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WEB PAGE: final project examples

Practical Matters

SONIC VISUALIZER / AMADEUS II/ HOME SETUPS?- Listening practice every class until mid-term

1/2 GROUPS FOR NEXT WEEK-Alphabetically (see attendance sheet)-ProTools lab in CJ 1.327

MINIDISCS FOR THE MINIDISC WORKSHOP- Everyone must have at least one disc

- Singles in CJ bookstore

- 3-packs in Future Shop

- Boxes of 5 in audio-video supply stores, e.g. Montreal Audio-Video, 2012 Saint-Laurent

- Keep the minidisc/ProTools assignment in mind right from the beginning

Sonograms show us if a sound has a stable, organized pitch, or not:

Sonogram A:

Sonogram B:

Fundamentalfrequency

Harmonicmultiples of

the fundamental

Thick clustersof partials not

reinforcing anyparticular frequency

Frequency - pitched & unpitched sounds

Frequency - pitched & unpitched sounds

Pitched sounds have ordered harmonics, onlycover specific parts of spectrum

Unpitched sounds (e.g. ‘hits’, hiss in this file) cover full stretches of spectrum

1st harmonic ~450 Hz

2nd harm. 2 x 450 = 900 Hz

3rd harm. 3 x 450 = 1350 Hz

4th harm. 4 x 450 = 1.8 kHz

5x, 6x, 7x, 8x, 9x, 10x, 11x, etc.

Musical/mixed example: excerpts from John Zorn / Kronos Quartet’s Forbidden Fruit

Frequency - pitched & unpitched sounds

Parts of a zoomed-in oscillogram (not the attack) can give us clues about whether the sound is pitched or non-pitched:

(A regularly repeating wave cycle such as this one will generate a stable pitch)

(This irregular waveform, which contains little of no repetition, will not generate a stable pitch)

Pitched sounds can also be stable (e.g. the examples looked at so far) or unstable (the violin note-gliss-vibrato note below):

Frequency - pitched & unpitched sounds

Spatial behavior / perception of sound

Especially in indoor environments, the sound we hear is not only the direct vibrations made by the object, person or process, but a number of echoes and reverberations laid on top of the direct sound, the nature of which is generally

referred to as (room) acoustics.

Concert halls and other listening environments are / were designed to create a pleasing (but not too confusing) reverberation, in the 1.5 - 2.0 second range:

The time it takes for reverberated sound to die down to below the threshold of hearing is called the reverb decay, and is given in seconds or milliseconds

Estherhazy Palace Hall, Austria, where most of the classical composer Haydn’s works were performed in his lifetime.

Reverb time: 1.2 seconds

Grosser Musikvereinsaal, Vienna, a major European concert hall.

Reverb time: 2.0 seconds

Powell Hall, St. Louis Reverb time: 2.2 seconds

Space

[SWP; OPCH]

Recording studios, on the other hand, are designed with shorter reverb times, because this allows for more control of recorded signals.

But contrary to what many people think, a completely ‘dead’ studio acoustic (i.e., reverb time < 0.3 sec) was only ever considered the ideal in the late 70s and 80s.

Space

Recording studios, on the other hand, are designed with shorter reverb times, because this allows for more control of recorded signals.

But contrary to what many people think, a completely ‘dead’ studio acoustic (i.e., reverb time < 0.3 sec) was only ever considered the ideal in the late 70s and 80s.

Today, most studio control rooms have reverb times between 0.5 - 0.8 sec, while recording rooms vary from 0.3 sec (e.g., booths for recording voiceovers) to rooms that can be ‘opened up’ to over 1.0 secs when carpeting and other acoustic baffling is removed.

Space

Arenas and other large concert venues not designed for sound present the challenge of very long reverb times (>3-4 seconds) that can confuse listeners with too much overlap.

This is usually dealt with by providing as much direct sound to as many parts of the venue as possible.

Speaker clusters for astadium rock concert

Space