Sound Design

Magical Music Gloves

Posted by sensuousenemy on March 7, 2013
Posted in: Music, Sound Design. Tagged: , , . Leave a Comment

Post by JAI
Award winning composer, vocalist, and superheroine

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6btFObRRD9k]

I’m always interested in new music performance technology, especially tools that enhance the output without hindering the process of performing live music. Imogen Heap, a brilliant composer and award winning artist, recently promoted and performed with a pair of the magical “Music Gloves” at Wired 2012.

Heap visited the MIT Media Labs in 2009, where she met Elly Jessop, who designed the original gesture gloves that could record and loop the voice with just a few intuitive hand gestures. When Elly sang a note, she could move her hand and change the instrument, vibrato, timbre, or a moving harmony. The combination of the intuitive music and movement excited Heap so much that she called Tom Mitchell, who had worked with her to program her Monome for a Letterman performance, and explained the idea to him . Tom loved the idea, and after receiving funding from the University of Western England to do a research paper, Heap asked 5DT for a set of gloves to begin the process.

It took several years for a team from the University of West England, along with Kelly Snook Adam Stark, Hanna Perner-Wilson, Rachel  Freire, Becky Stewart, and a few others to fully develop the tool.  An Xbox Kinect sits at the back of the stage and translates Heap’s position to provide different effects and layers. The floor literally becomes a playground, where she can walk in any direction and change the sound. As Heap moves toward the back of the stage the sound gets fuller and much bigger, but if she moves towards the audience at the front of the stage, the sound then becomes softer and more intimate.

Due to how Imogen makes her music, 50% of what she is doing on stage is never seen. She just presses a button and new sounds begin to move and pulsate. With this new technology, the audience can now see and hear everything she is doing on stage during her performance. The music Heap now performs is literally 3D in action. After many years and hours and hours of programming, the gloves via the user interface, Heap finally has a perfect and completely controllable live instrument using only her body on stage in order to shape and create her beautiful intelligent music!

Sources:

Imogen Heap’s Wired 2012 Performance
Imogen Heap “The Gloves”
Ted Talks 2012 – She has music in her hands”

Writing Great Songs: How You Start Can Be Crucial

Posted by sensuousenemy on July 20, 2012
Posted in: Industrial Music, Music, New Music, Radio Active Music, Sensuous Enemy, Sound Design, Writing. Leave a Comment

Post by JAI

Award winning composer, vocalist, and superheroine

Here is a great article about five different ways to start writing songs. We attempt to do this by switching between programming and piano. Recently, John has been starting the songs with a few drum tracks and synth tracks and then I add lyrics and melody lines. This works well for us some of the time. But what I find really works for me as a composer/artist/singer, is to sit down at my piano and come up with a song that I can just transfer to John once the core of it is complete.

The main struggle for me is finding the right time and energy to sit down and play the piano for a couple of hours. It takes a lot of discipline, which I’ve never been very good at when it comes to playing the piano for more than 20 or 30 minutes.
So, after reading this article, we might attempt to begin our songs with a different approach and see how it goes.

Casket Recording Booth

Posted by sensuousenemy on May 19, 2012
Posted in: Recording, Sound Design. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a Comment

Post by JAI

Award winning composer, vocalist, and superheroine

Casket Recording Booth #1

Casket Recording Booth #1

We recently built a new vocal recording booth under our basement steps, where the band rehearsal room is located. With all the padding, it’s about the size of a casket when you close the door, so I’m glad I like the coziness of enclosed spaces…NOT. John had large bass traps from his studio he brought over and we cut them to fit into the corners of the bottom of the stairs. They are made out of insulation and gauze.  Wait…that’s what a mummy is made out of right?  Hmmm I’m sure I won’t be in there for more than an hour at a time, so I’ll just have to think about it as being ‘headspace’ and it will be a lot easier to not feel clausterphobic.

Speaking of  ‘headspace’ that lil box could also be used for sensory deprivation sessions.  Well whatdya know, that closet will serve two functions!

Casket Recording Booth #2

Casket Recording Booth #2

We recorded some sample backing tracks last week and I think the space is going to work out perfectly for us.  This will save us a lot of time traveling to other cities in order to just record Vox.  Although we love spending time with our recording and producing friends Dan Clark and Wade Alin, time is a rare commodity and most of us understand how valuable it is. We will however still need to record grinding guitars, so I’m sure we’ll make some visits from time to time.

We’re pretty new at all this live recording stuff, so we’re going to need some pointers to make sure we’re doing it correctly.  If you have any suggestions, please let us know and we’ll try to implement them if possible.  Until our next release, we’ll keep plugging away at recording stuff to see what we can come up with!

Related Links:

http://www.audio-production-tips.com/recording-vocals-basics.html#

http://www.homestudiocorner.com/processing-vocals-part-1-recording-the-vocal/

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/oct98/articles/20tips.html

Writing Intentions

Posted by sensuousenemy on February 23, 2012
Posted in: Music, Sound Design, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

Post by John Freriks

Programmer, guitarist, geneticist

I was digging through my backup hard drive, and came across some of the original project files for songs off our last 2 releases. So just for fun, I’m going to walk through the parts and give you an inside look at how our tracks come together.

We’ll start with Intentions. Everyone seems to like this track. No two songs are written the same way for us – Sometimes Jai has a melody and lyrics that I build soundscapes around; sometimes I’ll have the backing tracks 90% done before she starts putting words to them; sometimes we just jam until it sounds good (or it doesn’t, we drink heavily, and then quit in dejection.)

Intentions was written over a two week period, which is ridiculously fast for us. We’ll often tinker with a song for months on end (Kali, for instance, took 9 months to complete) so having a track come together so quickly and the results being as good as they were very welcome. We had just recorded three songs for the Parity EP and weren’t happy with one of them. We needed a third track to put out the EP. It turned out to be one of our most popular songs.

Tech stuff: key of A minor, 127 BPM
Gear used:
Access Virus
EXS 24
reFX Nexus
Schecter Hellraiser
Peavey and Mesa Boogie amps

Jai came to me with a recording of her playing piano and singing the first verse. I started with an arpeggiated bass to follow along with the chord progression (Am-F-G-F) – the part started as an arp preset in reFX Nexus, but as the song grew I transcribed the arpeggiator pattern onto a Virus bass patch so I would have more control over certain sections (this is a very common trick I use.)

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/37267182″ iframe=”true” /]

Nothing can fill out or wash out a mix like strings. For the into I was going for big and brooding – The string line harmonized with the bass pretty well, but to keep the build up from being too repetitive I ended up cutting the bass out of the first few measures.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/37267190″ iframe=”true” /]

The plinky lead sound is a pair of Virus patches – one is a fuller sound, the other gives the high end some distortion- The verse was MIDI notes drawn onto Logic’s piano roll. The chorus was actually a part that was cut from Whispers and I had always wanted to reuse it somewhere – and it just happened to fit Intentions! The sound is tinny on it’s own, but works in the mix.

Verse

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/37267189″ iframe=”true” /]

Chorus

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/37267188″ iframe=”true” /]

The intro noises were fun to make. The voice is from the last interview with Lee Harvey Oswald before he was shot – It has nothing to do with the song and I’m not making any statement about whether I think he killed JFK or not. His voice on the lo fi recording sounded cool, and it sounded even better after is was run through a huge reverb and Audio Damage‘s Dr. Device . The other sound is some generic pad run through Audio Damage’s Replicant plugin, then 100% wet through Logic’s Space Designer reverb.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/37267187″ iframe=”true” /]

Guitar – For those of you who don’t know Dan Clark, you should. In addition to his band The Dark Clan, he’s been in Null Device and is currently in Stromkern. He’s recorded and produced Chemlab, Ego Likeness, The Gothsicles, and Caustic among others. And us, of course. What does this have to do with guitar? Well, Dan’s the best guitar player I’ve ever met. Dan uses DragonForce songs as warmup exercises. I should also mention he’s probably the nicest guy you’ll ever meet. Anyways, guitar – I’m a hack on it, so playing in front of Dan was equal parts terror and inspiration. He can hear when you’re gripping the neck too tightly and pulling the strings slightly sharp. He knows if you’re holding the pick wrong for the amount of attack a certain part needs. And he’ll hear this through while the entire mix is playing through his headphones. It’s nuts.

All the parts were played on a Schecter Hellraiser tuned to D Standard, and were recorded through Dan’s Peavy 5150 and Mesa/Boogie Triple Rectifier. If I recall correctly, the verses and solo were on the 5150 and the chorus was the Triple Rec. For the verse I mirrored the low string part, and Dan wrote out a harmony line for me to play over it. I’m glad he did – the harmony moves between consonance and dissonance and ups the tension of the verse.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/37267185″ iframe=”true” /]

The solo (the first I ever wrote no less) is in the A double harmonic scale – I didn’t know this when I was writing it, I just liked the middle eastern feel of the jump between the minor 2nd and major 3rd. It’s double tracked, and you can hear when I fell off time with myself. Dan wrote me in a harmony line and the high notes at the end – more ideas I wouldn’t have thought of on my own, but are the little extra touches that give a song it’s edge.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/37267184″ iframe=”true” /]

Put those all together along with a good beat and some creative flourishes from a ridiculously talented producer, and you’ve got one hell of a track.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/37402118″ iframe=”true” /]
Click the download button to grab the instrumental version

Links:
Sensuous Enemy – Parity on Bancamp.com
Listless Works (Dan’s studio)
The Dark CLan