed!) I have also been playing around processsing it with one of my favourite (and free!) sample processing improv tools; the fantastic GLEETCHLAB (Mac OSX only)
If you have a hankering for experimentation it is VERY worth your download (& if you enjoy it, please make a donation to the author – he has even gone to the trouble of providing a PDF manual which you will need – I played with it for a half hour before I managed to get any sound out of it)
An important key to getting started with GleetchLab is understanding the routing matrix, which if you have ever played with a Synthi it will be intuitive, but for anyone else its a bit like that kids game Battleship… so RTFM first on that bit ok?

Anyway here are some pieces of prepared piano, processed via random buffer playback in GleetchLab…

algorhythmic improv 1

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algorhythmic improv 2

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improv loop 1

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improv loop 2

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sub resonant loop (with a bit of help from GRM Freeze + LPF)

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visit the home of GLEETCHLAB