johnsencummingssound

[johnsencummingssound]

Activate the Collection - Week 13

Overall it doesn’t really feel like the end of semester, and I guess the reason for that is that for me it really isn’t as 2/3 of my projects are stretching out into a currently vague length of time. Due to my involvement in these other sound-specific projects, I guess my experience of this subject hasn’t been the same as most in where the focus has been on creating new works from existing collections. However something I found so wonderful each week is seeing how everyone’s works have progressed. Obviously it’s been great to see some more experienced designers do some really good work, but equally I’ve also thoroughly enjoyed seeing people develop their skills and grow so much over the semester. Overall I think everyone has put in a lot of time and effort and from that have developed some really good works which I’m looking forward to seeing next week! Another highlight of the semester was definitely discussion relating to industry and potential paths, although perhaps my viewpoint of this is biased as it’s a topic relevant more to those of us who are nearing the end of the course as oppose to some in the class who still have a little while to go. But regardless I particularly enjoyed the call with Franc Tetaz and I certainly think having those open discussions with people in the industry is a really great way to educate and motivate students to push themselves and develop goals for the future.

In regards to specific collaborations, the only one that has really been completed thus far is the collection work with Bobo. I did mention this in my presentation but overall I found this to be an enjoyable experience and certainly a unique one as I guess I’m more familiar with slapping sound onto an existing picture rather than having both inform each other. I think this was both a positive and a negative thing as on the one hand it created a less restrictive environment for being creative, but at the same time the lack of hierarchy made it a bit confusing sometimes as to who was responsible for making a change to improve the work (i.e. do we move the video edit forward or move the sound back?). I think also the fact that this was self-directed made it harder to get motivated to make big developments of our own accord — which is where the presentations came in handy as far as forcing us to get a move on.

Theatre Makers has been quite interesting this semester. I think perhaps this has been a good experience as far as working in a situation where one is very far removed from the visionary of the work, and thus miscommunication and misinterpretation can become challenges (referring to miscommunication about the Chef’s Table score). I’m a little disappointed that Jean and I seem to be the only ones continuing on with the project, as I feel like it could have been really great experience to be had as a team of composers, however I understand there’s no obligation for anyone to continue post-semester and thus some might not want to. I guess I’m only a little concerned that perhaps the workload might double for Jean and myself now to make up for half the amount of composers involved, but this remains to be seen.

Procedural Worlds is coming along well, although a bit delayed. I really enjoyed composing music for this project as I feel like it was the perfect compromise of writing for an existing concept or idea but having enough creative freedom to explore musical ideas that I thought were fitting. It’s also been really interesting as a spectator to just see how the animation has evolved from brainstorming concepts to storyboards and now to animatics— especially as I have no idea how to do anything with animation at all, so it just makes it even more fascinating. I’m really looking forward to completing this project and I think it’ll be a great piece of work to have in my folio.  

Social Distancing (collaboration with Bobo): https://youtu.be/NsTpQaCiqnE

Procedural Worlds update: https://youtu.be/6sJzNae1368

[johnsencummingssound]

Activate the Collection - Week 12

I found Franc’s insights this week super helpful in regards to a broader perspective of the industry as a whole and even on a more philosophical level just his work ethic and openness to share. Specifically the points he made that I found particularly insightful were the following:

Making sure to not just work on projects for others or you start to lose yourself

Find one thing that you’re good at. Still work on other things but you need to have at least one thing.

Figure out how much you need to charge to live off and expect fluctuations in how much you get paid

Have a routine that is conducive to being productive

Whatever you need to do will be done if you spend the time doing it

Whether misplaced or not it definitely gave me a burst of motivation to really dive into my work, especially relating to the “spend the time doing it” part — something that, although seemingly obvious, has really helped me get the work done this week despite me becoming increasingly prone to procrastination over the last couple weeks. I also really appreciated the fact that Franc is still very actively involved in both music production/engineering and film/audiovisual worlds, something that I never really realised was an option — always thinking that I’d eventually need to commit to one over the other. Not to say that I’d ever even have a fraction of success that Franc has had, but just knowing that it has been done and thus is a potentially viable career makes me hopeful for the future.  

In regards to Theatre Makers and Simon’s new temp music, I actually found what you mentioned Darrin to be a really interesting way at looking at how temp music has been used. I think traditionally I’ve interpreted temp music in a very literal and perhaps elemental way in which I’ve only analysed the superficial aspects such as tempo, instrumentation, mood and the elicited emotional response contained within each individual temp cue. However, looking at those in-between aspects such as focussing on the differences between temp music selections is a really interesting and deep way to try and figure out what Simon is exploring. I’m curious to see what Simon’s reply/ insight into that will be, but nevertheless it is definitely a helpful way to look at it.  

Here’s an update on the collaboration with Bobo, I think it’s pretty close to being done but I’m currently awaiting feedback from Bobo before I do some final polishing and tidying:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/17koyAO3vE6FXx8MNrp5DYWhHax0Ovom6/view?usp=sharing  

[johnsencummingssound]

Activate the Collection - Week 11

This week I’ve realised that I can be very productive when given short term deadlines I need to meet. Having briefly discussed in class the idea that the muse doesn’t just come to you, I’ve been proactively trying find strategies to chase ideas in my works this week. Starting with the collaboration with Bobo, the feedback given in class was to extend the excitement after the anticipated build up, rather than letting it die away. Upon trying to come up with ideas on how to do this I tried to establish what the work actually reminded me of that I’ve come across in other works prior, and for some reason mind kept coming back to the Stranger Things title sequence. Likely due to the similar elements of a pulsating kick drum and arpeggiating synths, so in trying to find elements that add to the excitement of the Stranger Things theme, I noticed one of the most exciting parts was a moment where it builds up to this very full, almost splashy major 7th chord on a poly synth (linked below). So naturally, I decided to incorporate something similar at the cut where previously the music would have died down. I think the urgency of the chord and the suddenness of the cut complement each other quite well and hopefully has helped address part of the original problem.

In Theatre Makers one of my more recent cues (00:05:20:14) had a pretty interesting journey regarding its creation. My first thoughts about the scene was that I wanted to focus in on the aspect of water and current that Drew mentions when discussing Medea: The River Runs Backwards. Again, following my instincts, one of the initial works my mind was drawn to was Radiohead and Hans Zimmer’s collaboration on (Ocean) Bloom for Blue Planet II. In an interview Zimmer discusses the idea of creating the “tidal orchestra” through using aleatoric score in which the orchestra plays little fragments and ideas seemingly randomly and fluidly to create a sense of natural flow and current similar to the waves of the ocean. This was my initial inspiration for the more ambient delay guitar textures, but then inadvertently I also kind of ripped off Bloom’s chord progression as well. So once I’d established what the start of the cue would sound like I started to think about the place I wanted it to end up. The temp music for the latter half was Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance which I didn’t feel was entirely appropriate in the context of the scene, however I was mindful of the tempo and the energy/drive the music brought. Drawing inspiration from the movements of the dancers and trying to be mindful of the demographic of high school students my mind instinctively went to the music video for Inhaler by Foals (a band I was quite fond of when I was at high school). Although Inhaler in of itself was probably too slow and aggressive to draw musical inspiration from, it did make me think about Foals’ overall (early) sound of dance/groove based drums and bass with delayed and syncopated guitars not dissimilar to those I had already written for the first half of the cue. From that point on the cue sort of wrote itself. Although perhaps not the most creative method of writing music, given the deadlines of the end of the week I found this method of writing pretty useful as for trying to come up with ideas quickly.

Works: Collaboration with Bobo: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lytI2KFEG8LJmREtokRMhPsLJqNdNday/view?usp=sharing

Theatre Makers Drew 00:05:20:14 cue: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Vq4QaXE7Ug_xb3EgVNEnmzurQGnrlulY/view?usp=sharing

References: Stranger Things | Title Sequence [HD] | Netflix https://youtu.be/-RcPZdihrp4?t=38

How Hans Zimmer and Radiohead transformed "Bloom" for Blue Planet II https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIsewG2g-1g&ab_channel=Vox

Foals - Inhaler (Official Music Video) https://youtu.be/qJ_PMvjmC6M?t=257

Foals - Spanish Sahara [Official Video] https://youtu.be/eYoINidnLRQ?t=296

[johnsencummingssound]

Activate the Collection - Week 10

In relation to class discussions this week, I personally found the insight very helpful in regards to formulating some sort of rough trajectory for the coming years. In regards to Malcolm Gladwell’s rules of success, I think they’re all valid and perfectly reasonable points, however as I mentioned in class, I don’t think success is as clear cut and as simple as the rules define. Specifically, I’d like to hone in on rule 1 “Have the courage to pursue your idea” and rule 10 “ Outwork others”.

I think my criticisms of these rules particularly stem from the high risk factor involved in trying to achieve the objectives at the heart of the rules and thus the potential consequences involved. Regarding rule 1 — which I briefly discussed in class — obviously it’s great general advice, however it is very scalable and especially in a high risk situation, having “courage” can generally also equate to having a better safety net or fallback.

In addressing rule 10, yes, I would agree that it is also good general advice. However, I question whether the strategy of working harder and faster than anyone else is healthy or even sustainable for extended periods of time. The analogy Gladwell provides in the interview is that of a kid’s netball team in which they exhaust themselves playing an extremely aggressive defence during the game. Whilst no doubt this is a great strategy for the underdog in a sports game, I’d also argue that the analogy doesn’t translate very well when thinking about the exertion required over a longer period of time. In the context of these rules the timeframe in question can span from 10 years (10,000 hours) to an entire career which is an insane duration to be under the amount of stress needed to simply “outwork others”. A counter argument could be made that the outworking phase is only required until success is achieved, however this fails to take into account the huge factor that after success is achieved it also has to be maintained. Similarly to when I was in high school and everyone assumed that after exams and VCE that Uni would be easier. Needless to say everyone was shocked when they got to Uni and the workload actually increased. I’d imagine that if one was to pursue the career in the field they were studying at Uni the workload would probably also increase, or at least maintain its difficultly/ intensity. The overall point I’m trying to express is that if one is to outwork others as a strategy for success, it is not in short bursts as in Gladwell’s example, but rather as a consistent effort over time, which is a far bigger and scarier commitment. That brings me to my next point which is the question of whether success should be desirable outcome.

Although success is something we’re all encouraged to desire and thus strive to achieve, as mentioned in class, the vast majority of us won’t achieve whatever our ideas of success are. The reason for this I believe is that as a culture we make the assumption that success is synonymous with happiness, and also commonly believed is that the monetary representation of success is money. Now, I understand how silly this may sound coming from a 20 year old who earns close to minimum wage and doesn’t have responsibilities such as a family, a career and a house, however, I’m not sure anymore if everyone should be striving for the idea of ‘success’ in their life. I think a more noble goal that is more conducive to happiness is related to Gladwell’s rule 3. Engage in meaningful work, just replace work with life. At risk of going on a bit of a hippy-esk tangent, I believe yes; success provides some people with meaning and happiness and all those magical feel-good emotions, but I also believe people need to stop striving for the same idea of success if they’re not the kind of person that gains any happiness or meaning from it. Amusingly, the paradox also exists that if we’re all striving towards the same goal of success that we’re not actually distinguishing ourselves from others (rule 5), and especially if done without re-evaluation on what our ideas of success are then we’re also breaking rule 6 (constantly revise your conclusions). I don’t want any of this to be taken as an excuse as to why people shouldn’t work hard or have aspirations etc. and hypocritically I think I do in fact fall into the category of people that find meaning and happiness in conventional ideas of success, however, I’d like to simply interpret this as my poor attempt at exercising critical thinking.

Also, there’s been an update regarding syncing Pro Tools and Logic via MTC as discussed in last week’s blog. It ended up being a complete failure and my computer kept crashing almost humorously. I can see the advantage if my rig had more powerful processing, but for the time-being the playback lag, crashing and reduced processing power for VIs and plug ins is too much of a detriment. Therefore, I’ll be continuing on with this project with a separate session per cue and then just reimport the video each time. It is also very possible that something contributing to the strain on the CPU was the fact that I was using a compressed mp4 file which neither DAW likes. I have since used Adobe Media Encoder to create a mov. version, but just to avoid the headaches I’m going to stick with the current workflow.

PROJECT UPDATES:

Collaboration with Bobo: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sAIK_4T8btLtLz6hONx0NsTCkM7JPp-1/view?usp=sharing

Theatre Makers cue #2: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tKp-nYXsn2vrxofIG9y_i2S8YU8JFc1r/view?usp=sharing

[johnsencummingssound]

Activate the Collection - Week 9

This last week I haven’t had that much chance to work on my projects for this subject due to my time being allocated working on a couple big assessments for my other subjects. However, early on in the week I did manage to put together a cue for the most recent Theatre Maker’s segment (prior to the whole episode being sent out). Now having heard that   Simon isn’t necessarily wanting a Chef’s Table-esk orchestral score has me a little conflicted, as I thought that that style and tone was working pretty well with the type of cinematography in the doco. Not to say that the current temp music doesn’t work, but essentially it’s going to take a bit of discipline to try and shift gears a little bit away from what I thought was appropriate. I think perhaps this may mean focussing on different elements of my earlier offer other than simply the orchestral instrumentation to figure out what Simon may have liked about it. At this point of time my hunch is leaning towards the use of elements such as the delays and interlocking rhythms to create movement, rather than the specific choice of instruments used.

A few weeks back I was watching one of the Spitfire Audio summer classes and I noticed that the composer Homay Schmitz was using both Pro Tools and Logic within her workflow. During the Q/A she explained that typically she runs the whole movie in Pro Tools and then composes each cue in separate Logic sessions synced up to the timecode in Pro Tools. This is logical as Pro Tools Ultimate allows you to have several movie files running within the session, however granted that in Theatre Makers for instance that we’ll be receiving a whole rough cut of an episode at a time, I figured I would be able to adapt this workflow to my own Pro Tools Standard license as well. After a bit of light searching I found out how to sync the DAWs through way of an internal MIDI connection via MTC. Essentially the idea is that I’ll run the movie in Pro Tools, whilst composing each cue in logic and then once the cue is complete I will bounce it out as an audio file and re-import it into Pro Tools, and then continue to repeat this for each cue. I’m optimistic about the benefits to this approach, for one it will hopefully be a little lighter on my CPU as I won’t have to have every single instrument for the whole episode running in one session and instead might only be using up to 20 sample instruments per cue. The other benefit will be avoiding accidentally altering all of the cues when trying to edit only one (which was a big cause of frustration for last semester’s doco)- whether this be through accidentally adjusting the timecode, or messing with automation etc.

Composing A Film Cue with Homay Schmitz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlrEbD71Fos&t=250s&ab_channel=SpitfireAudio

MTC Sync: Logic X & Pro Tools https://spitfireaudio.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001572113-MTC-Sync-Logic-X-Pro-Tools

[johnsencummingssound]

Activate the Collection - Week 8

After receiving feedback on Wednesday regarding my collaboration with Bobo I set about trying to come up with ways to spice up my score. In a logical fashion I identified what I thought was the strongest part of the original composition, that being those Blade Runner-esk synth/string swells. Realising that in the midst of the ambience they had lost their emotion and expressiveness, I decided to try and focus in on this area first, with the intention that once this aspect was as strong as possible I would go back and flesh out or add other aspects to the score. Having been recently captivated by the works and experimentation of Hildur Guðnadóttir, I thought I would try and adapt some of her ideas surrounding composition. My first realisation was that it would be easier to dynamically express something if I used an instrument I was actually comfortable with. Although my primary instrument is guitar, I thought I’d have a go at getting out my saxophone (for the first time in a few years) just for the added dimension of expressiveness determined by how much air you push into it — which was especially useful for modulation over long notes. As well as this I ran my sax into my guitar pedals using a re-amp box rather than FX in the DAW. Although not entirely the same, I think the ideas behind this were my attempt at having a go at how Guðnadóttir takes a classical instrument (that she is very comfortable with) like the Cello and tries to use it in an experimental way — or in the case of her work on the Halldorophone, learns to play a different way to accommodate the sounds and qualities of the new instrument. Effectively, the decision to use my guitar pedals was deliberate for two reasons. Firstly, I wanted to monitor what I was playing in the context of the final signal, as the sounds imparted by the FX definitely altered how I would conventionally play sax. Secondly, it got me out of my typical workflow of sitting down with a MIDI keyboard and using the mouse to pull up different plug ins. As cliche as it sounds, actually playing an instrument I understand (I’m not a keyboard player) and having the tactile and immediate response of knobs to adjust my FX parameters actually made a huge difference to how I connected to the music. All this being said, I don’t know if it actually made that much difference to the engagement of the composition itself, but I think it’s certainly a starting point in trying to spice up things and at the very least I now know that my sax can be a pretty awesome sound design tool for future projects!

Project Updates:

Bobo Project: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nYwfdeMmHV7ZrPlQ0AgCMTTq-ZDGrcm-/view?usp=sharing

Procedural Worlds: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cL8M_Vfoiv3SIusEK5nbVDR8v4ChyZLY/view?usp=sharing

References:

Hildur Guðnadóttir - Erupting Light https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmZ2pAFbXsE&ab_channel=RachelBrandon

Composition for halldorophone#5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo4Jq-_tysc&ab_channel=HalldorUlfarsson

Hildur Guðnadóttir on the Details of Composing in Cubase | Steinberg Spotlights youtube.com/watch?v=Nht-1TRrV6k&ab_channel=Steinberg

[johnsencummingssound]

Activate the Collection - Week 7

I’ve spent a considerable amount of time over the last couple of weeks working on my Procedural Worlds sketches, including some failed attempts and some things working well. In order to have some consistency throughout the different pieces (despite some of them being quite different from each other), I’ve been trying to attach musical elements to certain themes or symbols within the concepts. The obvious choice is the use of leitmotifs which in particular worked well when attached to the idea of humanity/people as it can be interwoven in the soundtrack at different stages throughout the story. A prominent symbol earlier on in the story is that of the birds, representing the spread of Covid-19 and given harrowing nature of such a concept, my experiments with using a leitmotif to express this ended up a little cliche and overall wasn’t really working too well. I instead began experimenting with trying to attach the sound of a specific instrument to the idea of birds varying from strings to synth drones. The closest I got to something I was happy with after about a week was a patch on a Spitfire instrument that was basically swarming bells, which sort of worked conceptually, in the way the sound started off small and grew to be overwhelming, but it wasn’t particularly inspiring. I also toyed with the idea of having real life bird samples to express this but, aside from there being a very limited number of good bird samples available, it just seemed like a very ‘functional’ idea that didn’t really say much or make me feel like I had actually attempted to do something creative with it. Some time later I stumbled upon YouTuber Davidlap’s video “Animal sounds on acoustic guitar (w/bow)” which sees him effectively recreating animal-like sounds using extended and experimental techniques on a guitar with a violin bow. This idea of experimenting with an instrument to try and create a real-world sound really resonated with me and I set out trying to come up with a bird sound in this way. Eventually I had some success on electric guitar with the help of a couple distortions, delays and modulation effects. Overall the sound I came up with isn’t incredibly accurate to what birds sound like, but in my opinion the ‘slightly-off’ and twisted sound that merely resembles birds sort of works on a conceptual level given the context that it’s representing diseased and mutated birds.

Raw bird recording: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18vHg5WuwDODJDI4Wfu8r3QcH-7dUjSol/view?usp=sharing

Example 1: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zBnQzAA7XoLNuMKz5eDg7uj_tee6gmhR/view?usp=sharing

Example 2: https://drive.google.com/file/d/162lymZAF8BjIcnbqNz9GwcuAQ4sbUs98/view?usp=sharing

During the last couple weeks, Spitfire Audio have been running some online classes based around composition, the earliest of which was “Developing Your Own Creative Voice with Oliver Patrice Weder”. In the video Weder runs through his score for a documentary he worked on quite early on in his career. My major take away from this was Weder’s emphasis on the selecting the correct tonal pallet through selection of instruments early on in the process. In the video he explores his drafting processes in order to create a main theme and then how from that original idea, composing the rest of the score was considerably easier as he either rearranged certain parts or created new cues using the same instrument choices that were approved. Although this approach may not fit every scenario, I think adopting this for Theatre Makers would be quite useful as a tool to hone in on the vibe of the documentary and keep it consistent throughout the numerous cues. By this I mean using similar instruments in my future cues to that of the offer I uploaded over the break. I think that this will help give the score within the documentary some uniformity (something that was somewhat lacking in the documentary I scored last semester) and additionally I think it will make the process more efficient as I won’t be spending as much time looking/ searching for a new sound. After hearing examples from and talking to Jean and Isabelle, it would seem we’re all on the same page as far as our cues being orchestral instrumentation in a more contemporary arrangement — which again will hopefully further this musical consistency throughout the project.

References:

Animal sounds on acoustic guitar (w/bow) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_IKKBHFlo4&ab_channel=Davidlap

Developing Your Own Creative Voice with Oliver Patrice Weder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbolagdzQKE&ab_channel=SpitfireAudio

[johnsencummingssound]

Activate the Collection - Week 6

During the week I’ve been quite focused on trying to find precedents or or works similar to that of my project with Bobo. This proved a little difficult, especially as when I initially wrote the music there wasn’t a particular inspiration in mind, so I spent some time watching and analysing the work in context with the visuals. My initial thought was that it reminded me of a planetary exhibition (likely due to the stills of the astronaut and stars). From there I determined there were also elements that reminded me of space documentaries. It was from this that my first nugget of practical information was obtained. A consistent characteristic I noticed after analysing a number of space docos was the use of a low end rumble when showing planets (probably due to trying to convey mass or enormity). Although Bobo hasn’t utilised any assets that involve planets in her visuals there is an ambiguous object that is cut to roughly midway through the video, and it was here I got the idea to characterise this object with a low end rumble in order to give it the illusion of presence — or at the very least make it seem otherworldly. A while back Bobo had mentioned that the music had made her think of Inception at least as far as a feeling of warping space and time. Using this Christopher Nolan tangent as well as the mutual inclusion of Black Holes, I started investigating the sound design for Interstellar. Interestingly, the portrayal of sound in space for that film is highly accurate — in that there is none. However, realistically not having sound to picture in my work probably wouldn’t be the most practical or engaging thing to do, so instead I looked at other ways in which the film articulates sound in space. Primarily the team, lead by sound designer Richard King, uses interior sounds (such as the rumbling or shaking within the space shuttle) in order to convey heft or enormity within the exterior environment of space. A technique they used that really stood out was getting a couple of powerful PA systems, placing them inside of an aircraft wreck and loudly playing various low end sine waves and noises. It was from this that they recorded the shaking of the aircraft interior which is what they used in the film. Inspired by this ingenuity, I thought I would experiment with a similar technique — probably partially inspired by my recent acquisition of a subwoofer. The results weren’t quite the same as far as my room isn’t deliberately set up to rattle, however what I did capitalise on was the acoustic behaviour of various room modes depending on where the mic was placed within the room. Though the recorded sounds weren’t radical departures from the original signals that had been played, they did have a different character to them: a less narrow frequency range as well as being slightly more ambient/lively. I thought this was a cool little experiment and have thus used one of these recordings to characterise the aforementioned ambiguous object.

As far as failed experiments this week I also played with having a clock ticking sound to activate tension towards the end — another technique lifted from Interstellar. The idea behind it is that it initiates a countdown at the end of which the listener knows something will take place and it is this anticipation that creates a sense of tension. In hindsight I’m not quite sure why I thought it would work, but I decided to throw it up against the picture just to see what would happen. Overall it was simply too jarring to have such a realistic, familiar and earthly sound placed up against a visual that was anything but. I did have a go at playing with time stretching and pitch shifting in order to try and destroy the sound a bit, but in the end decided that the work was simply far stronger and more effective without it.  

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tCQszssg6CYQa3sMHst8Q4thoevlCwJl/view?usp=sharing

References:

JOURNEY TO THE EDGE OF THE Universe | Space Documentary 2020 https://youtu.be/pj9cNnT7PJs?t=1507

The Making of INTERSTELLAR Sound Effects and Sound Mixing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOJrKka8TJU

What Makes Interstellar's Music So Terrifying https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWPenJNSPso

[johnsencummingssound]

Activate the Collection - Week 5

It’s been a bit of a hectic week but effectively here is a basic overview of my projects. I’ve worked more on the collection project with Bobo this week and am waiting for a visual draft back— I’m a bit tentative about doing much more work on it until I’ve seen what she comes back with (just so there’s no major confusion if she’s working on one thing and I’ve gone off in another direction). So once she sends me what she’s done discussions can be had about how we want to evolve it. Procedural Worlds information has finally come through this week, so I’ve spent a bit of time going through the document and listening to the references the animation students have included for music. The genres are quite diverse— ranging from fast paced orchestral, to ambient, to more electronic, so it’ll be interesting to see how I’m going to consolidate all those different ideas into something a little more cohesive — but that’s next week’s problem! In lieu of it being a bit of a crazy week, composing concept pieces for Theatre Makers has taken a bit of a backseat for the time being. Below is the most recent iteration of the Bobo collaboration: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LMrShI5RIfAXMLRRQkMDrQWBnhyqp_MT/view?usp=sharing

In class this week in regards to the Raisinboy ACMI video, an interesting point was brought up about repetition giving the impression of semantic meaning. This reminded of some ideas that were explored in my Leitmotif Essay for Audiovision last semester. Just to recap, one of the reasons that a leitmotif is effective is due to intermittent repetition which studies have found increases enjoyment in the listener (Marguilis 2013, p.55), which makes sense as to why a composer would use it. If you want to convey meaning through your work, ideally you want it to be engaging and thus enjoyable. However, something that hadn’t crossed my mind before was perhaps that things have come full circle. Previously I would have considered that in a work the meaning is intended initially and the function of repetition is to engage, familiarise or at the very least adheres to a particular set of conditions dictated context (i.e. themes). However, I’m now comprehending the idea that perhaps there is indeed no meaning at all in some art, and as an audience we project the meaning onto the work simply because of an aspect such as repetition, due to precedents set by other experiences with art — such as leitmotifs. Effectively, we make the assumption that because it is repeated it must have some level of significance.

On the topic of engagement and the discussion brought up in class about why certain installations aren’t engaging, I would argue that engagement is not the only reason why works can be admired or appreciated. I think the second aspect would be recognition of accomplishment through a tremendous amount of work and effort. A work that has come to my attention recently is Christian Marclay’s The Clock. Which, for a quick summation is a piece of media that plays in real time over a period of 24 hours using various scenes of clocks from around 12,000 moments of different films. Conceptual and philosophical significance aside (which I know sounds ridiculous but just go with it), the work is not what I would consider engaging in of itself. Maybe for novelty and in shorter bursts, but to watch the whole 24 hours I would think would be considerably boring for most people. However, the sheer amount of work, dedication and time that must have gone in to such a project is where I think it holds its value and importance and thus is one of the reasons people appreciate it, despite it not being incredibly engaging. Not to say this is a reason to not make my work this semester engaging, but I think it’s probably a partial explanation to the question of why some works aren’t engaging. Bringing it back to the assets in one of my projects, the NASA archive isn’t extremely entertaining, however when you watch the footage, it’s not a standalone piece of work. Instead, it represents the technical accomplishment, planning and decades of work that culminated into the capture of that footage.

References: 

Five Ways Christian Marclay’s The Clock does more than just tell the time https://www.tate.org.uk/art/lists/five-ways-christian-marclays-clock-does-more-just-tell-time

Margulis, E. H 2013, ‘Aesthetic Responses to Repetition in Unfamiliar Music’, Empirical Studies of the Arts, vol. 31, no. 1 , pp. 45–57.   https://tinyurl.com/y4l94oqo

[johnsencummingssound]

Activate the Collection - Week 4

Misha Ketchell’s article was an interesting read that led me to reassess my own ideas about creativity and motivation. Having my own mental health take a marginal decline this week due to self induced irrational stresses, I’ve ironically seen the effects of the happiness/creativity concept. Whilst typically I’ve found a ‘less than ideal’ head space to be beneficial in producing creative works in the past — partially due to tapping into a level of emotional authenticity — recently I’ve discovered it very much limits one’s range of creative ideas to pursue. For example, Bobo and I have decided to explore the concept of loneliness and isolation for our ATC collaboration. There has been considerably less resistance in trying to write for this idea this week due to being able to tap into those emotions that I’m sure most people are feeling in some capacity at this point of time. However in trying to come up with other concepts (Theatre Makers sketches for example) I found myself struggling to write anything that wasn’t (after reassessment) melancholic, sad etc. — very much reflecting my own thoughts. Ketchell’s quoting of the corporate world concept that “anxiety focuses the mind” may be true but I feel that in order for this ‘focussing’ to take place there needs to be a clear vision or objective, hence when the goal is more obscure such as being creative and generating ideas then this focus is actually counterproductive as the tunnel vision effect constricts the flow and creation of new ideas. Hence I don’t know if happiness actually promotes creativity or rather provides a level of emotional neutrality that allows creative ideas to come freely. I agree with Ketchell’s take that motivation or purpose is necessary for a sustained creative output and perhaps due to the current projects being unclear and still very much in early stages, it has been harder to feel a sense of purpose or meaning in regards to most projects just yet (aside from the obvious “this is an assessment you must do to get your degree��). I’m hopeful that as the works develop and I start to see things come together, it will give me the necessary sense of meaning and purpose and thus facilitate my creativity.

Interesting that Shaun should bring up Bladerunner 2049 and the cinematic feel involved, naturally I decided to do a bit of digging about on the processes and concepts surrounding the score. An interesting thing I came across was co-composer for the film Benjamin Wallfisch discussing the collaboration and relationship between sound design and score in the film. He describes the sound design and score as interchanging roles, specifically, sound design informing emotion through mood and tone similarly to what music does traditionally. Within my collaboration with Bobo this week I’ve toyed a little more with using more sound design-esk things to try to convey emotion— nothing too extreme just yet, but definitely playing with a few more musically obscure textures and such. Continuing on with my Trent Reznor binge this week, I came across a composer’s round table segment in which he addresses how he gets creatively inspired. Instead of starting an idea with a chord progression or melody — as he states is typical within his background of songwriting — he instead usually starts a composition with a sound or noise. Although I’ve been able to add stuff to already existing ideas, as far as coming up with new ones I’ve had a bit of a creative slump this week. Having found this little nugget too late into the week, I really want to try this in next week’s pursuits in an attempt to get out of my comfort zone, which is very much starting with a melody or chord progression as Reznor describes — likely due to my background playing in bands and writing songs. I’m hoping even if this ends up being a disaster, disrupting my typical approach will at least cause some level of inspiration that allows me to get out of this creative rut and back on track.

References: How a sense of purpose can link creativity to happiness (resource from canvas) https://theconversation.com/how-a-sense-of-purpose-can-link-creativity-to-happiness-115335

Benjamin Wallfisch ('Blade Runner 2049' composer) pays respect to original Vangelis score https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApHkgJQOSL4

Trent Reznor, Hans Zimmer, Danny Elfman and more Composers for THR's Roundtable | Oscars 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-oUeuMRKIU

[johnsencummingssound]

Activate the Collection - Week 3

Whilst procrastinating this week Christian Henson’s (Spitfire Audio) recent video “Why Are Synths So Difficult To Mix???” popped up on my Youtube recommended. Naturally I watched the whole half an hour video instead of doing work, however, I’m happy to say that watching the video ended up becoming unintentional research. Within the video Henson discusses essentially the reason synths are more difficult to mix as opposed to acoustic instruments is the waveforms are far less complicated, due to sounds in nature having effectively far more frequency content as well as randomisation, things that can be partially replicated with synthesis but not anywhere close to the same extent. Of course the video deviated off into messing around with old cassettes and delay boxes, but the major take away I got from it was when he used a piano sample to created a synth pad (almost a reverse synthesis?). This inspired me to experiment with a similar approach in which I used some midi instruments (unintentionally Spitfire libraries) Rhodes, piano and strings and routed them through a combination of several delays, distortions, pitch shifters and reverbs in order to create a more ‘organic’ sounding synth sound. Not sure entirely what this experiment will amount to yet, however, at the moment I’m treating it as a compositional tool/technique that I may use to generate more etherial/obscure soundscapes within my projects.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/18nYAdW09e-ckKPIJR-FFh7fAxBS1m-zJ/view?usp=sharing

My exploration into composition favouring soundscapes this has probably been inspired by my research into Trent Reznor that I’m currently doing for another subject. However, I think there is considerable room for crossover regarding his philosophy in approaching film score. First and foremost Reznor’s core belief for all forms of art is that the artist should remain out of the spotlight in order to preserve a certain level of mythology which in turn he believes facilitates inspiration within listeners and thus creates future artists. I find his aversion to celebrity quite fascinating especially as it directly contrasts to someone among the likes of Hans Zimmer who seemingly thrives on it. On a technical level this can be heard in his work which, as mentioned prior, is heavily soundscape and mood driven, rather than full of leitmotifs, themes and other identifiable characteristics such as one would find in a John Williams score. Reznor has explicitly stated that he scores to fit a world holistically rather than for a particular scene or to serve a specific narrative function. This idea of world building through score is an approach that I feel drawn to for the purposes of scoring Procedural Worlds (not just because of the namesake). If we are to tie this in to class content for the week, one could argue that this approach leans more towards the connect, extend and transform aspects of the Pathway Framework as it allows a certain degree of freedom in which the only constraints are the concept and the mood. Of course this is dependent on the project, and for something like the QLD doco my work would be less experimental (you could say leaning towards the ‘multi’ aspect), however, I feel that the workflow and concept behind Procedural Worlds justifies a more conceptually driven approach.

In tying back to the QLD doco, whilst watching Chef’s Table in order to get an understanding of what the creators are looking for, I have noticed that Duncan Thum (and the other composers) have recently been incorporating aspects of the highlighted Chef’s culture and background into the score. For instance using bluesy, soul inspired guitars and drums in Mashama Bailey’s episode as she grew up and currently operates in Georgia USA. or Dario Ceccini’s episode is largely made up of classical music that wouldn’t sound out of place at an opera due to him being a local butcher in Tuscany. Not entirely sure if the creators of the QLD doco are desiring this level of interconnection/ if the backgrounds of each of their doco subjects are distinct enough to attempt something similar, but on a conceptual level, this is a really interesting approach to building cohesion and immersion through score. However, that being said, it is also as likely that they were simply referring to the main theme which is very much Romantic Classical/ belongs in a British Period Drama. I guess we’ll have to wait for further details.

Something else that has come up within research this week is David Byne’s TED talk on how music has evolved according to architecture. If you haven’t seen it I highly recommend, however, to sum up a point he makes towards the end is that the room — and since the implementation of recording; the listening device— traditionally has subconsciously dictated what decisions are made as far as music arrangement and production. As far as how this ties into my work, I think it can be adapted into an early consideration on my behalf as to what medium the work is being designed for. For instance the QLD doco is likely to be viewed on a TV or such device with a relatively limited bandwidth, therefore there isn’t much point including an 808 style sine wave bass within my work. Contrastingly, in the work that I may create for AudioLabs (probably won’t be viewed at all, but let’s just say hypothetically) there is a bit more wiggle room in regards to frequency and space/depth as the most likely place for the consumption of an audiobook/podcast is on headphones. Procedural Worlds is a bit more ambiguous at the moment (and to be honest, too early to tell at this stage). However, considerations that I’m anticipating could be something like mono compatibility, in which I could potentially experiment with ‘binaural-esk’ sound design in order to push immersion yet this is at the risk of it losing that audio when summed to mono such as on a more rudimentary sound device. Of course, at the moment these are all considerations for the future, however I think it is helpful to be aware of them early on in the process. References:

Why are Synths So Difficult to Mix??? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nezcJztBR0I

Gone Girl Q&A | Trent Reznor + Atticus Ross https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1OT3bBoRoQ

How architecture helped evolve music https://www.ted.com/talks/david_byrne_how_architecture_helped_music_evolve

[johnsencummingssound]

Activate the Collection - Week 2

Briefly exploring the ideas of both Art Thinking and Design Thinking this week I’ve come to the understanding that these are different approaches that we all take in some capacity, yet are not necessarily conscious of at the time. In hindsight, although not entirely aware, I believe my typical approach to my work has been similar to that of Design Thinking. Largely, my workflow is to come up with a definition of success and a way to measure such an outcome, followed by a slew of potential ideas based on what approaches I believe may be successful and eventually I use a process trial and error in order to find the desired result. I believe this approach stems from my background in audio engineering in which much of the work is an implementation of problem solving in order to achieve a desired outcome. A desired outcome could be as simple as getting a sound system to work in which the problem solving takes the form of methodical troubleshooting in order to find the fault in the signal path. More commonly the desired outcome is the satisfaction of a client and the problem solving then takes the form of whatever mixing techniques, editing and decisions are needed to satisfy that client based on the client’s influences, aspirations and expectations. Although not always necessarily methodical I believe I gravitate to this approach as it appears to be a more pragmatic way of finding solutions, which is likely why it has been adopted by various tech companies and big businesses. From my very limited understanding of Design Thinking it also seems almost less risky in a sense that at least a definition is given to a desired outcome and by continuing to work you are at least in some capacity moving forward and making progress, although I recognise the contradiction in that statement as if one is being creative and making mistakes, is that not also progress? That being said, I appreciate the potential for innovation involved with Art Thinking, even if it seems like a terrifying approach to those risk-adverse such as myself. I’d like to attempt to incorporate a level of Art Thinking into my work this semester; an opportune project for this might be procedural worlds which I would like to be part of from its inception. I like the contrast of developing a work from a conceptual level and bouncing off each other’s ideas in which each development informs the next, rather than the more conventional approaches of providing a service for a client that I’ve come accustomed to. I’m fully aware that trying to steer myself into trying an Art Thinking approach might not work out for me as well as I hope and I may end up falling back to something I’m more comfortable with, but at this point of time it’s definitely something I’m interested in trying to implement. References: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/what-is-design-thinking-and-why-is-it-so-popular

https://medium.com/in-the-midst-of-art/art-thinking-or-the-importance-of-inventing-point-b-d4d2ae63c9fc