Codec Studies web site

My graduate thesis is focusing on codecs and their impact on audio.  I have set up a companion web site to go along with the paper part of the thesis here.

The Wiitles Max/MSP Vocal Effects Processor

In one of my bands, The Wiitles, we use Max/MSP as a vocal effects processor.  The Nintendo Wii-mote acts as a controller for the effects such as delay, pitch shift, amplitude modulation, and a vocoder.

This video also has significance for me since it brought me to buy a little program called ScreenFlow which is pretty much amazing.  ScreenFlow is the program that allowed me to capture the real time actions of my computer on video.  Very cool.  I have yet to scratch the surface on this bad boy, but, especially once I start teaching sound classes, this promises to be a revelation.

Will Oldham on Movie Music

I love this friggin’ guy…. and wholeheartedly agree with these views on movie music:

“AVC: You mentioned talking to Richard Linklater and Caveh Zahedi about your ideas on movie music. Can you summarize those ideas?

WO: Well, for a while, it seemed like you were always seeing movies where all the music was determined by the music supervisors and their special relationships with certain record labels. And I just felt like, “Wow, I’ll bet they spent months or years writing this screenplay, and I’ll bet they spent months shooting this, and I’ll bet they spent months editing this, and now they’re spending no time at all picking these completely inappropriate songs with lyrics to put under a scene that has dialogue.” How does that even work? How can you have a song with someone singing lyrics under spoken dialogue and consider that mood-music, or supportive of the storyline? As somebody who likes music, when that happens, I tend to listen to the lyrics, which have nothing to do with the movie. And then I’m lost in the storyline. Not only is that a crime, but it’s a crime not to give people who are good at making music for movies the work. It’s like saying, “We don’t need you, even though you’re so much better at it than I am as a music supervisor.” Like the cancer that is that Darjeeling guy… what’s his name?

AVC: Wes Anderson?

WO: Yeah. His completely cancerous approach to using music is basically, “Here’s my iPod on shuffle, and here’s my movie.” The two are just thrown together. People are constantly contacting me saying, “I’ve been editing my movie, and I’ve been using your song in the editing process. What would it take to license the song?” And for me it’s like, “Regardless of what you’ve been doing, my song doesn’t belong in your movie.” That’s where the conversation should end. Music should be made for movies, you know?

AVC: So there aren’t many contexts in which you can imagine licensing one of your songs to a movie?

WO: No. I mean, I could see—

AVC: Over the closing credits, maybe?

WO: Right, the closing credits. But again, someone wrote me recently and said, “We wanna use your songs in our movie, and we’ve already got this artist, this artist, this artist, this artist.” And I was thinking, “Well that makes for like, no integrity to your movie. All these different voices combined with the actors’, writer’s, director’s and DP’s voices. That sounds like the worst place to be. That sounds like a music festival.” [Laughs.] I liked it when those crazy, dirty, Rhode Island brothers made movies like There’s Something About Mary.

AVC: The Farrellys?

WO: The Farrelly brothers. Was it Something About Mary that had nothing but Jonathan Richman songs in it? I like Jonathan Richman a lot, and while those weren’t my favorite Jonathan Richman songs, I liked that whole idea of lacing one voice throughout the whole movie and having it be a conscious decision made somewhere during the writing and pre-production, and not during post-production. “This is the voice that we wanna have, and these are how we want songs to work with this movie.” That’s all I ask for, that a little bit of time and respect is given to the musical part of filmmaking.

AVC: So do you think of your songs as inviolable? If you want to understand what the song is about, then you have to consult the song?

WO: Yes, essentially. Like sometimes we’ve made film clips or video clips to go with the song, but honestly, the only reason to do that is to get the music to other places where people could hear it. And I’ve never done a video where I feel like the images have anything to do with the song, except in the most vague way possible, because I feel like the song is its own complete thing. People who put songs in movies like to think of a song as a sphere that you can cut a huge chunk out of. “Well the movie’s gonna take up most of that sphere, or half of that sphere, or a fraction of that sphere.” When you’re writing a song for a movie, you only have to fill in a part of the sphere, knowing that it’s gonna go with the other content that’s already there. But ideally, a song is a complete sphere like the Earth, where if you were an alien with a huge, huge finger, you could stick your finger into the middle of the ocean and make an impression on it. It’s not an impregnable sphere, but it is a sphere.”

Read whole interview at The Onion AV club:  http://www.avclub.com/articles/will-oldham,26498/

The Wiitles at GDX

The Wiitles performed at the GDX (Game Developers Conference) in Savannah Georgia last Thursday (4-16-09).  We were extraordinarily received by some very cool folks who make game sound their careers such as George Sanger, Jason Arnone, Michael Sweet, and Chris Rickwood.  Below is one song from the performance:

A bit of trivia:  That’s my son Sebastian in the background, who joined us on stage for a bit.

Pro Tools Post Production Operator Certifiable

It’s official.  I am now Pro Tools Post Production Operator Certified (7.3), or certifiable as my bank account tells me.  Pro Tools class was a lot of money for the piece of paper and T-shirt I got in exchange.  I guess that one could argue that it’s the knowledge that I paid for.  So I’m going to comtemplate that here for myself and for anyone else thinking of taking the Pro Tools certification course.

I should begin by saying that, out of all the Pro Tools courses, 210 was by far the most useful and most meaty.  From chasing tape to editing ADR, 210 gave workflow suggestions and tips that I had not previously thought of.  I have already seen some improvement in my post-production gigs.  Additionally, 210 had sections at the end of each chapter called Practical Application Scenarios.  These little tid bits were quite useful and something that I felt was missing from the first three quarters of the overall four-part course.  software knowledge is all well and good, but learning about the ins and outs of any software, especially one as powerful and in depth as Pro Tools can be painfully boring.  So it’s nice to see how and where this kind of knowledge can be useful, for both boredom cures and for long-term retention.

But the real question is whether or not the thousands of dollars you pay for the Pro Tools courses is worth the amount of knowledge you gain.  This is the question for any audio program, of course.  Especially since the long standing common knowledge is that any kind of certificate or degree won’t help you in the world of audio… it’s just purely good sounds (probably more important, however, are good connections).  So then the question becomes, “Is taking this Pro Tools certification course going to give me better sounds?”  The answer is maybe, maybe not.  There are some cool tips and tools drawn out for the student in all of the Pro Tools certification classes.  Many of them go beyond just teaching software and give some theory and some practice tips.  But someone who has been working in the field for several years may find these little knowledge nuggets somewhat elementary.  If the question is something more like, “Will the Pro Tools certification course make me faster and more efficient?”.  The answer to that one is probably, in the case of the experienced veteran, and definitely with the novice Pro Tools user.

However, interested students still need to be advised to do a cost benefit analyses of the course.  It is not cheap.  If you’re the kind of audio professional who is already fast in their workflow, then I’m not sure about investing this money.  However, if you’re like me, and still trying to figure out ways to maximize workflow and please his clients, then it may be worth it.  For me, it was totally worth it… but unfortunately now comes the little task of paying it all back.

Sound Art Showcase featuring The Wiitles

The Wiitles recently performed at a sound art showcase at the Savannah College of Art and Design (The Wiitles’ future alma mater).  The showcase was interesting, with eight different groups of sound designers and weirdos making sound and art(??).  The mostly Max/MSP based projects included a set of speakers made from conk shells, a flautist recording and manipulating her flute with Max, a drum set made from PVC pipe (a la the Blue Man Group), and a DJ manipulating his music selections with the same vocal patch that I use to process my vocals with The Wiitles.  Check out the event web site here.  Our friend and photographer, James Paonessa, was nice enough to document the performance with his handheld.  Below is part of The Wiitles performance.  Enjoy:

Unfortunately, the performance issues in the above video are painfully obvious to us (and may be to you too).  Therefore, we have decided to share the load of the sampling and processing that Max has had to endure with a program called OSculator.  OSculator is an incredible little program that allows “for making sound and vision with new controllers”.  We will use OSculator to send Wiimote data to Ableton Live, ensuring the kinds of (especially rhythmic) performance problems will no longer take place.  This method will hopefully prove more fun as well, being that, using Max with The Wiitles, it always felt like we have been on a tightrope… one little slip and chaos would incur.  I have been pushing for utilization of Ableton for quite a while now.  Ironically, my vocal patch will continue to use Max for at least a little while longer, however.  Updates about our successes and failures using Ableton Live with The Wiitles are soon to follow.

The Wiitles will be performing this year’s GDX (Game Developers Conference) in Savannah.  The event promises to be unfathomably nerdy, and therefore ironically cool.  Do come out to see us if you have the means.

Also, I have been busy mixing some tunes for my other band, Oryx and Crake.  Please stop by and give them a listen.

Who’s Gonna Watch the Watchmen

The title of this piece would more appropriately be titled, “Who Gonna Watch The Watchmen When the Music is so God Awful?”  I am by no means a comic nerd in the same way that, Jeff Albertson, the stereotyped comic nerd in The Simpsons is, but as a kid, I gobbled them up.  And as an adult, there have been a few comics that have moved me much more than some of the classics I was forced to read in high school and college.  Watchmen was one such comic.  I was as excited as any other Watchmen fan out there (besides the writer, Alan Moore, himself, who refused to be associated with the film version of his masterpiece) when the film version was announced.  And after seeing the trailers and how faithfully Zach Snyder had been to Moore’s and Gibbon’s vision, I felt like this movie was no doubt going to be, at least, the greatest superhero movie ever.

The movie was great.  I have read that some of the actors seemed oppressed by the source material and that one or more of the actors seemed lifeless, but I thought the casting and the acting was spot on.  The action sequences were definitely more than what the comic had offered, but they were fun, and with a comic movie that features so much heady material, I enjoyed the break.

The music in The Watchmen, however, was Godawful.  I’ve never seen so many cliched musical moments in one single movie, and the ones that weren’t cliched, such as the Hallelujah sex scene, were still driven by, well, Hallelujah… and many other extremely famous and played out songs.  I’m sure that there were very good, artistic reasons for choosing the classics, not the least of which being that several of them are referenced in the book, but when Ride of the Valkyres gave Vietnam helicopters a soundtrack, and when The Sound of Silence played over a funeral, I was no where near being involved in the movie.  I could only think how much a certain music editor needed to get sacked, even if he was being influenced by a dictatorial director.  We as sound designers, or music editors, etc. need to be conscious of these decisions, as these decisions are not trivial, but can make or break an entire movie, however beautiful and blockbustery that movie may be.

I have heard that The Watchmen looks to be on it’s way to losing money for it’s studio.  Sucks for them, they were one Hans Zimmer original score away from a classic.

Appetite for Self-Destruction

The book, Appetite For Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash Of The Record Industry In The Digital Age, is one that people will be talking about a lot in the coming months. In it, author Steve Knopper lays out his theory of what happened to the music industry to make it fall from such great heights to such great lows.  It would be hard to argue with the basic premise that underlies Self-Destruction.  Many people already feel that the recording industry proved itself incompetent and behind the times (and maybe somewhat manic) in their response to the Internet and most pointedly, peer-to-peer services.  But Appetite still reeks of a book idea that someone was a little too eager to put out into the world, be it Knopper or his publishers.  The industry has been changing so quickly that Appetite was in danger of sounding dated before it came out, and self-consciously repeats phrases like “at the time of this writing…”.

Appetite certainly does a good job painting portraits of the colorful characters who have ‘guided’ the music industry over the last several decades, portraits that prove to be one of Appetite’s biggest charms and its biggest let downs.  Knopper seems to rely a little too much on his unusual access to these record industry big-wigs, and, while interesting, often times seems more than a healthy dose of filler.

All in all, I think that Appetite for Self-Destruction is an important book.  It attacks the record industry while also maintaining an objective gaze on what brought it to its current state.  Music fans the world over are wondering why in hell the major labels are putting out such terrible drivel on a regular basis, and what happened to make all of it happen.  Appetite gives these music lovers a good starting place in trying to put the pieces together.

Pro Tools 201

This past weekend I completed the 201 part of my Pro Tools certification course,bringing me 3/4 of the way to being Operator certified, bringing me untold amounts of riches, women, and creative output.  But while this all sounds exciting, I think I can calm down long enough to reflect on 201 and share these reflections with you all.  Again I am struck by the depth that Pro Tools inhabits.  The editing features, of which I have always been impressed with, I now see as more powerful than ever.  Pro Tools is definitely the best editing software that lives in the highly competitive audio software market (audio editor that is… Pro Tools continues to be way behind the curve when it comes to MIDI editing… although I have heard intersting things about Pro Tools 8).  The selection modification tools and the region editing in particular were useful knowledge to add, and I have quickly adopted them into to normal workflow while using Pro Tools.

However, I do have some gripes about Pro Tools 201.  Firstly, now that I have completed 201, which was a nicely organized and thought out course, I can, in retrospect, criticize the 110 course even further.  The 110 Pro Tools certification course was a big pile of gobbedelygook.  It was as if the editor had dropped the 110 manuscript as he was on his way to devliver it, quickly picked up the dropped pages, and then turned it in to the publishers (publishing responsibilities fall squarely on Digidesin, who have decided to publish this entire course on their own).  201 was nicely set up in comparison, and transitioned nicely from section to section.  Where 201 did have some shortcomings, though, was in it’s content.  One would expect that the Pro Tools courses would get progressively more difficult and gain more depth, but the 201 course barely was not nearly as challenging as the first two.  This may have been because 201 focuses primarily on HD level systems which I have had quite a bit of experience with, but at times, 201 felt more like an argument for buying HD systems over LE and M-Powered systems (Although the same blatant advertising can be found on all three of the courses I have taken so far).

Still, all in all, I feel like my investment in the Pro Tools courses have been worth it.  My workflow has gotten considerably faster already, and the more work I do, more of the concepts that I’m learning about become all the more relevant.  My biggest concern is that, with the ridiculous quantities of information covered in such a short period of time in these courses, I hope the most imortant information comes back to me when I’m under the gun.

Coke Commercial

I am delighted to say that the commercial that I have been working on (see “Adventures on the Wacky Worm”, “How to Build a Transformer”, and “The Wrecking Crew of Sound Design”) has been posted online.  The commercial is for Coke and it is part of a nationwide competition.  Ten finalists were selected from an un-Godly amount of submissions based on plot idea and animatic.  The finalists then had a short amount of time to build a fifty second commercial for Coke.  The best of these 10 finalists (as decided by a panel of judges) is to be selected on February 21 and will then play at every movie theatre in the universe for a while before every movie (because the real reason we spend our hard-earned-dough on the movies is obviously to watch commercials).

Check out the commercial by clicking on the picture below, click on the “2009 Finalists” tab and then click on “Here We Go!”

The storytellers tried to put a bit too much story into fifty seconds and the visual effects guys may have dropped the ball, but, if I do say so myself, my team of three did a damn good job on the sound design.  Especially cool is the  fact that the vast majority of the sound design, including transforming roller coasters, a studio wall crash, and a roller coaster lift off was done with a lot of original sound effects- stuff we recorded.  We also recorded the band Blue of Noon who did a great job with the sound track.  Go on and check it out.