Constructing the Trees

The construction of the trees has begun.



Students are disassembling computer speakers and stripping the wires.

The speakers will be wired in parallel to form speaker arrays and hooked up to battery powered amps.

Small hubs will be connected to the amps for visitors to plug in their smart phones and play the QR code linked pieces they composed.

The trees are hosts to ambient compositions.












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Soundcloud is cool!

My students have uploaded their arch form compositions onto their own Soundcloud Accounts.  After the students liked their accounts to mine, we spent the class period sharing and evaluating the pieces to develop critical skills.

This was most valuable in helping the students examine what makes a good composition and what might be less successful techniques for expressing their musical intent.  We will jump right back into composition with a piece about cars.  I will cut

down the timeline to about 4 days from start to finish since they have acquired the necessary skills to create the loops from scratch.

I also had the students download the free Soundcloud app for iPhone/iPod and Android.  This wonderful app allows you to record, geotag, and upload recordings from your mobile device onto your Soundcloud account.  This allows almost anyone to use Soundcloud for capturing sounds much like Flickr or Picasa lets you deal with images.  Very exciting!

Some of the best features of Soundcloud include the ability to store any size file online, embed customizable players into wikis and blogs, and the social networking connectivity of the site.  Like many sites, Soundcloud offers their services for free up to two hours of storage.

I think I will have the kids make simple movie versions of their songs to host on our YouTube channel since there is no limit to how much we can put there.

Arch Forms

By Kelly Martin (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-2.5], via Wikimedia Commons

My Music Appreciation classes will be finishing up their first compositions tomorrow. After making piezo microphones, sampling various instrument and noise-makers, and uploading the resulting meta-tagged loops to Soundcloud accounts, they are experimenting with various combinations of their sounds to write a piece.

I am using this technique to introduce them to the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), in this case, GarageBand. Each day, I begin by demonstrating three aspects of the DAW, then letting them experiment with their loops and the sound.

Yesterday, we listened to a number of examples of electronic music composition from the soundtrack to "The Social Network" by Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor (aka Nine Inch Nails).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m80r4mhZ5ak&feature=channel_video_title]

We listened critically- especially using our "reduced listening" skills, to evaluate the timbral qualities of the music. Especially interesting is how economically the opening track, "Hand Covers Bruise", uses it's material. We discussed how some sounds harmonize or complement each other versus sounds that might antagonize, and what the resulting effect is. We tracked the pacing of the musical material and how many sounds and at what dynamic level Reznor lets you hear at any given moment in the piece.

The students were then challenged to use the additive process exemplified by "Hand Covers Bruise" to create an "arch" of music. Care is to be taken to consider the timbral effects of consonance and dissonance with the choice of loops and effects. Their forms are to be palindromic in nature- where the sound is subtracted in the reverse order that it appeared.

So far, their bag of DAW tricks includes manual beat-slicing, meta-tagging the transients so the loops beat-sync, reverb, volume, echo, panning, and the various effects included in the GarageBand software. Currently, they are not allowed to use any pre-fab loops or MIDI- with the exception of a drum beat. I let them import one beat so they can hear if their loops sync properly, but I do not let them keep it in the piece.

Lots Happening! OHM, Soundcloud, & compositions!

First, this year's OHM Festival of art, music, and new media will be hosted in the Berendo Building! The plan is to have a kind of circus, with art on the hallway walls, music in the orchestra room, video looped in the video lab, sound art installations in nooks and crannies, and film in the choir room.

During the week of April 18th, classes will be invited to walk the exhibition during the day. On the evening of the 19th, we plan to have an open house style exhibition in Berendo. I am especially excited to have parents see the work of all of our art students and hear the music classes sing and play.

Over the past week in class, we have been refining our Audacity skills and cutting loops. My students have been generally getting progressively faster at creating the material. I have stumbled upon something that may fall under the law of unintended consequences, however. Because multiple students use the same computers over different classes, some students are stealing other classes loops and uploading them to Soundcloud as their own. I may have to require that everyone save their loops on their own media. When I get administrator privileges for the lab, I can batch erase the computers daily.

An immediate problem I see with this is that students may only have one backup of their work. They could back up to the cloud, I suppose, but with slow upload speeds, it may not be a practical solution. I will have to experiment with this. until then, I need to be extra vigilant on their behalf.

My student have created Soundcloud accounts to upload their finished loops. This is a wonderful service! They get to store 2 hours of soundfiles in the cloud for free. The site provides an mp3 preview player, either as a single track, or a jukebox. You can download them, or play them online.

The accounts also have a social networking aspect to them. We will all link our accounts together so we can share tracks. I will use it as an opportunity to teach about Creative Commons Licensing as well as how to attribute work.

An easy test for a cheater will be to have them create a loop right in front of me- from start to finish. This first time a student makes a loop, it seems to take somewhere around 20 minutes because of their unfamiliarity with the software and especially the counting of beats. The overall workflow between recording, using the editor, and properly placing metatags in the Apple Loop Utility is a bit complicated.

By the end of this portion of the assignment, they should have created and uploaded 25 loops. After 25-times through the process, they should be fairly expert at creating- at least understanding the workflow. Any student who hasn't gone through the process all 25-times will not be able to produce a loop on the spot.

Get ready!

Recording with the piezoelectric microphones in class

The perils of recording with contact mics

Day two of recording sounds. Thank goodness I demonstrated making a contact mic to each small group. In two days, about eight microphones have broken! Fortunately, I have a group of backup mics to pass out to my classes! I would not have predicted this, even though the mics are relatively fragile.




Mostly this is due to over-enthusiastic taping of the piezo element onto the object being recorded.

Students seems to be getting the hang of using the various flavors of Audacity to record. They have even improved upon my workflow suggestions!

Originally, I suggested that they record a short sound (10-20 seconds), then export it immediately as an aiff or wav.

Instead, some students made multiple recordings in the same workspace, then muted all tracks save the single sound being exported. Much more efficient!

The next step will be learning to edit and modify the samples into usable loops. This includes learning how to properly apply metatags with the Apple Loops Utility as well as sequencing in GarageBand.

Because GarageBand is proprietary, it is difficult for students without Macs to work at home. I plan to touch on open-source alternatives in the near future.

On my YouTube Channel, I have been posting similar examples of this kind of workflow with my "cat dance" series of experiments using a Korg Monotron.

The Monotron is a wonderful analog ribbon synthesizer that is about the size of a wallet. I record improvisations into the computer, chop up some samples, then make short electronic music sketches.

Here are some examples:



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Recording Sounds

Today, we hooked up our piezo mics to all kinds of instruments and objects including Indonesian frog-callers, toy accordion, bajo, cajon, toy piano, kalimba, and sleigh bells.

Before turning them loose, I demonstrated the recording process.  As a "light at the end of the tunnel", I created a modified loop and played it in GarageBand.

First, I showed them how to tape the microphone wire onto the side of the instrument to relieve stress on the small lead wires and solder joints.

After plugging into the computer, I demonstrated how to set the proper sample size, bit rate, and file types in the preferences pane.  As a reference, we recorded as AIFF, 44,100, and 16-bit. I did this to facilitate assembling projects in GarageBand.

I checked the input levels with a sample recording, then recorded about 10 seconds of improv.  I did a quick edit, counted off eight beats, then applied some effects.  I added a wet phaser and reversed the clip.  I exported the loop into the Apple Loops Utility, added metatags on the transients, and exported that into GarageBand.

Because of the metatags, I could now manipulate the loop in GarageBand.  I demonstrated how to sync it with other pre-fab loops and create a simple piece.  This whole process took me about 7 minutes. The remainder of the time was spent with the students working in groups to build a small library of recorded sounds from which they will learn to create loops, and eventually, compose a piece.

I should mention that I teach them to use Audacity so we have an open-source-cross-platform tool students can use at home, either for homework, or hopefully, their own projects.  In the absence of one-to-one, this helps level out the technological playing field.

Next week, we will continue collecting sounds, before I teach them how to edit and place metatags into the files.










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Tutorial Video on Piezoelectric microphones for posterity

Today I finished making a tutorial video about contact microphone construction.  Besides the explanation of how to make a microphone, I tried to convey the idea that once you capture signal, you are only limited by your imagination in how you use it.

I made a little electronic-improvisation in Ableton using a few loops and a number of audio effects on our video clip.  First, I matched the sound, as captured by the Sony recorder in the video, to the video from the point-and-shoot.  I then loaded the clip into Ableton and did a brief sketch with four samples of the video.

Finishing mics and researching unusual contact mic uses

Period one has finished mic construction and testing. While period one, group three built, the other students researched unique artistic uses for contact mics online.

I am curious to read their posts to see if anything unusual surfaces. I hope they dig deep. Even with slightly esoteric subjects like this, I am increasingly finding many answers coming from link farms or other content scrapers.

It is frustrating, and, it shows that students need to keep critical distance from online sources until they can be properly vetted.

It also shows the need to search deep into Google for relevant information. I will do a bit if experimenting with some other search engines to see how the results stack up. My gut tells me Google will still probably be best, and, it will be interesting to see if this holds true.

Wondering aloud, I wonder if there are Yahoo or Google communities around this particular topic?

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Wrapping up mic construction

I've got quite a collection of mics that I've been making as I demonstrate. I think this weekend, I'll make some sample recordings and a tutorial vid for the next step.

Students not making mics have been researching and blogging about the Hornbostel-Sachs classification of instruments. Hopefully, considering instruments by how they create sound will inspire some unusual electroacoustic creations as we move towards sonifying the trees.

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Piezo mics

Mics wound and bagged, ready to record! I think my kids have enjoyed making them. I hope they feel the satisfaction of having made something with their hands.

The trick will be to use the mics as tools of creativity!

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Piezo contact microphone construction

Today is the second of what I project to be three days of contact mic construction.

First, I demonstrated how to make a microphone for the whole class.  I took special care to point out pitfalls and how to avoid injury.  Then, I brought students by their workgroups to a small table where i walked them through the process.

Students strip microphone cable, twist the copper, and solder it to piezo discs. We test them on our Sony handheld recorder, plugging them into the mic jack and tapping them to see if we get signal.

While small groups construct mics, the rest of the class continues to research and blog about their mythical trees. They are looking for inspiration in myth, art, and poetry as they plan to sonify a real tree.

The microphone construction is slow. It is difficult to strip and twist such small wires. I have also inhaled way too much vaporized solder as students operate the iron for the first time. About 65% of all the students have finished their contact mics.




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The seed is planted!

Today, the Electroacoustic Tree project comes online.  We are all creating blogs to document the process.  Links to all of the blogs will be hosted on this project homepage.

The idea is to sonify the trees in the courtyard.  By using computers, piezoelectric microphones, amps, and speaker arrays, we will turn the trees into musical sound sculptures.

To date, my classes have been split into small workgroups, researched different trees in myth, art, and science, selected trees, and are researching interesting ideas about their trees.

Tomorrow, we will learn how to build contact microphones out of piezo elements.  While portions of the class work on construction, others will be learning or refining their computer DAW skills.

Stay tuned!