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.

Pro Tools 110

Wow!  I took and passed the Pro Tools 110 certification exam today.  I had procrastinated and perspired for a solid five days trying to cram the ridiculous amount of info rammed into 110 into my wee brain.  This course is almost like all of the afterthoughts of 101 rammed indiscriminately into 400 or so pages, without any rhyme or reason.  But somehow I managed to pass with a 46 out of 50 (45 and above is passing).

Once again I was struck and surprised by the gi-normous amount of things that Pro Tools can do.  Presumably desinged to confront the onslaught of innovation coming from competitors such as Logic Pro and Ableton Live, the Elastic Audio and MIDI sections of 110 were enough to make my head spin.  Now it’s off to 201, where I’m told that 110 begins to seem like child’s play.  As long as it’s a little better organized, however, I look forward to moving on to 201.

Pro Tools 101

This past weekend I began an intensive crash course designed to teach you everything there is to know about Pro Tools, the standard professional post-production and music audio software.  I made the switch to Pro Tools from Apple’s Logic Pro, and quite frankly, have never understood what all the fuss was about over Pro Tools.  Logic had more options, more plug-ins, surround sound capabilities, and free time code.  When compared to Logic (and other audio applications), Pro Tools did not seem to really compare.  But my school pushed Pro Tools, so I begrudgingly made the switch.

This quarter I decided I would take a course designed to really get to know Pro Tools, and I’m quickly realizing that I had underestimated Pro Tools, and that maybe I should accept that people who have been doing audio for a living in the last twenty years might just know what they’re talking about.  I only completed the first of four weekend crash courses, but have already changed my workflow to allow for my new knowledge.  The intuitive interface and workflow in Pro Tools allows you to do a great deal in a very short amount of time.

I highly recommend any of you audio pros or wannabee pros or hobbyists to check into the Pro Tools 101, 110, 201, and 210 courses if you have a facility to go to and the means to pay for it.  It definitely will benefit you editing and mixing chops.

I now see that maybe a lot of my gripes about Pro Tools could have been a little unfair.  With Pro Tools 8 around the corner, however, I am not complaining if they want to throw some extras my way.

Adventures on the Wacky Worm

Day three of the sound library adventure led us, appropriately enough, to Adventure Landing in Jacksonville, Florida.  We needed a roller coaster sound, and what better way to get a roller coaster sound than by recording a roller coaster?  The folks at Adventure Landing were amazingly cool about the whole recording process.  We got there early enough so that no other patrons were wanting to ride their coaster, and they let us take advantage of the whole place…. on the house!

The in-house coaster at Adventure Landing is the Wacky Worm.  Although it may not look like much, and indeed we are going for a massive, scream-inducing coaster, the sounds we got from this ride sound very big and thrill-inducing.  The size of this small operation may have been to our advantage even, due to the close proximity we were allowed.

There was literally no place on the tracks that we were not able to record with the help of a short boom pole and a Neumann shotgun mic.

Some of the best sounds came from the PZM stereo mic:

This next one created some particularly interesting sounds, although the vibrating metal got suprisingly violent to Brandon’s ears.

Here is our tour guide and super cool Wacky Worm conductor.  We were given free reign to explore the entire Adventure Landing operation.

Amazing what you can do with a couple of mics, a Sound Device field recorder and a Wacky Worm.

How to Build a Transformer

On the second day of the commercial sound design, the task was to build the sound of a row of chairs transforming into a roller coaster (as I said in the previous post, this commercial is a tad outrageous).  Now, I was a fan of the Transformers cartoons as much as any other kid currently between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five years old.  But I didn’t want our transformer to borrow from the synth cheese that was so relished in the eighties.  So we set out to record a bunch of different moving parts, as many as we could think of, so that when put together, our transforming row of chairs/roller coaster would seem “realistic”.

The different velocities of all the machines we recorded had some interesting effects.  Same goes for moving the machines back and forth across the mic.

Below was the highlight of the day.  I have no idea the make or year of this beauty, but a vintage projector gave us a plethora of interesting transforming sounds.

And here is Brandon and his pal the Icon taking all of it in:

Some intense editing needs to happen first, but a transforming row of chairs/roller coaster will soon emerge.

The Wrecking Crew of Sound Design

I have recently begun preparations for the sound design of a television commercial.  The company will remain undisclosed at this time, but the plot of the fifty second slot is outrageous and, thankfully, calls for some ridiculous sound design.  Trains, zombies, rock bands, and more will be somehow thrown together in under a minute.

Today is the first day of the project, and my crew of three brave designers (myself, Brandon Jiaconia, and Ana Cetina) started building up a sound library.  The first sound effect on the list: The sound of a train wrecking through the wall of a recording studio.

The first step was to go gather some props:

This is Brandon and I, nearly, at our most scavernous.

Our budget pretty much allowed for whatever we could find in the dumpster.  So we picked up the best looking scraps that three different Savannah dumpsters had to offer and went on back to the studio.

Complete debauchery followed.

Here is Brandon and I beginning our mess:

And here is Ana and I enjoying the after math (before the clean up):

That’s going to be all I share for now.  Come back each day for some sound samples and some more journal entries as we knock out some of the funnest sound design I have ever gotten to participate in.