Sunday, September 29, 2013

Another Class Project Done

After getting delayed several times, I still managed to get my last assignment for Survey of Music Technology in a day ahead of schedule. To be fair, I had some small advantage on this one: it involved programming, and I've done a fair bit of that in my time.

But since I did understand a lot of the concepts going in, it gave me time to have fun with it. Instead of using the sound files that were supplied for the class, I recorded my own, about ten of them, and manipulated them with the programming scripts to create something that, while it won't be on anyone's Top Ten list, is still an interesting result.

If you're curious, you can hear it on my SoundCloud account. It's the one called "Some Random Pluck." The "Pluck" refers to the fact that the dominant track is composed of a total of six recordings of my six-string banjo; five of the recordings are single notes.

The "drum" track is actually make of sounds created with a balloon. The only synthesized sound is the horn sound, which comes from my old Casio keyboard. It's also the only one with effects added. I was required to create the effect myself in the computer program.

In fact, I was required to create the entire soundtrack using only the computer program, without any manual manipulations in the recording software. So although the individual bits are my recordings, the music itself was generated by my computer.

Even though I knew a lot of the programming concepts, I learned a lot over the course of the last five weeks of this class that I'm going to be able to apply to my musical composition for some time to come. I really love this online learning thing!

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