Posted by Andrew
Mon, 10 Jul 2006 10:56:35 GMT
Okay, so I haven’t really done anything about that sleep thing, but after reading a bit over the last few days, I feel like I can probably write something of moderate quality. What else should pop into my head, but music. In the last moments (while writing that previous sentence) the article has opened up a little from that, but that’s where I’ll start from.
A couple of years ago, when I was looking for my first phone, I was a different person. I was sucked in by some fancy advertising and features and instantly wanted a phone I saw which a) glowed in the dark, and b) could have recorded ringtones. I have always been against polyphonic ring tones, and I was even back then, but the alure of a real ringtone was too much for me. I found the one phone retailer who was still selling the damn things and sunk more money than I should have into that phone, after spinning my parents some cock and bull story about the benefits of this phone over one which was the same model as my sister’s phone (and considerable cheaper).
Then I got down to recording ring tones. I took my most recently purchased CD, Triple J’s Hottest 100, volume 11, and popped it in my CD player, held my phone in front of it, and recorded away. The two songs which I recorded I think ended up being The Nosebleed Section by The Hilltop Hoods, and Just Because by Janes Addiction. These ended up being pretty reasonable choices for ringtones. The distortion that the mic/speaker arrangement added didn’t sound too bad. It made The Nosebleed Section sound more vintage and grungy, and the riff from Just Because is just dirty electric guitar anyway, so nothing was lost there.
That has been my one foray into inappropriate use of music on a phone. The songs I chose worked, so it wasn’t so bad, but I’m a strong believer in conventional ringtones. The fact is, most songs are not mixed to be played on a crappy 1.5” (if that) speaker through a plastic case. They are mixed on high quality audio equipment to sound their best on high quality audio equipment, but still hold their own on your average piece of home audio equipment.
In most cases, your phone just can’t handle that kind of audio. Phones are better suited to arpeggiatic, mostly monotone (SHOCK HORROR!) ringtones. Funnily enough, these ringtones are easier to pick out in noisy environments!
I’d suggest that if you do have a song for your ring-tone, you think carefully about the song you choose. Something which has elements of silence, is peaky, not a wall-of-sound type sound, doesn’t depend on bass (your phone definitely can’t pull off that wicked bass riff from whatever crappy pop song you love), and most of all your ring tone needs to have a few high notes, to sing out over the noise at the party, so you can hear your parents/loved ones/trashed buddies calling you.
What is my current ring tone? I use two. My global ring-tone is some default techno thing (WAV not polyphonic) which sounds good on my phone. It’s got high notes, and it isn’t wall of sound. My secondary tone, for family and other important numbers, is some awful polyphonic deal which was the second best tone on my new phone. Perhaps later when I can afford a bluetooth phone I’ll start writing my own ringtones (hell, I wrote for Mum years ago, and she still uses it. No one has the same ringtone as her!)
Tags audio, cell phone, mobile phone, music, phones | 6 comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Andrew
Wed, 03 May 2006 14:40:00 GMT
The next month is going to go bananas for me. Really. I worked the dates out. It will be exactly a month. Most of that tasty yellow fruit will be thanks to the musical which our school is holding. I’m doing sound ops, probably for my second last year. I really do enjoy doing it, but sometimes it can be a real pain. I love the problem solving, the thinking on my feet, and I especially love having an answer for everything, but sometimes the “creatives” have a habit of getting in the way of that.
First off, don’t get me wrong, I like artists, I’d like to think on odd occasions I’m artistic, but I also like to think I don’t make other people’s lives hard in the process. This year, it’s been worse than I’ve ever seen it. I mean, I’ve done some interesting gigs, for a 17 year-old, I’ve done a lot. Last year I went from James Morrison to Narcotics Anonymous.
Musicals just knock the whole thing up a notch or two. In my experience actors are prissy and self centred at the best of times, but now add a bunch of hormones and teen angst, and remove a bunch of professionalism and then you’ve got a school musical.
Over the next few weeks or so, I intend to let you into my little world. I’ll have some wireless access at school, so I may even be able to post some very up-to-the-minute commentary during the thick of it.
I was going to start ranting about this year’s musical here and now, but for now I’ll just give you a hint on the people I’m working with through a story from two years ago:
It was our final dress rehearsal. All the cast were used to using mics now, and all had been lectured with what I call the mic talk. It’s goes something like this: “Once it is on (And it will be put on by a mic tech, not you or your similarly incompetent friends), do not touch it. Do not touch the mic pack, do not touch the mic itself. Do not fiddle with the tape, the cable or anything. Adjust your costume around it as carefully as possible. Do not sing or talk into another castmember’s mic at any time.” It’s really longer than that, and more flowery, but you get the jist.
I was running the desk which involves manually checking the audio from the radio mics 5 minutes before the show, then visually checking right the way through. I had done all my checks and everything was good. Second line of the show, no audio from one of the narrators. I went into a frenzy trying to find the fault, we had full signal, no audio. I got on the comms and got one of my mic techs to check it out. Stupid girl had turned off the audio switch on her pack. Apparently she didn’t trust me not to snoop on her conversations.
After that rehearsal, we had to convince the cast that I wasn’t about to grossly invade their privacy, and I would only manually check 5 minutes out from the start of the show, and only for a split second, to check that the audio was good. For good measure, we taped all the audio switches to the ON position, just to make sure there was no doubt which way the switch should be.
Along comes the matinee. Second line… NO AUDIO. I almost die. Again I send a mic tech in. The stupid girl has UNPLUGGED her mic from the pack. Some of you may think it came undone or something…. Nope. That thing requires you to twist it while pushing two bits on the side. After having a few words with her, it didn’t happen again.
After reading this, you might think I’m arrogant and not really good with people… I’d tend to disagree. While I sound nasty here, I’m nice to people even when I’m angry, to a point. I keep my cool on the outside, and I don’t really express too much of my frustration to anyone until it’s all done.
Tags actors, anecdotes, audio, cast, microhphones, mixing, musicals, rants | 4 comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Andrew
Sat, 17 Dec 2005 14:22:00 GMT
A recent study has said what I’ve been thinking for a long time. Young people listen to music at a higher volume than is safe. Of course, there was some information in there that was sobering for me as well. The report blames the iPod and the ear buds which accompany it for an increase in the amount cases of hearing loss in young people.
The ear buds which accompany the iPod (and pretty much all portable audio devices) feed sound down your ear canal fairly directly and reduce any attenuation which may occur winding down there, and even that of getting into the ear. That means that the volume which reaches your ear is increased by a sizable percentage. That isn’t always a bad thing… If you don’t care about losing your hearing.
Those of you who know me know that for a few months I had canalphones, which I really enjoyed, until the cabling died an unfortunate death. This has got me thinking about what possible damage I may have done to my ears. I am a music addict, I feel naked without my iPod to provide my life with the soundtrack which Steve Jobs tells me it deserves. I only recently moved to headphones over ear buds. While I listen to my music at a considerably lower volume than many, I listen for a much longer time than most, which concerns me.
A lot of what I have learned abou hearing loss is that exposure time is a big concern as well, so considering that during most of this year, I listened to music for the two hours of travel between school and home each day plus time between classes, that adds up to a considerable amount. Have I done any damage? Only time will tell.
I feel sorry for all those people who find it necessary to crank their iPods to 10, not thinking about any damage it could do to them… I suppose now you know.
Tags audio, science, technology | 2 comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Andrew
Fri, 16 Dec 2005 15:42:00 GMT
Anyone who has been sent or linked to some of my music probably knows that my track names are all followed by a 8 digit number. Some people think this is just me being insane. It’s actually me timestamping my work. When I get people to listen to my work, it often isn’t complete and I like to know which version is which, and of course which version is the latest. So there you go. Something almost completely irrelevent to this post :-)
I’m talking about timestamped music where the music sounds like it is from a particular time period. The easiest decade to pick is the 80s, because it was such a new sound, and a lot of people have stayed as far as possible away from that sound since (the people who haven’t are of particular relevance to this post).
I subscribe to a magazine called “Audio Technology”, it’s a cracking good read and keeps me in touch with a lot of what’s going on in live and recorded music (such that I could recognise the console and line array being used at the Oasis concert I went to), but I read an article a while ago which I now disagree with. The article suggested that producers and mix engineers shouldn’t make their music sound like a particular time.
This to me sounds like “Make your music as generic as possible, so it will be mediocre forever.” This makes me want to hurt someone so much. If you know anything about my music taste, I like a lot of older music, but at the same time I do like to keep up with what’s going on in music. I have quite a beef with people look back on music from days past and make like it’s all that ever will be good. There’s another thing that makes me want to hurt people (I’m really not that a violent a person, but music is a topic of much passion for me).
To me being tied to a time period is along the same lines as being tied to a genre (a lot of you will know how much I hate that). You can imagine how I react to one of my friends who is tied to a particular time period of a particular genre (many beatings, let me tell you). But also to ignore any time period because of the bad wrap it may get is also a grave sin against music. Enough of my whinging….
What I wanted to talk about was new music which sounds like it is from an earlier time. The best example I can think of is Wolfmother. My goodness! That band sounds like they fell into a time machine during the 70s and then fell into a recording studio. They are everything that 70s rock should be, and from a surprisingly small ensemble. Another that I noticed somewhat on the way home from work yesterday was the Killers. The Killers have a lot of new ideas, yes, but they also have some really classic synth sounds which are truly awesome.
This music, because of its class and awesome sound will be truly timeless because it’s a good sound, not because of what time period it is from. Another example from a while ago is Stravinsky. That man is a genius. My music teacher played a piece of his to our music class and we all mistook it for a Handel or similar baroque composer, not a neo-classical 20th century genius. (He did more than just Baroque, but that’s the example I have)
So what? I suppose a lot of this was a poorly structured vent, but I’d also like it if it encouraged people to stop stigmatising eras and genres, but listen to music because it is good, not because of the images which it has or whatever else. Listen out for old sounds, and when they are cool, give credit where credit is due.
I might later post some tracks which are worth listening to for this kind of thing. For now, you can post yours as comments. (Go wild Michael :P)
Also, as some of you may have been very concerned about Nat. Her arms have been reattached, but on the wrong shoulders. The good news is that… Actually, there isn’t. Efforts will be made to correctly position the arms tomorrow.
Tags audio, music | 1 comment | no trackbacks
Posted by Andrew
Fri, 09 Dec 2005 19:35:00 GMT
I came across this really cool iTunes signature maker which takes your songs in itunes, puts them through some cool algorithms and gives you a “signature” made up of the songs which it has sampled. My first one sounded pretty cool, but I’m trying for a bigger, broader sample, and I’ll post it when it’s done.
This only works on OS X and Windows with iTunes. Sorry to any chumps not using iTunes :)
Hippies have expressed dismay at the rumours of Nat’s contractual negotiations with Dove. One hippy told our reporter “Man, we thought she was cool, but dude she sold out and like, that’s not like, cool, and yeah.”
Tags audio, itunes, music | no comments
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