Author: Pedro Bosch Morales

HMM?

The first team I was assigned “the last AI”. I never got a reply from the team

So I switched to another team “loop”. In this team we are six sound artist working on this game. We divided the sounds we needed to record. When I joined the group most of the sounds were already assigned, so I mostly dedicated my time on the music.

Working with the sound arts team has been good, everyone has been organised and hard working. It was good that we managed to find a way that everyones skill was set to the work we were doing.

One of the most amazing artists working with creative coding right now.

Next year I’m taking the creative coding diploma and my goal for the end of the year is to have a fully functional hardware synth.

I want it to be a mix between analog and digital, the sound sources being digital and sound processors analog.

My idea is to make a portable SDR radio ‘Elektor SDRShield’ , which would be connected to an Arduino, and the Arduino also being my interface to make a granular synth in Pure Data. So the radio sounds are granulated without the use of a computer.

I found some great resources online for granular patches in Pd, one of them made by Richard Devine, where he replicated the code of a Morphagene. The idea is to modify these patches to my liking, instead of starting from strach. This allowing me to spend more time building the electronic circuits.

I would like to have something similar to the RES EQ by Serge, where I have multiple bands of resonating filters, have a spring reverb and maybe some distortion. I’m interested my tube amps, but since I’m new to soldering maybe I’ll leave that to a future project since it can be dangerous.

The idea is not to use sequencers but instead using contact mics and touch sensitive pads to control the parameters. Also having many sliders. I’ve found some good resources to build these in a cheap way

There is also this amazing DIY module called ‘sloths’, which creates random/chaotic modulations, I’ve found a way to build it myself and maybe incorporate it into the synth

My main contribution for the submission was the ambiences and music for the video-game. When I joined the group most of the foley sounds were already done or assigned to someone. So I took the responsibly of music.

Reading the notes given by the video-game students, I have a very small reference to what they wanted. Just using words like: emotive, melancholic or optimistic music. So I did the music without much reference to sound or visuals. Just did some ambient tracks that felt “video-gamey”.

I did some that were more intended as background music. Just doing drones and granular compositions. Nothing too complex.

The ‘optimistic’ piece was made in Ableton as a long jam. I wanted to only use square waves, which is what would make it sound the most suitable for a video-game, and I wanted to use many different sequencers that were sequencing each other, to get complex and evolving sequences, similar to using mixers or sequential switches on the modular to combine sequences. Used a quantized at the end with a mayor scale. I used some of the max for live sequencers, ‘step sequencer’ and ‘MDD Snake’ which is a clone of the Make Noise ‘Rene’, I love this sequencer because it can make really nice evolving stuff.

I ended up doing more than 10 different compositions all of them ranging between 8-20 minutes, because I though it having longer recordings would give us more possibility of being able to properly match the sound with the visuals when we actually had them. I also ended up using lots of old material and processing that, just to have even more material to work with

Having longer sounds in the video-game would make it sound more interesting instead of short loop, making something that sounds more generative, which I guess can evoke a sense of immersion.

It was pretty fun having to do lots of ambient tracks, this was something I was really into a couple of years ago, but feels like I kinda left that behind. So I was a great way to reconnect with this genre of music which I love

A couple years ago I sent a piece I made to a friend where I was using feedback in Ableton, sending the return tracks back onto itself and creating a composition out of that. She told me it reminded her of this guy called Thomas Ankersmit, I didn’t know about his work at that time, but I checked his performances out and feel in love with the way he interacted with the serge modular.

I had the pleasure of watching him perform a couple weeks ago, it was a lovely performance, very physical. Usually with modular you use lots of modulations to keep the sound moving, but he was using his hands more than cv, it was beautiful the way the interacted with the feedback, he was completely in control of it and using it in an emotive manner.

There was a point of the performance that lasted about 5 minutes, where he had this resonating feedback drone at an extremely high frequency, and he slowly pushed it louder and louder until it reached a point that I started to hear a new frequency that sounded like it came from inside my head, the more intense it got I felt like my eardrums were about to pop. I enjoy the first couple minutes but I got a bit unbearable by the end, regretting not carrying my ear plugs.

Regardless, It was a beautiful performance and opened my ears to the possibly of otoacoustic emissions.

When I heard my ear producing a new frequency it was not a psychoacoustic trick, I was actually a frequency resonating by the smalls hairs in my ear. You can actually record this frequency if you place a microphone besides your ear. Its like a filter when it starts to self resonate when the resonance is pushed too high.

Maybe this is something I would like to research into in the future.

I think that the idea of VR and AI is interesting and I know it could be the future of humanity by the looks of the Metaverse’s progress. It could be a useful tool in not just sound arts but also medical care, technology, and several other ways. One thing I always hear about VR is that it’s something I should stick to and focus on in my future endeavours.

But I don’t want to. I just don’t have any interest in it. Here’s why:

As for now, to me, it seems as a more complicated way of using spatial sound. It’s still an underdeveloped concept since it is so new. My only experience with VR comes from using the Oculus headsets and when I first put it on I was really surprised by its effect. It tricked my brain into thinking I was somewhere else. From a visual point of view, it’s something mind-blowing and outstanding but from a Sound Artist’s point of view, I feel as if there is not much to work with. Yes, there are some psycho-acoustics tricks you can pull off with VR but I don’t see the creativity in it. At least with my work, I always think there has to be an equal compromise between artistic and scientific work. With VR, I feel like it becomes 100% about science and less art. I rather stick to films, animations etc.

I understand that the goal is immersion, but there are so many other ways of achieving immersion through sound.

“Uncanny Valley is a term used to describe that uneasy feeling when you recognise a humanoid is lifelike, but you are emotionally unsettled by a sense of artificiality in its portrayal of humanity. What is it that is absent?”

During February, a “conference” took place in the Battersea Arts Centre there was a robot with the features of the author Thomas Melle, this identical robot gives the conference instead.

It talks about artificial intelligence and technology. Extremely thought provoking lecture, and a brilliant idea.

I lacked empathy towards the speaker, which was actually a robot made to look like Thomas Melle. The reason I say this is because I did not feel bad when walking into the auditorium late, as I usually would when I’m late to a lecture or live performance and the presenter/performer witnesses my late arrival. The way the robot looked, its movements as well as speech resembled a human but there was a surreal feeling about it, knowing it was not human.

During the talk there are moments where it feels like it’s almost human or you get distracted for a second, but it never really convinces you and leaves you in this uncanny valley.

This reminded me of what Mark mentioned in his class about lecture performance and performance as research, where the presentation is the piece of art

He used the example of Lawrence Abu Hamdan and Coco Cusco.

He was the bass player in the band ‘Can” they were interested in instant composition.

His mentor was Stockhausen.

He was interested in magnetic tape and shortwave radio. This is clear in his album ‘Movies’, a big influence in Byrne & Eno’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

81’s On the Way to the Peak of Normal is another interesting album that used these methods.