Thursday, October 29, 2009

I am glad to have finally finished my music concrete project. Although at first this seemed to be a simple project it took a lot more time than I originally anticipated.

For my sound source it seemed logical that I choose huskies, since (besides the fact that I have two of my own) the sounds they make have always made me laugh. Huskies have a unique way of communicating that is somewhere between a howl and a bark. Most people call it "husky talk." I had originally wanted to sample the sounds of my own dogs, but since I don't have any great way to record them right now, I chose to use a clip off You Tube of a dog named Mishka.

This particular video is hysterical and most people seem to agree as it has more than 1.5 million views. In the video the dog's owners are trying to get him to say "I love you," and it's amazing how close he comes. I also added a 1 sec clip off of a Beastie Boys track of another dog saying "I love you." I used this clip for a rhythmic foundation, alternating with left and right speaker channels. I gradually add in Mishka's vocalizing which builds in intensity towards the middle at which point I combine two segments to create a syncopated type of effect. This particular rhythm I carry to the end, while the howling and "talking" builds in intensity to a full husky chorale.

The piece ends with the syncopated effect repeating and then abruptly becoming distorted and then stopping. This effect I created with the Wa Wa control and also by pitch manipulation. I used a total of six separate tracks to create this piece. This project was a lot of fun for me, and I hope to recreate it in the near future only this time use my own dogs as a source material.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Here is blog number one.

Since this is the blog for my Tech Trends class, I'd like to use this opportunity to discuss the NYU server. Why is it that whenever I am trying to work on an assignment for tech trends, the NYU server is down? How am I supposed to finish anything if I can't access the server. Does anyone else have this problem?

On another note, I don't really have any idea where this blog is going to go. Hopefully it will gather some kind of focus or direction, we shall see.

On the topic of gifs, I am having trouble creating gifs with the pictures that I used for the image assignment. Whenever I try to export it says there are too many colors. Not sure how to fix this but, I will do more research tomorrow.