I’ve found edublogs to be too unreliable, and have therefore moved my blog (address below).

http://hvwheat.blogsite.org

Have spent some time considering how I want the painting to be read, and have come up with a few ideas.

The first example shows the picture being read from left to right, in the same way as a piece of text.

The next example shows the picture being read from the centre outwards. I think this would suit a picture that had a focal point in the centre, however for the piece I have chosen I don’t think it will be suitable.

Finally, I have considered reading the painting in the way shown below. At the moment, this is the direction i am favouring, as I believe that the eye is drawn to the darker colours at the bottom of the painting initially, before being lead out to the lighter areas.

I have devised a basic way of controlling the order in which the sounds play, however this needs some work now applying how I want the painting to be read.

I would appreciate any feedback on the above.

The brief for Task 6 is to create a musical interpretation of a painting of our choice, from the early 20th century.  I decided to look for a piece of cubist art, as I am particularly interested in this area of artwork. However, on looking for a picture to use, I came across the work of David Lewis Baker, and particularly his piece “Ocean 144″. Initially the painting caught my attention as, even without knowing the name of it, it was obviously a visual representation of the ocean/water, and this immediately started me to thinking about the sounds I could use to create a musical representation of this idea. However, upon studying the work further, it inspired me to consider the use of Max rather than Logic for this piece, making use of some of the Max objects in order to take advantage of the grid-like appearance of the painting. More importantly, I was intrigued as to whether I was capable of doing it.

The picture is made up of a 12 by 12 grid, and each individual square is both a picture in its own right as well as a small part of the whole painting. I decided to use this idea as the basis for my piece, make each square of the grid contain an individual sound, and playing these sounds together to create the piece.

To do this, I looked in to using the matrixctrl object in Max. This took alot of research, as I have never used this object before. However, after much work it became clear that it would be possible to import the painting into the matrixctrl object.

The matrixctrl object is then routed, and I have assigned a different sound or sample to each of the individual cells in the matrix (and therefore each of the individual squares in the painting). When one of the cells or squares is clicked, a particular sound file is loaded and played, and it loops until the cell is clicked again, when it stops. I have put up a couple of screen shots below of the various subpatches within the main patch.

At the moment, it is possible for the user to create their own interpretation of the painting by manually clicking on the squares in any order they choose, and there is also a random setting. However, I have developed some charts of how a painting could be read, and will upload these along with my finished patch soon.

For Task 4 and 5 combined I am using the main battle scene from the film “Chronicles of Narnia”, as I feel that this leaves me a lot of room to take a variety of different approaches to my work.  In the film itself, a large part of the scene doesn’t contain any music, only sound effects, and although this works well I thought it would be interesting to see if I could add music (as well as creating sound effects of my own).  I was doubtful as to what the result would be, as with the amount of sound effects needed it would be easy to overcrowd the piece.

However, so far I believe that I have made a fairly successful attempt at creating my own take on this scene, and I will post my work so far on the blog shortly.

I have split my work into a number of different sections:

1:  The music – Although I decided to take a minimalist approach to the score, to avoid overcrowding, I have still maintained the idea of having used a full orchestra.  I did this by researching orchestration, using Arnold Schoenberg’s ‘Theory of Harmony’ and ‘Structural Functions of Harmony’, and applying this to the orchestration of my composition.  So far everything is MIDI, however I plan to record some live instruments, particularly clarinet, flute, and trumpet to give it a more realistic feel.

2: Sound effects – As, there are so many sound effects required, I have split this into a number of subsections.

a)      Animals – there are a large number of animals (both real and fantasy) in the scene, so I spent a lot of time creating individual sounds for each creature before implementing them into the score.  I am finding it a challenge to create sounds for the ‘fantasy’ creatures (such as minotaurs, trolls, giants etc), as I have no grounding on which to base my work. Therefore I am currently using a process of trial and error – mixing other animal sounds with vocals and a few organic sounds – until I find sounds which I believe represent these creatures.

b)      Weapons – to create sounds for the weapons I am using a mixture of pre-recorded samples of metallic objects, such as pots, pans, keys etc, and adding effects to create the sounds of the multitude of weaponry found in the scene.

c)      Fire and ice – There is a small part of the scene where the ground is set on fire, followed quickly by the White Witch turning it to ice.

I still have a lot more to do on this task, however I will post my work so far shortly.

Here is my work so far on the Commercial task. I have not yet made any changes since the feedback lecture, although I have a few things that I am planning on doing (which I will discuss in the next post), however as always feedback would be appreciated.

Task 3 – Commercial

This is my work on the animation task so far. I have made some of the amendments suggested during the feedback session, although are still more things that I want to do. I would appreciate any feedback.Task 2 – Animation

Our second task is to write the music and sound effects for up to one minute of animation. In the lecture we watched a Warner Bros animation and analysed firstly what had been done, and secondly how it could be achieved. I found this very useful as it enabled me to see how I could achieve certain things using different effects and techniques, and also provided me with techniques I can draw on when completing the task.

I have chosen to score a clip from a black-and-white Mickey Mouse cartoon from 1929 called ‘The Opry House’, in which Mickey is playing the piano in a concert. I chose this particular cartoon for a number of reasons. Firstly, as this clip contains no speech it relies solely on the music and sound effects to create atmosphere, comic effect and changes in mood, allowing a lot of room for imagination. Also, it requires a mixture of classical scoring (and therefore attention to orchestration and instrumentation as well as the harmonies and structure of a classical score) and synched effects e.g. footsteps.

I have split the aspects of the task into five sections, so that none of the effects/music required is neglected:

1. Write a score for the piano music
2. Sound effects for the crowd
3. Sound effects for Mickey
4. Sound effects for instruments
5. Draw it all together using other elements/effects/music etc.

When my film was shown to the rest of the class, I received a variety of feedback (both positive and critical), and am now attempting to use this in order to improve my work.  There were a few main points that were picked up on:

Firstly, although I had written the composition out for Double basses, Cellos, Violas and Violins, I did not manage to re-create an actual performance within Logic (meaning that the sound was not realistic).  However, in the lesson Julio showed us a number of techniques to enable us to re-create a more realistic orchestral sound, which I hope to put to good use both in this and future tasks.

Secondly, it was felt that more or different instruments could have been used to punctuate certain points (nominaly the hammer hitting the nail), and after re-watching my excerpt I am inclined to agree. I believe that using a wider variety of instruments would ensure that I am able to create the mood I want.

Thirdly, Julio felt that there was no need for the high strings towards the end – they sounded too much like the ‘Psycho’ strings, although not enough for them to be a comical imitation – and again I am inclined to agree.  So they have been removed, and I plan to again use a wider range of instrumentation in the last 10seconds in order to keep building the tension until the end.

All in all I am pleased with my first attempt at this task, and am planning on using the feedback I have received to improve the piece.

After studying the film “Persona”, I chose a section from the intro that I thought would best suit the feel I wanted to convey – beginning at SMPTE 01:01:57:16.06 (just before the shot of the hand) and lasting for about 30 seconds.

To get started, I first scored the film by hand – I am essentially classically trained and find it much easier to work in 4-part harmony initially, following on to expanding out the parts to an orchestral level, and only then putting this into Logic and starting to edit it.

Within the piece I have used no sound effects, just classical instruments, using changes in timbre to build up tension throughout the excerpt.

Although this is only a first attempt, I feel that I have made a good start on this task.

This week we were given our first task – to score 30 seconds of the intro to Ingmar Bergman’s film ‘Persona’.  After being shown in the lecture the logisitics of scoring a movie in Logic, we have been sent away to score an excerpt of this film “in any style”.  Which obviously leaves a lot of scope for any number of musical and conceptual ideas.
I decided to research the film first, to give me a feel for exactly what I am scoring the intro to, and also in the hope that it would give me some inspiration (as to be honest I was at a loss as to what to do).  And lo and behold, it did. The film itself is, in my opinion, brilliant, and certainly gave me a few ideas for the introduction.
In contrast with the original soundtrack for the film’s intro, I have decided instead to use classical music to evoke the idea of an old, black-and-white horror movie (think Dracula and Frankenstein).  If this pans out how I want it to, I think it will work well.
We shall see.