I re-visited Suffolk New College today, this time to deliver two lectures on Star Wars sound effects and Film music, it was good to have both music and media students in attendance as it was relevant to both groups.

I took them through the first 10 minutes of the “Star Wars: Clone Wars” cartoon analysing the sound design and through the first 10 minutes of “Star Wars: A New Hope” analysing (and in some cases note for note) the music of John Williams.

The lectures have been a success at University Campus Suffolk and Anglia Ruskin and they certainly seemed to enjoy it and and take on some of the terminology used in film music and sound. Although this was to be a brief introduction, I hope some of them go on to extend their studies in this area.

I was fortunate to do a series of workshops for the music performance and production students at Suffolk New College, Ipswich it was mainly geared around circuit bending, not just making sounds but showing them how they could also be used. Taking toys a part, bending them and making beats out of the sounds we captured. All sounds in the sample loop below were from super cheap toys we hacked up in the workshop. Each of the groups and days were different, naturally the performance students wanted to know about different thing to the production students and good fun was had by all. Have a listen here.

Today was different to the other lessons, we started by looking at organic sounds, sounds with no electronic circuits. I had asked the students last week to bring in something metal, something all in one piece like a spoon or a fork, we simply attached the item to a piece of string and held each end of the string to our ears. The sounds is incerdibly different as it allows the energy in the lower frequencies to make it to our ears. Hanging the items from a microphone stand and using a Cducer Contact Mic borrowed from friend, colleague and composer Mike Challis, it allowed an even fuller sound to be heard in the headphones. We even used a whammy bar that was in the studio and used that as the instrument itself.

After this we had a look at timbre, which the students had already learnt about, but had never seen the concepts behind it. So using Sygyt’s Overtone Analyzer, I played several different sounds through it, I explained how we could alter a sound of a piano to sound like a guitar by making several cahnges to it’s properies. The image above is of the sounds produced by a Nintendo DS altering the the wave duty at 12.5%, 25%, 36.5%, 50% etc.

Below are some sounds recorded from spoons first with a normal SM58 type clone and then with the Cducer Contact Mic.

SpoonSounds

Today was the follow up workshop to the lecture last week, with a suitacse full of Game Boys and a Commodore 64 the students got to make sounds for themselves using some of my equipment.

After recording them we put the sounds on their memory sticks to take away to be used in their own music. It was good fun and you can hear some of the sounds that were made below, and it’s also nice that the further we get into exploring sounds the better questions start coming out and the more interest in how sounds are made from scratch, which is something we will explore soon.

Sad to say but this will be the last venture into electronically made sounds for a while, next week we will be looking at sounds that we might otherwise not even hear and how we can access them.

ChiptuneSounds

Todays lesson was more of a performance than anything, I brought in a whole host of machines, two Game Boys, two Game Boy Advances and a DS and ofcourse my wonderful touch screen Mac controlling everything and we rammed that into Korg Mini Kaos Pad and out to a PA.

After a history and how I got into it, I gave a short performance and then let the students have a go on my instruments.  It was good fun, but next week they will get to use my equipment the whole lesson to create sounds to include in their own music and I will be taking in extra machines like a BBC Micro and a Commodore 64 to play on as well. Listen to some of the sounds they made today below (Warning Loud)

ChiptuneNoises

Enjoy!

This was a follow up to the Circuit Bending Lecture @ Suffolk New College, this time it was the students turn, after last lesson they were sent off to look through charity shops and car boot sales.  Some came back with some baragins, some didn’t.

I brought in my enormous suitcase full of  components and crocodile clips. Some good sounds were made, as you can hear below. (Warning Pretty Loud) CircuitBendingSNC Enjoy!

I am very fortunate in that, amongst my research and music composing I get to teach music. Not music in the traditional sense, and certainly not things like music theory, but things like sound design, Circuit Bending, Graphical Scores and Found Sound.

Today was a circuit bending lecture, I sat at a small table with the students huddled around me and over the course of the three hours I disected two keyboards and discussed basic electronics. Below are some of the sounds I made with the two keyboards I demonstrated, they were amazed at the sheer range of sound that a £3 or $5 keyboard could make with a few simple additional components.

Next week is their turn, they have been sent off to find cheap keyboards and electronic musical toys from charity shops and car boot sales, for us all to take apart next week. So I will post some examples of the noise we make next week. The overall aim with the two groups over the course of the year is to give them 22 very different ways of looking at sound, and we are only on week three.

CircuitBendingLecture128K

I ran a new workshop today for the first time, graphic scores or graphical notation, which is something I use quite often as I am not entirely comfortable with standard notation and often use colours , words or even morse code when writing down ideas for music. I often see music in my head, ideas and sounds come about via a very synesthesia like technique. It was good to have an entire group of students draw graphical scores, a lot of them for the first time, so crayons, coloured paper and felt tip pens we spent about an hour and a bit just sketching out ideas.  There were some very colourful and elaborate scores, I however very amusingly stuck to traditional black and white for my own examples. The session was used to highlight the uses such as the alleviation of writers block, limitations and the ambiguaty and freedom of graphical scores and by the end of the session several of the students were keen to interpret and perform theirs and their colleagues scores. It was a very enjoyable workshop and certainly one I will run again in the future.

Pixelh8 “Whats In a Name”

Pixelh8 “Jaw Tooth”

Today I taught my first lesson to a group of Higher National Diploma students, in the very same room I was taught music theory in fifteen years ago. There were no guitars then, no drum kits and certainly no electronic keyboards. There was a brown upright piano, with an upright man who wore a brown jumper, brown trousers and had a brown moustache. He taught me music theory and taught me well. He frowned on the fact I was going to use it to write electronic music and tried to convince me not to pursue it. Fifteen years later I have his job, teaching music in the very same room. There are guitars, and drums and electronic keyboards. There will be graphical scores, there will be electronic music, circuit bending, vintage synths and there will be noise. I have yet to find a suitable brown jumper.

It was very enjoyable and I look forward to next week.