Update: Experiments Continue!

An action-packed update hot from the Audio Flasher Labs for you today!

First up, a fellow music-head, Eddie Hughes sent me the first track he's done using Reaper as his DAW. Eddie's a talented jazz guitarist with experience using Logic, Sonar, and other software/hardware recording set ups, but he's just switched over to Reaper (which is available for free as a demo, or for a frankly meagre $60!). The Audio Flasher Project convinced him to share this one with readers as another "I've never used X before, let's see what I can do with it" Experiment.

Also, Audio Flasher is proud to announce that our forthcoming collaborative project, Experiment X has already attracted some participants! I can reveal that one of those participants is the gifted guitarist, Chris Juergensen!! Chris is the Vice Principal of Tokyo School of Music, and a Guitar Instructor at the Musician's Institute in California. Now, I'd talk Chris up some, but why bother when I can let giants like Mike Stern and Jennifer Batten do it for me? Here's what they have to say...

"Chris is a phenomenal talent head to toe. 'Big Bad Sun' unleashes an unabashed dirty low down blues side of him that has you stompin' your feet to a killer variety of grooves. And prepare to stand back as the guitar speaks to you, alternatively ripping your head off and then caressing you." - Jennifer Batten

"Another beautiful cd from Chris Juergensen. This recording has a serious blues vibe. Chris sings and plays his ass off on this one." - Mike Stern.

That CD, and his others, can be found here and over at Spotify. I've been giving his tracks some heavy rotation on Spotify long before he agreed to participate in Experiment X, so I'm stoked to be having him on board for this. His site has a ton of well-written and really useful lessons for guitarists, ranging from beginner to the more advanced, and he has written some excellent books which can be found here, so his pages are definitely worth bookmarking. In true professional fashion, Chris has already submitted his track. And, in true "I'm going to prep as little as possible and through-compose my mix as much as possible" fashion, I've yet to give it a listen. I'm bloody tempted, though.

There's still plenty of space in this project for more contributors and, as I'll be editing from all the submissions to create the final track, please don't be discouraged from getting involved - all we need is 30 seconds-2 minute's worth of music from you, as a single track (either a live instrument, or a MIDI track converted to audio), using a D drone note as a tonal reference (don't include the drone note in the file you send to Audio Flasher). Please email submissions to audioflasher at gmail dot com, and state in the email what name you prefer to be identified as when we publish the track here in a few month's time. Full details of Experiment X can be found here.

Finally, Audio Flasher made an impulse purchase yesterday. It involves some portable MIDI controller gear, but let's not say more than that. It is expected to arrive early next week (doncha love the web huh?), so you can expect a further "I've never used this gear before, but I can push buttons well enough....let's try to make a track" Experiment to come out of that.

Thanks for reading! Hope to see you involved in a future experiment, too.

Here's Eddie's track - Autumn Leaves:

Audio Flash Experiment - Volunteers Needed.

Audio Flasher is planning a future Experiment that needs your help! The Hypothesis to be tested is to build a collaborative improvised group composition.

The Methodology will be simple. Enlisting the help of at least 4 (more than 4 would be awesome!) contributors, each contributor will be asked to record an improvisation of 1-2 minutes of music. It can be coherent, or whacky. Each volunteer will record one track, but the choice of instrument is left to their discretion (a VST/AU instrument converted to an audio track, a live instrument track, a piece of 'found music' from your environment, whatever you choose). The framework will be a D drone note and we'll use 80bpm in 4/4 time, although divisions/multiples of that are welcomed (e.g. you can use 2/4, 3/4, 5/4, 7/4, etc, or set the bpm in your recording setup to 40bpm,or 160bpm - 7/4 at 160bpm would be really interesting for one track*). Once recorded, each volunteer will send their audio track here, and I'll take all the contributing tracks and mix or blend elements to develop the composition*. The final mix would then be posted. The aim of this Experiment is to test group improvisation under conditions where improvisers have minimal information about the contributions of the other participants. I'll be doing the mix within one day, and wont be listening to any submitted tracks until the day of mixing, so I wont have any chance to prep**. The more contributors we have for this, the more interesting it will be (the final mix may exceed 2 minutes), so please get involved!

To sign up for this, just post in the comments section below. We'll figure out a timeline for the duration of this experiment once we have an idea of how many contributors will be involved so, if you're busy for a week or two but still want to be involved in this, please post and give an idea of when you might be able to do your track, and we'll figure it out. And if you know Audio Flasher personally, but you lack recording equipment, buzz me and we'll fix a way for you to use my gear to record your track.

All contributors will retain the full rights to their individual submission (by submitting a track to this Experiment you are granting permission for it to be used within the framework of this Experiment). Rights to the final composition, the final mix (or mixes, if people volunteer to do alternate mixes), and the recording of that mix, will be held equally by all contributors. For the final mix (or mixes), production credit should be given to the individual responsible for that mix, and composition credit should be given to the Audio Flash Lab Rats (the official name for the group of contributors involved in this Experiment).

Have I missed out anything important? If you think so, post in the comments and I'll update accordingly. Thanks.


*All contributors could do their own version of this step in the experiment. In fact, I'd positively encourage it - the results of the different tracks would be very interesting to hear.

**We may have to organise it so that I don't receive the tracks until the day of mixing. I'll have a think about that.

***Brief Update: Later today, I plan to post an update with links to a couple of sites I find useful/interesting/inspirational in relation to the Audio Flash Project. I'm hoping to include these sites in a handy links tab on the side of this site, but I want to check I have permission from some of them to link in this way before I go ahead with it.
Also updating with a quick clarification of terms. As this Experiment discusses ownership rights over a group composition, I should clarify stuff like "The Audio Flash Project", "Experiment", "Methodology", etc., so that there's no ambiguity there.
Also contacting a few people privately about some other collaborative Experiments we have planned for the next few weeks.
And, if there's time left after doing all that, drinking lots of cups of tea (I prefer Ceylon, if that matters), faffing intermittently, and practicing music, I might get into doing another quick improvised experiment.

Non-Sonic Experimentation.

Well, sort of. Feck, I didn't know what to name this post. Intuhweb Experiments? Organisational Experiments? Hmmm.....

Anyway, as part of the Audio Flasher project (a side project, if you will), I'll be testing out various sites and apps and stuff to try to make this project harder. Better. Faster. Stronger. I mean, more interactive and well-publicised. Yup. Stuff like figuring the best place to post the audio from the Experiments (that sounds so much slicker than "Diary Entries" no?) and how to keep everything organised. And more important stuff like how best to get other people involved in collaborating, giving feedback, and contributing their own experiments.

I signed up to boxnet for my first post, but that audio box for Experiment 1 was massive, and I've yet to figure out how to add a suitable image to it (there must be a way, no one would design a box that big and not let you add an image to it, surely). Then, I somehow happened across soundcloud, and a friend got me to sign up to ustream.tv to check a live feed he's doing*. I wasn't planning to use ustream myself, but we'll see about that (if there's an interesting way of using it, I'll give it a shot at least once, I just can't think of one right now). Then, the dude** Mike Outram told me about bandcamp, so I signed up there, too. I'll upload to each and investigate, so expect some evaluative postings as I learn more about each.

So far.....
Boxnet seems okay, but I haven't really investigated much. Less user friendly than the others but I've yet to find an upload limit. There probably is one. I'll probably find it soon enough.
Soundcloud seems really good - you can include IRSC codes and Release Cat. No's, plus tagging for each file. The really great thing is you get a visual waveform for each file you upload and other users can post comments below the track, or they can post onto your track at a specific point - very useful if the comment is feedback about the composition or production as you can pinpoint precisely where in the track you're referring too (nothing worse than a vague comment about "that synthy sound" when the track has ten synths in it and you don't know which one or where they meant).
But the free version of Soundcloud has a 120 minute upload limit and then there's a few categories of paid accounts with different limits. Getting an unlimited amount of file storage costs $500 per year, so it's not a great place to store tracks for long periods of time (like this blog needs). So it looks like a good place to store files temporarily for feedback or collaborative work, with a more permanent copy posted elsewhere.
And that "elsewhere" might just be Bandcamp for me - I've only just signed up, but it seems pretty comprehensive in having a tagging system, a comprehensive search system (including searching by location), high google search rankings for your band's page, the IRSC codes and wotnot, artwork uploads, and even the option to sell music and merchandising using a Paypal premium account through the site. They even let you set promotional codes for discounts and freebies for download sales, and you can collect emails for a newsletter. So it goes beyond the basic, then. As far as I can tell right now, uploads are unlimited, but I'll have to check this to be sure.

Anyway, I'm AudioFlasher, or Audio Flasher on all of these, so feel free to look me up on any that you use (that'll also help me gauge the comparative popularity of each of these sites). If you know of other good interactive or upload sites for music projects, please post nods to them in the comments section and I'll peruse. Thanks.

Right, time for an Update:
Basic stuff - I'm gonna get RSS set up asap. But this about the next Experiment. I'm currently organising a couple of collaborative efforts for future weeks (don't worry, each collabo will have slightly different rules and completely different people...well, except for Audio Flasher, who'll be involved in all of them for now). I'm also looking seriously at the logistics of doing something involving iPhone music apps for one experiment (I swear I'll limit it to one). And today is a roasting hot day so, instead of experimenting in the Lab, I'm outside enjoying the sun with some friends*** and typing this. Expect a new Experiment in a few days though. I'm working out the Methodology as you read this (unless you're reading this three years from now, in which case just trust that I was working out the Methodology when I thought you were reading this three years ago and, oh crap, I'm starting to feel like a character in a Douglas Adams novel already, you get the point).

I'm also slowly concocting a suitable way of describing the whole Audio Flasher enterprise so that it resembles something vaguely sensible (in sharp contrast to the sounds I post). More of a "What is Audio Flashing?" than a "Who is Audio Flasher?" I may or may not post some visual teasers in advance.

*Crap. I mean "did". It happened today, and I was caught up watching the news about the mass murder gunman in Cumbria and totally forgot about it. Uh oh.

**Official moniker, on account of continual musical hookups of great magnitude. Also a bloody great musician, jazz guitarist and tutor, and afficionado of the experimental and philosophical. His blog, personal recordings, and Spotify playlists are well worth checking out and, in case you missed it the first time - www.mikeoutram.com/

***Blogs take exponentially longer to write when you're chilling with friends. Now I fully understand how journalists calculate their weekly work hours for the content they submit. The things you learn...

Experiment No.1

Okay, here's my composition from yesterday (30 minutes 'composing') which I roughly mixed today (another 30 minutes). Mixing was....interesting.

With a time limit on how much I can work the piece, I really had to compromise on what I did with it. This would have been a lot easier with a basic rock band two guitars, bass, and drums set up, where I could just pan each instrument and EQ them roughly to create some sonic space and leave it at that, maybe fade out the ending if I didn't have a proper ending worked out.

But this was way too esoteric and the 'creation' of it lies as much in how you mix it as the notes themselves - panning so instruments move around the sonic field, and getting levels right with the melody at the end and the echoey bit I did (a separate instrument played to echo the last notes of each lick).

My ready, fire, aim mentality on this project is already catching up with me! Phew! I've never been so pressured when mixing. Partly because I'm a plank and realised that working on my laptop meant doing this rough mix using my crappy built in laptop speakers and some headphones. So, if you're listening on a top studio audio system, well, I'm sure they sound really great. With something else playing through them. Sorry!

Right, on to the music. It sounds like a cheap imitation of some Vangelis when drunk. I was also thinking a bit about Jeff Beck's Jeff album, specifically the tune Plan B (a fave of mine). Here's some Vangelis on the ubiquitous.

Gear used:

* M-Audio Axiom 61 Keyboard Controller to input MIDI commands.

* Logic Pro 9 for everything else (on my MacBook Pro - the version before that one).

*Headphones - Skullcandy Hesh and Sennheiser HD25

The Mix:

Nothing fancy in the mix - just some roughly automated panning, a fade ending, and stereo imaging (which I hope worked) on the synth pad that runs through the piece. Stereo imaging gives it a wider sound. I wanted that synth to be my space, with the other sounds moving around within it. Again, time prevented fancy work there - I just duplicated, added some delay to one channel and and panned one hard left and the other hard right. No real time to fine tune on EQ, adding subtle reverbs, etc. I had to choose between keeping the instruments static in the panning, or trying to fine tune the sounds. I chose the former. Thought it more important to the piece that they moved around the space. I also wussed a bit and thought real fine tuning on EQ, etc., could take well over 30 minutes.

The sounds (from Logic - all presets, no tweaks as yet):

* That synth pad running throughout the piece came from the EXS24 using the Crackle_Trance Morf ModW preset. The first piece in my composition, and it really dictated everything else. It sounds like the audio from some avant garde AV art installation you find in places like the Tate Art Gallery. Now I know where they get it from, heh heh.

* 'Bassline' - not a bass at all, but the ES2 on Swelling from the Synth Lead section. The Axiom is semi-weighted, so I could easily play it in softly to keep the attack low. The synths often have very different sounds depending on how much velocity you use in playing (only works if you have a velocity sensitive keyboard though).

* Drums/Percussive Sounds - built up on several quick takes using three kits: Hip Hop Heavy kit for the kick, Classic Hip Hop Remix kit for the hi hats and a dry hi tom heard from the start of the track (totally missed using the gated low tom for extra variation, but hey), and the Hip Hop 90s Kit for anything drum introduced after bar four.*

* The fizzling synth sound effect from bars 8-16 is the EXS24 on the Emission preset.

* The oscillating sound from bar 16 onwards is EXs24 again, this time on Fat Jupi LFO 8.

*End melody is the EXS24 in Bellsphere Basic mode, and the 'echoes' of it are the same instrument in Metallic Reeds. Again, I've gone real soft on the velocity here, difficult to play, I had to tweak one of the notes in the editor later (see below for that).

*The faded outro - back to the Fat Jupi LFO 8 on a single sustained note which I then added an automated fade to. This reminds me of Justin Timberlake's Cry Me A River, produced by Timbaland (and frankly an awesomely executed production). Gonna have to take another listen to that track to hear if Timbo used the preset, too....

The Tips:

So, if there's a sound you like in there, now you know where to look. If you want to know how to tweak velocity in Logic use the hyper editor on the track you want to tweak, and for automaton, just hit the letter "a" and the automation for each track appears. The default setting is for volume automation, but if you double click the volume button on the track you want, it lets you control automation for panning, as well as for various parameters for the AU instrument and plug ins you're using.

The Audio Flash:

And there you have it, a minute and a half of spacey music in a DAW I'm new to. I didn't get to mix it, as I overran my hour quite a bit just trying to get al the tracks to bounce properly so I could mix them. Gah, was that tedious and frustrating. Logic really dropped the ball on that one, I much prefer Nuendo's setup for converting MIDI to audio (I may do an explan of the differences between each at some point, if there's interest - Nuendo and Cubase should have the same processes). You can listen here (I hope) -

Conclusions:

I've already surmised that this is highly unlikely to be a daily diary. It feels like an athlete pushing weights - you don't want to do consecutive days on the same drill. Besides, I want my posts to give full details of the sounds used, so if I aim to post a piece every other day it means I can make sure the posts have all the necessary info and aren't pooped out with errors. So, check back in 48 hours for the next instalment! I might go for using the real instrument samples and trying to make it sound as close to a real band as possible. Or I might not. Who knows? Audio Flasher certainly doesn't. That's the beauty of it.**

Right, I'm off to play this on a proper system and then cringe like hell from the mixing. This is officially Audio Flasher's first Audio Flash. Sweet. Thanks for checking in!

*How did you figure out I used the Hip Hop template for this one? Heh Heh, I might try out the Rock template next. Although this submission doesn't sound at all hip hop. All plug-ins where whatever the instrument preset came with (dunno if Logic tweaks these based on the template you pick yet, I should check that).

** I'll post on days I'm not submitting an audio flash, too. Whenever I come across interesting kit, or useful tips, or just have something of interest to say. I might even explain the ethos of audio flashing. Once I figure out what that is (thinking a trip to the pub is required for the philosophical endeavour). Trying to stay on point, though.

***By the way - does anyone know how to make the boxnet links have nice pretty pictures on them? I'd like to do that, if it's possible. Thanks!

Tiredness Pervades

Minimal amounts of sleep the last 48 hours mean I had trouble keeping my eyes open to mix today's piece. Recorded it in half an hour tho, so I have 30 mins left and will get onto it tomorrow sharp to put the inaugural improvised production up on this page. I'm also hoping to fit in a second piece tomorrow too, but we'll see how the day goes. Today's piece was inspired by the drooping of eyelids and the total collapse of my short term memory; I want to add some kick drum from bar 6....hang on, which bar is the kick drum coming in at again? Yup, that's how the whole piece went down. I was amazed to find I managed to create around a minute and a half of music (however spaced out and psychy) given the state I was in. I'd never advocate working like that on a serious project, but the aim of this one is to work with my back against the wall, so I soldiered on with it anyway.

It's off to sleep I go. Update soon, so fix up.

The Point Of Audio Flasher...

Hi, and welcome to my blog, Audio Flasher. I'll be regularly uploading snippets of music as an online audio diary of sorts.

Why?

I'm a musician (primarily guitar, primarily blues, rock, funk, and jazz), and I am studying recording and production, so my life is lived around sound. I mainly use Nuendo for recording purposes, and tend to work more with live instruments (my own guitars) than with VST synths, so I'm always looking to learn more about using computers for music creation. That, and I've just got a copy of Logic Pro and don't know how to use it (why don't all my key commands from Nuendo work in Logic, I wonder?). So, I'll be keeping a daily (or almost daily) diary in which I create, improvise, or otherwise fabricate some sonic weirdness and then upload it here for people to check out. I'll include a few notes on the sounds I used to create each piece.

I'm giving myself a maximum time limit of one hour per day to work on this, so don't expect every post to be a pristine copy of a finished symphony. In fact, don't expect any of them to be symphonies - I'm not Beethoven! The point of the music I'll be posting here isn't to be commercially viable, on trend, or even complete. I might work on a piece over several days, but each day you'll get an audio of what I did that day. And, as the point is to create new stuff using a DAW I'm not familiar with in a set time limit, I'll be working towards doing a complete short piece in each session, rather than working one piece over several days (wherever possible) - the idea is to improvise the work as much as possible. The hour time limit starts when I open the app, and runs until the final mix/master - after that hour, I go straight to .mp3 and up on here.

Comments on the stuff I post is always welcome, but don't bother telling me "that beat is whack" "you'll never get signed" or "why isn't there any X on this track?!? you can't possibly have a track that doesn't have any X on it!" because that would be missing the point completely. But general feedback on how it sounds is always good, and constructive criticism is great, too.

You prolly have a stack of questions, like why am I bothering with this? Who is Audio Flasher*? Don't I have the latest Guitar Hero to play with instead? Where is my first diary entry? I'd answer those, but I have a piece to go create....

*Audio Flasher is a lowly serf to ProScrybed Productions. That answered that one easily enough. But this is something else entirely**.

**Always wanted to say that - "something else entirely". God knows why. Sounds a bit mystery-novelesque. Or novellish. Or whatever, you get my point.