If you like 8 bit sounds and lo-fi stuff you might be interested in using LSDJ for the gameboy. It’s very similar to Fast Tracker or Modplog Tracker and got built in drum sounds and a few wave forms. To use it you only need a gameboy emulator like KiGB.
Metropolis Comes Alive!
Sound Design - Report
In accompaniment to my sound design this report will discuss and explain some of the techniques used. Also covering the creative procedure of the composition concentrating on the source of the sounds.
Metropolis is a silent science fiction film created by Austrian-German director Fritz Lang. It was produced in Germany in the Babelsberg Studios and released in 1927. It was the most expensive silent film of the time. Obviously because it’s a silent movie the makers didn’t have to think about what the machines or the transformation would sound like. It was a great challenge and creative opportunity to create a whole sonic environment to an imaginary that was made eighty years ago.
I watched the chosen part of the movie over and over again and than started recording sounds in and around my house. The sound sources were a hoover, an electric razor, tapping on turntable, hitting wood, a screeching cupboard, a bike chain, boiling water, a microwave, a fridge, a CD player, a digital camera, a zip and for the transformation scene I poured a pack of tick-tack into a frying pan a swirled it around, just to mention some. I also downloaded sounds from The Freesound Projet site, a few clicks, a deep rumble and an electricity sample for instance.
A great web site called FilmSound.org and Michel Chion’s book Audio-Vision gave me lots of ideas and guidelines about how and what kind of sounds I need to use for the scene.
“Synchresis is the forging between something one sees and something one hears - it is the mental fusion between a sound and a visual when these occur at exactly the same time. Synchresis is an acronym formed by telescoping together the two words synchronism and synthesis. When we expect sound - a character walking for example - synchresis are unstoppable and the filmmaker can use about any sound effects for these footsteps.”
The process of putting the sounds together started with cueing important parts of the movie and arranging the sounds of switches and footsteps. In the first version of the piece they were slightly dull, so sounds of a grandfather clock were laid over to the original version to give the switches more weight.
The most difficult part to create was the overall ambience of the room. The laboratory is not high tech in a sense that it’s all analog. In the first version I didn’t realize that but after feedback, a recording of three jackhammers mixed with a reversed sound of hoover were added to create the sound of the machine.
The sounds of the transformation rings were designed using Logic’s FM1 and ES1 synthesiser because they are great to create textures similar to the sounds old classic sci-fi movies like Forbidden Planet or Solaris.
When the transformation is finished the camera concentrates on robot Maria’s head while the rings disappear. For this part radio tuning sounds were used alongside the ring sounds suggesting that information is being projected into her head.
And finally, I am sorry but I had to use the legendary “Castle Thunder” for the section when the professor closes his eyes; it just seemed to be an obvious choice and a great example of an off-screen and internal sound at the same time because hopefully most viewers will associate it with his corrupt mind.
On my blog there were generally good feedbacks on this piece, but there were also two constructive criticisms, which came from Julio’D Escrivan:
“Hey Laz, good work. Look to use a compressor with a side-chain going into it so you can ‘duck’ the electronic sounds and this way your mix will become clearer… use of reverb will help with the sound of space in the lab, for the steps and so on and will also help with the room tone. For the latter you can use a rumble of some sort! Well done!”
and Krisztian Hofstadter:
“Hey mr, great stuff! The only thing I would change is the heartbeat at the end. I would use something like a more organic sound.”
I took these advices on board, which really helped me to create a better atmosphere for the movie. Although I didn’t use a Ducking Compressor, but instead took some of the unnecessary clutter sounds out and adjusted the volume and panning automation of the project, the mix became much cleaner and the layers of sounds became clearly audible. The heartbeat is a combination of bit-crushed stress balls and tapping the cartridge of my turntable, which I didn’t change because I wanted to emphasise the empty, mechanic emotionless quality of a robot.
Bibliography
Chion, Michel, Audio-Vision — Sound on Screen (1994) Columbia University Press
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(film)
http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/
http://filmsound.org/
Pac-Maniac
The commercial is from 1981 and it advertises the Pac-Man video game for the Atari 2600 console. The quality of the video is not the best but this is the only copy that is available, as far as I know. The original spot uses a soundtrack called Pac Man Fever by Jerry Buckner & Gary Garcia. It is a vocal driven rock – disco piece that has a few original sounds from the video game. My approach was to use mainly 8 bit sounds to create a chip break composition to accompany the video, instead of using acoustic instruments.
There are some key points of the advert, which are emphasised by the music. One of them is the dog barking which breaks the flow of the music, a real head turner. The original “wacka-wacka” sound is used here. Other ones are when the main target audience, the 10-16 year olds, are on screen or when the actual game play can be seen.
The beginning of the song starts with one element of the branding sound and the other one can be heard in the middle section. With this technique the ever-important branding becomes part of the music, it’s seeded, so when it’s heard at the end the viewer is already familiar with it.
The key melody, which is the game’s theme tune, can be heard all the way trough and when the beat comes in it’s double tracked which is a well-known production technique of the 80’s. With this method a fuller sound can be achieved and the 8 bit melody gets an 80’s treatment so a customer in the eighties would have been just as satisfied as a costumer would be know because chip music and a less is more attitude is back again.
The idea for my Final Project came from a video I saw about the Bubblegum Sequencer. Watched it a few times and thought I could make something similar to this.
The process of making “Drummit” can be divided into two parts, designing and building the hardware and writing the software. There were problems I came across on both sides.
Finding the right camera and fixing it so it won’t move,
working out the best type of lighting,
getting accurate measurements of where the holes need to be and than cutting them out
as well as making it durable were just a few problems that needed solving during the process of constructing the hardware part.
On the software side making the gating algorithm
and designing the user interface were the major challenges.
To start using “Drummit” the user first has to attach the camera and a midi control device to the computer, switch the camera on and make sure that the lighting is ideal. The next steps are loading the samples and starting the sound. When that’s done the threshold has to be set, the midi routing checked and the sequencing can be started.
Additional controls and effects include a bit crusher for 8bit-influenced beats, delay for dub, pitch shifter for electronica and playback speed control for trip-hop. There are also controllable values of BPM, volume, band pass filter and cut off frequency. Combining all these effects can result in an unexpected drum sequence. The hand on control of “Drummit” is a different approach to drum sequencing in contrast to purely software-based drum machines.
Watch a demo video–>
Hey,
I finally managed to fix my original blog, the problem was that old theme crashed. I’m going to be updating this one from now on!
IT IS FINALLY HERE!
Those kids are clever and they can restrict themselves to not eat all that colorful candy :) I think it is brilliant and shows that all you need is a simple idea to come up with something amazing!!!
You have probably all heard about this new gadget which is a very fancy midi controller. Here is a video to demonstrate it’s power!
For the music for picture task the chosen painting is a surrealist landscape called the Old Horizon (1928) by Yves Tanguy.
How do we look at a painting? First we approach it than have a feeling sensation, pick out a few bits and pieces, and only after that we start to break it down to its elements. This is what the composition does as well. It fades in and gives an idea of mood and a few individual sounds seed the style and than it unfolds. Dream like artificial sounds fade in and out transform one into another just like when we try to associate and find connections between the objects of the painting. Experimental? Possibly.
Hey everyone!
I’ve been geeking away and done this thing which is beat cutter combined with a screen cutter. It’s pretty messy underneath…
Ok, I know I shouldn’t have done it because it’s one of the most famous monologues in the history of cinema but it was so tempting I had. If it hurts anyone’s feelings I am deeply sorry and please forgive me…
Tension! In the final scene of the movie where Harry is face to face with the “Punk” the viewer could bite into the anger and hate between them but for some reason the creators of the movie didn’t include any incidental music. I did it for them!
I used electric guitar samples (Fender), Guitar Amp Pro plug-in and a cheese synth sequence (influenced by Planet Terror, if you haven’t seen it yet you must!!!).
When Harry first appears on screen you can hear vibrating dissonant guitar feedback. With this I try the achieve the feeling of something is going to happen sooner or later. As the soundtrack unfolds the feedback sound is always there and the additional sounds has more tremolo added when they come back because a tremolo sound will cause a more tense and immediate focusing of attention on the image.
The first electric guitar doesn’t have a clean melody because as Chion writes “A sound with a regular pulse is more predictable and tends to create less temporal animation than a sound that is irregular and tus unpredictable, the latter puts the ear and the attention on constant alert”.
I used almost random micro-music with rapid changes of notes on the second guitar to illustrate the confusion of the Punk when he first tries tor reach for the gun because “if the flow of musical notes is unstable the temporal animation will be greater” (Chion).
When Mr. Dirty goes “Do i feel lucky?” and the camera is on Mr. Punk the notes of the second guitar speed up and than slow down (which is very slow vibratio) to die into long release with which I try to illustrate how time is running out and we are coming extremly close to the final and the decision therefore to the answer of the question.
There is a reason why the overall sound of the composition is rich in high frequencies. It’s because “high frequencies will command perception more acutely “(Chion).
Dirty Harry is a modern day western movie after all where Harry is the law. The only one!
Laz
