PROJECTS
Submit your assignments to the Box Account with the following content:
An AIFF or WAV file (with standard sampling rate and bit depth) labelled with the specified filename
Screen shot(s) of your software session
Compositions are graded based on technical proficiency (lack of technical errors), following the requirements outlined for each assignment, and musical creativity and imagination
Etude #1: Bridging Worlds
Preliminary score due 10/7 by 1:30PM (uploaded to Box or handed to me)
Final piece and updated score due 10/16 by 1:30PM
Using sound material recorded on a portable recorder, sounds from the Theremin, and/or the ARP Synthesizer, compose a short etude based on an original score. Utilize a DAW of your choice to modify the sounds and to mix the sounds together (you’re welcome to use whatever effects you’d like; we will discuss many in class, too).
The final piece must be 3 to 5 minutes in duration (strictly). One of the issues you must confront is the apparent disconnect between sounds of musique concrète and elektronische musik. You are welcome, encouraged in fact, to simply use the sounds you have already recorded for our previous assignments.
A draft of your score is to be turned in at the beginning of class on October 7th. It may be made on paper or be digital. It should include a timeline. Everything else is up to you - text, graphics, photos, drawings, musical notation, and so on. But whatever you use, it should help me grasp what the music might be like. Find some way of notating volume, timbre, density, duration, cadence, form, stereo field, acoustic space, and so on. Like any other musical score, it will change and mutate during your compositional process. You must register the musical changes on the score. The score is not merely a starting point, it should match the finished version of the music.
Label your final mix LastnameFirstname_bridgingworlds
Etude #2: Three Spaces and a Silence
Initial Materials/Ideas/Draft due 11/20 by 1:30PM
Final piece (no score) due 12/9 by 1:30PM
For sound materials for this Etude, you may use field recordings, studio recordings (including of the synthesizers in Studio 4), and any virtual synthesizers or samplers you’d like. You may use any DAW or software tools you would like.
Any and all effects and processing are also welcome in creating this work, but explore ones you’re not used to. As this Etude allows you to use all sounds and techniques, I would also ask that you explore sounds and tools that are new to you, not those you’re very used to. Additionally, consider focusing on the expressivity of careful parameter automation.
This work should be no shorter than 3 minutes and no longer than 6 minutes. Additionally, your work should adhere to the following stipulations: first, it should have at least one moment of digital silence, and second, it should contain at least three “spaces”.
Your interpretation of what a “space” constitutes could be taken literally—field recordings made in different spaces, or different artificial reverberation applied to your sound materials—but it may also be taken more figuratively: a bright space, a dull space, a calm space, a frenetic space, a smooth space, a striated or spiky space, and so forth.
Your (at least) three “spaces” need not be of the same duration, they may recur multiple times during the work, but they should be perceptibly quite different.
Label your final mix LastnameFirstname_threespacesandasilence
MINI-MIX ASSIGNMENT
Due TBD
Pick one of the four packages of song stems (unmixed audio tracks) below, each provided free of charge from the “Mixing Secrets for The Small Studio” multitrack library. Note that these tracks may or may not be your artistic aesthetic; the goal of this mixing assignment is to train your ears to listen and also learn skills required in nearly all electroacoustic music practices: the skills you build from mixing any of these may be translated to your own electroacoustic artistic practice.
“JAZZ” | EXCERPT | DOWNLOAD_FULL_STEMS | Difficulty: ★ ★ ★
“FOLK” | EXCERPT | DOWNLOAD_FULL_STEMS | Difficulty: ★
“POP” | EXCERPT | DOWNLOAD_FULL_STEMS | Difficulty: ★ ★ ★ ★
“HOUSE” | EXCERPT | DOWNLOAD_FULL_STEMS | Difficulty: ★ ★
Note: if the above stem links don’t work or are super slow, you can also download them as .zip files here.
Import these in to REAPER (or another DAW of your choice), with one stem on each track (some stems may be mono, others stereo (2 channels, left and right)).
Your task is to take these raw stems and end up with a final 30-second long stereo mix (a single 30-second long track which you will upload to Box). The 30 seconds will be an excerpt from the full song: listen to it and determine which 30 seconds you’d like to mix (a high point, a low point, a chorus, a transition, etc.) and only mix and upload those 30 seconds!
When mixing you will primarily be changing the volumes of tracks, their stereo panning, their dynamics (with compression/gating, etc.), and their equalization. These changes should be made with purpose while listening intently. In addition to those primary means of mixing you might also use other effects such as reverb, echo effects, stereo wideners, modulation effects, etc.
How you mix can be chosen within a spectrum from “traditionalism”—creating a mix that is representative of, or idiomatic to, the genre that the recorded musical material situates itself in, where your artistic contributions are nearly transparent—to “experimentalism”—creating a (re)mix where your creative choices are intentionally very audible and foregrounded; for example, through editing of the stems and/or applying effects that transform them nearly beyond recognition.
Your only constraints are to
1) have all of the instruments in the stems present in the final mix (don’t just cut out the guitar, for example), and
2) to refrain from bringing in too many outside materials: while layering on a bunch of drum tracks could be an interesting musical choice, the focus here is on the stems themselves and how you handle them to create a successful final mini-mix.
Requirements: a 30-second mini-mix of the stems from one of the four songs provided
Label files LastnameFirstname_minimix