Music Tech II 2014_15

            Most of the samples were unedited, but I modified some of the samples’ pitches so they would be easier to make melodies out of.

 

 Jason Friedman: Click Here to listen to my piece

I started the song by looking for a suitable kick, snare, and clap.  I tend to make my songs around the percussion, so I looked into my large supply of samples and found a kick that originally clipped the audio, but I compressed it to a reasonable level and added some reverb to make it sound better.  I already had a great clap sample that was recorded in my music theory class, after I asked Mr. Waldron if he could make the whole class clap in unison.  Some reverb and EQ was added to create some good stuff.  The main melody was from some audio I recorded from Erin Powell.  She gave me a couple vocal lines that I put together to create a harmony.  I created a melody out of that as well as a funky little echoing extension.  I asked the members of the concert choir I was around at the time to sing one of their songs for me to record.  They sang Carol of the Bells, and using some parts of that with reverb made it feel much more full.  I phased, flanged, and pitch corrected a small sample of somebody in my English class to make a neat xylophone type sound, which I used as both a harmony and a bass. I used a recording of my Dad to create another layered harmony.  To add more depth to the song I added a heavily effected version of my breathing to the track..  The song structure itself became a barrage of noise towards the end, which I like.  I like being hit at different angles by the music itself.  Overall I’m not entirely personally satisfied with the song itself, but I do believe that I put my best into it, and that it is a generally good song.  My personal dissatisfaction comes with a perennial discontent with my own music as a whole.                                                                                         

                                                                                                -Jason Friedman

 Kediel Morales: 

My Musique concrete was influenced by a number of factors. I am heavily versed into east coast hip-hop just as much as I am in jazz, blues and rock. I therefore decided to replicate one of my favorite hip-hop tunes in the intro called “World Star” by Childish Gambino by using a sampled bell, cutting out the highs and putting a nice echo with automation. The tune then opens up into an atmosphere of sampled voices of Mr. Nicholas and hi-hats backed by a hip-hop style beat. There are many triplets, processed effects and echo to fill in the space left by my ignorance of the ESX sampler. The kick is sampled from a recycle bin while the hi-hat is sampled from an actual hi-hat and Mr. Nick’s voice. From the bridge to the ending the voices are sampled from Jason Friedman (Tenor) and his father (Bass). I created a bassline and added vocals on top to create chords with dissonance for an interesting sound. The ending was a bit awkward because I had trouble finding a conclusion to such an avant-garde type tune. 

 Matt Palumbo: Click Here to listen to my piece

For the musique concrete project I used logic and I started with a simple beat to get a basis as to what I want to make. from there I chose to move forward with a breakbeat 135 bpm beat. After that I started layering my sound to fill space. Then I added some drum racks to manipulate drum hits and samples. From there I took samples from Jason and manipulated them to make a very melodic lead and added melodies on top. This created my whole intro and build up. I chose to sort of make an electronic tune to compliment my style of production while also incorporating musique concretes vintage style. For my main bass I started with Jason’s dads voice and put it into the sampler in logic and created a very unique saw tooth waveform with a slight phase to it. From there I changed the envelope and phase and made that my main breakdown synth. I added various effects to this synth such as a flanger, gold verb, channel eq and ring shifter to manipulate the sound even more. 

 Alan Davis: Click Here to listen to my piece

                     Click Here  to view an interview about my piece

 Matt Roselli: Click Here to listen to my piece

To create my song I used various types of random sounds and chopped/edited them to make them sound like a respective instrument. For my drum beat I would take simpler sounds such as a bang click or pop and chop it into a smaller segment; after this I would use my chopped sounds to create a similar sound to that of a snare or a high hat (i.e. balloon pop as high hat, bang noise as snare). To create my bass I would take a sound that sounded like an xylophone, chop it into one note, and put it into a sample editor tweaking knobs and lowering octaves to make it sound somewhat “bassy”. To create my lead sound I would use a process similar to how I made my bass, but I would create it in a higher octave pitch and edit it to a sound that I thought would work well as a lead and counteract with the drum and bass well.

 Tyree Hawkins: Click Here to listen to my piece

What I did for my song is use Jason’s voice and I used flextime to get a specific part of it. I then used pitch correction to make it all one not. After that I began to play. I then used flextime to pick a certain part of a balloon popping. I then put the sound into a drag and drop template in ultra beat. I changed the pitch so I could make it sound like different parts of a drum. That’s basically it. I wasn’t really to sure about what I was doing so my song is not the best.

 

 Matt Palumbo

Picasso Project: Click Here To listen to my Project. 

Alan Davis

Picasso Project: Click Here To listen to my Project. 

Hi I’m Alan Davis, and we had just created a music piece for an Art Museum displaying Picasso painting’s. For my piece I wanted it to be a piano based song because wanted a little bit of a challenge since I myself am a drummer. I used a grand piano with a four chord, chord progression, and complimented it with a simple melody. Afterwards, I used cellos to play the same exact chords as the bass of the piano. Next I used strings that played eight different chords and it had a touch of reverb. Then I used a harp to play separate notes and add a new feeling so that the song can express new things. At the same time I introduced some percussion, but I kept it basic with a shaker and a deep bass drum. Finally, to end it of I added strings to play the chords every eighth note, and a new melody that was introduced by a second harp. 

 

Picasso Project: Click HereTo listen to my Project. 

Picasso Project: Click Here To listen to my Project. 

This particular composition wet through a number of different incarnations before settling on the heavy, swirling thing it turned out to be.  Originally, I wanted to replicate music I have heard in art galleries in the past, where songs would transition into each other with very different styles. So I made three pieces that would transition into each other: one that was orchestral and classical, one that was very EDM inspired, and one that had a more ethnic influence.  I was overall not very satisfied with the finished product, so I decided to scrap it at the last minute.  Realizing what I wanted to make, I spent some time at home listening to dark ambient artists like The Haxan Cloak and Tim Hecker.  I designed the song mainly around the surround instruments that were offered in the presets of logic.  I warped many of the instruments to create heavy noises and swirling synthesizers to create the effect of window blowing through your hair (well maybe not in Mr. Nick’s case).  I spent  a lot of time looking at Picasso’s art to determine an appropriate key and melody.  I also found some percussion sounds that I loved.  Overall I tried to go outside my comfort zone of normal melodic progressions and attempted to make something a bit more scatterbrained.  Like most of my songs, I wish this had a more definitive progression and structure.  I never feel like I use enough instruments or have any clear variety, but I’m overall satisfied with the finished product.  

 

Picasso Project:Click Here To listen to my Project. 

Picasso Project::Click Here To listen to my Project. 

Picasso Project:Click Here To listen to my Project.