![]() We want more than one, we want more than one, we want…Īs I wrote last week, musicians often want to be able to play more than one delayed sound, or to repeat that delayed sound several times. Though some of the examples below will use the Max programming language, it is because it is my main programming environment, but also well suited to diagram and explain my points. No real tips and tricks here (well maybe a few), but I do hope to communicate some ideas I have about how to think about effects and live audio manipulation in a way that outlasts current technologies. However, despite this focus, I am optimistic that this information will also useful to solo instrumentalists using electronics on their own sound as well as to composers wanting to build improvisational systems into their work. Mostly, I’ll focus on the case of the live processor who is using someone else’s sound or a sound that cannot be completely foreseen (and not always using acoustic instruments as a source– Joshua Fried does this beautifully with sampling/processing live radio in his Radio Wonderland project). We also will look at the relationship between delays and filtering, and in the next and last post I’ll go more deeply into filtering as a musical expression and how to listen and be heard in that context. This post will cover more ground about delays and how they can be used to play dynamic, gestural, improvised electroacoustic music. It depends on the length of the sound going into the delay, and what that length is with respect to the length of the delay. Longer delays might create rhythms or patterns medium length delays might create textures or resonance. ![]() Short delayed sounds nearly always overlap. If a copy of a sound, delayed by 1-10ms, is played with the original, we simply hear it as a unified sound, changed in timbre. I’ve tried to develop a kind of electronic musicianship, which incorporates acousmatic listening and quick responses, and hope to share some of this.Īs I wrote, it’s all about the overlap of sound. I use the changes in delay times as a tool to create and control rhythm, texture, and timbral changes. The difference in my approach is that I want to find a way to recognize and find sounds I can put into a delay, so that I can predict what will happen to them in real time as I am playing with various parameter settings. My “aesthetics of delay” are similar to what audio engineers use, as rule of thumb, for using delay as an audio effect, or to add spatialization. These psychoacoustic phenomena (interaural time difference, interaural level difference, and head shadow) are useful not only for an audio engineer, but are also important for us when considering the effects and uses of delay in electroacoustic musical contexts. (To notice this phenomena in action, cover your left ear with your hand and with your free hand, rustle your fingers first in the uncovered ear and then in the covered one. We are able to discern small differences in timbre, too, as some high frequency sounds are literally blocked by our heads. We are able to detect tiny differences in volume between the ear that is closer to a sound source and the other. We are sensitive to delay times as short as a millisecond or less, as related to the size of our heads and the physical distance between our ears. Sound travels at approximately 1,125 feet per second but though all sound waves we hear in a sound are travelling at the same speed, the low frequency waves (which are longer) tend to bend and wrap around objects, while high frequencies are absorbed or bounce off of objects in our environment. I wrote about our responsiveness to miniscule differences in time, volume, and timbre between the sounds arriving in our ears, which is our skill set as humans for localizing sounds-how we use our ears to navigate our environment. ![]() We are sensitive to delay times as short as a millisecond or less.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |