Initial Ideas

I am really keen to do somethingthis year that is going to serve me well in the years to come; something that I can hopefully turn into a business, or that aids and advances my skillset in the world of sound design and music composition.

I am also keen to build something, as for the last four years I have been almost solely sitting in front of screens, hands confined to a keyboard of one description or another. I want to have something solid to show for my time spent in education.

With that in mind, I spent the summer considering everything that I have done over the last four years. I tried to think about what had inspired me the most during this time, the solid moments in my mind where I felt I turned a corner, or made progression in one area or another. Though in the end that was quite a few, there are a few I am going to share just now that have stuck with me and kept running around in my head.

Acoustics

Since the first class I had in college about acoustics, I have been fascinated by the topic. I would go as far as to say that it has become an obsession in my life, certainly in the practical sense - I am constantly now striving to make my listening experience better & more accurate.

This has led me on a journey to discover a wealth of knowledge that I would have otherwise over looked. I have rediscovered a passion for numbers and shapes, one lost since the time I spent in my earlier years of school. The ancient history of Pythagoras & Fibonaci; the "Golden Ratio". How places of worship in days gone by were designed with this in mind 100's of years ago, without the aid of staring at computer screens with machines doing all the work, with perfect acoustic characteristics.
Just writing here makes me want to go and spend the rest of the day reading and watching things about the topic, maybe move my speakers a bit or change the placement of my acoustic treatments to try and get that stereo image a bit more poppin'... God I'm sad.

I really do that though. Aaaaaand it really does make a difference. You will hear all sorts of things online on both sides, that it either is all you need in your life and you should sell your clothes for it, right through to it being a pointless waste of time that doesn't make a difference. Well both are clearly bollocks, however I have infact ended up selling some (fairly old and fairly useless) property, in the chase for a better sounding room. I guess this means I er on the side of, well.... bollocks? Could never have won that one anyways...

Seriously though, I ended up building these

8 Broadband Absorbers, 3 Corner Traps & 1 Slatted Helmoltz Absorber/Diffuser. Obviously this is something I like doing, so my first consideration for my honours, in a nut shell, is acoustic treatment R&D. Looking at how it effects making music, what the main treatment types are just now and how they could perhaps be improved upon. Something in this field anyways...

Speakers

Before I realised how important acoustic treatments were, I like most used to think that speakers were the be all and end all of the resulting end sound that we hear. Rarely do you find someone that has even so much as thought about the baring your environment has on the sound you are hearing.  Around the time I started higher education in audio, my friends finished a pretty high end DIY SoundSystem build. Though I had no part in the build itself, this also was the time that I bought my monitor speakers. So these situations combining at the same time as acoustics becoming a thing in my life kinda peaked my interest. I would now say that speakers are equally as important as acoustic treatment. They are like sinks and taps - you shouldn't have one without the other. Certainly not if you are serious about sound.

Though you can only see one above, I like many have a pair... a big pair (no pun intended). They are definately one of the loves of my life and I seriously use them all the time; I am addicted to listening to music through them. I would add that their full potential wasn't realised until I got a proper audio interface, however that is a whole other kettle of fish.

The point is, I have strongly been considering going down the route of speaker design. Is it possible to create a "studio accurate" pair of speakers at home is a question that keeps coming to mind, though Im not sure about the academic validity of such a project.

Lights

Bare with me. This post has been composed over the first few weeks, simply because though I had thought a lot about what I wanted to do, I hadn't really got any closer to making my mind up by the start of play.

Ableton Live is my tool of choice for creating music & sound. It is built around a programming language known as Max/MSP, which can also be accessed through an aplet within ableton, cleverly named, "Max for LIve", or M4L as it is more affectionately known.

It is something that I have wanted to get a lot more in-depth with; it is viewed as somewhat of a dark art in the world of bedroom producers. I'm sure to a hardcore programmer it is basic as hell, but there you go. I started wondering about ways that I could incorporate all of my wants for this year into one, using this magical piece of software...

Well the common theme throughout all of what I have said just now is audio reactivity, at least in its analogue sense so far. Both speakers and acoustic treatments are audio reactive. Max for live opens a world of possiblity when it comes to audio reactivity, from within the digital domain this time. Like I said though, I want to BUILD something this year. Then it hit me.

Until I am told it is a bad idea, or can't be a good question made of, this is the plan. Real-time, audio reactive lights, where the colour is mapped to the frequency spectrum, and the user can choose beetween either Amplitude, Peak Detection or RMS data to scale the dimming effect. In the box, my aim is to build a Max for Live app, that splits the incoming audio data (sits on the masterbus) into 8 bands, representative of the 8 audible octaves of sound. Each of the bands (filters) can then be modulated on the way in.

Though the aim will be to keep the centre point of the band pass stable, two modulation parameters will be useful at the input stage. The Q point can be modulated to give a more specific band reaction, it can also be given a reaction threshold - if its not loud enough, it wont activate anything. The system is much the same throughout as a classic vocoder, however I am looking for other data at the output stage.This data can be scaled and spat out as MIDI data, which in turn can run DMX.

In parallel I will run a chain that collects the Amp, Peak & RMS data from the overall mix, compensates for the enevitable delay incurred by the chain above, and hopefully the combines to be spitting out 11 glorious channels of MIDI data, ready to run the second stage of the project.

DMX and MIDI, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G... Shit joke. Anyways, they do love each other and there are a lot fo programmers and electricians that have built a wealth of great toys to play with. So I am going to buy four reals of RGB LED's, a power supply and a DMXis MIDI to DMX converter in order to build the reactive lights themselves.

The real idea behind this, is to hopefully create the feeling of sitting within a metering system. I want to explore the possibilities of calibrating a system like this in such a way that it served to benefit a music producers working environment. I have spent a lot of time thinking about this and, though technically challenging in a few ways, I believe it is not un-doable. It is also something I am passionate about, or certainly have become so in the last few weeks. Here are a few rudimentary examples of what I am talking about in video form, however they don't really get across fully what I have in my head. They will certainly give you a glimpse of the poissibilities...

Colour Organ

Peak Reactive.

Anyways, this has been a long post so I will leave it there for now. To surmise, I am starting my research into the uses of RGB LED lights as a full room metering system for audio production, using Max for Live and outboard MIDI/DMX convertes/LED's, that will sit behind my acoustic treatments. A fully audio reactive room is the goal, fun times ahead!