335 research outputs found
Sound from Gramophone Record Groove Surface Orientation
ABSTRACT Preserving historic recording on gramophone records is an important task because the traditional record play back system damages/wears out records eventually. We present an optical flow based method to reproduce the sound signal from gramophone records using 3D robust scene reconstruction of the surface orientation of the walls of the grooves. The imaging setup was modified to overcome a shallow depth of field by using a thin glass plate to obtain additional in-focus parts of the image at a second focal length. The sound signal was recovered from the surface orientation and processed further using the industry standard RIAA filter. The overall algorithm has been tested and found to be working correctly using both undamaged and damaged SP records. The algorithm is a "proof of concept" in that it shows sound can be recovered from time-varying 3D orientation of groove walls
Exploring visual representation of sound in computer music software through programming and composition
Presented through contextualisation of the portfolio works are developments of a practice in which the acts of programming and composition are intrinsically connected. This practice-based research (conducted 2009â2013) explores visual representation of sound in computer music software.
Towards greater understanding of composing with the software medium, initial questions are taken as stimulus to explore the subject through artistic practice and critical thinking. The project begins by asking: How might the ways in which sound is visually represented influence the choices that are made while those representations are being manipulated and organised as music? Which aspects of sound are represented visually, and how are those aspects shown?
Recognising sound as a psychophysical phenomenon, the physical and psychological aspects of aesthetic interest to my work are identified. Technological factors of mediating these aspects for the interactive visual-domain of software are considered, and a techno-aesthetic understanding developed.
Through compositional studies of different approaches to the problem of looking at sound in software, on screen, a number of conceptual themes emerge in this work: the idea of software as substance, both as a malleable material (such as in live coding), and in terms of outcome artefacts; the direct mapping between audio data and screen pixels; the use of colour that maintains awareness of its discrete (as opposed to continuous) basis; the need for integrated display of parameter controls with their target data; and the tildegraph concept that began as a conceptual model of a gramophone and which is a spatio-visual sound synthesis technique related to wave terrain synthesis. The spiroid-frequency-space representation is introduced, contextualised, and combined both with those themes and a bespoke geometrical drawing system (named thisis), to create a new modular computer music software environment named sdfsys
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Experimental turntablism - live performances with second hand technology: Analysis and methodological considerations
In experimental turntablism, sound artists and musicians encounter not only the pre-recorded sound of the vinyl records, as is common in DJ culture and hip hop turntablism, but also accentuate the materiality of the records and turntables themselves. The thesis shows that the record player is itself the key concept within which each experimental turntablist unfolds an intricate dialogue between mediation and materiality. Through these media-specific practices, these sound artists raise to the surface the fact that our listening habits tend to dissolve the reproduction medium from our awareness. This thesis explores experimental turntablism in live performance and presents an innovative methodology that establishes the ideas and tools for a potentially generalisable approach to performance analysis for concerts using live electronics. The analytical framework, disclosing the medial and sensual significance of experimental turntablism performances in a digital era, broadens the perspective on sound with theories of performativity, materiality, mediality and instrumentality in electronic music. The thesis methodology includes performance analysis, artist interviews, video and audio recordings and interactive graphical transcriptions based on the current music analysis software EAnalysis.
Three case studies examine three distinct artistic approaches: the specific focus of each experimental turntablist varies from playing techniques, to sculptural objects, to mechanical operations. Joke Lanzâs direct and embodied playing negotiates a sound production between signal and noise, musicalises samples, and leads to spontaneous acts with site-specific aspects. Vinyl -terror & -horror destruct playback devices and vinyl records to re-structure samples in chance processes; the duo accompany their sculptural objects with movie soundtracks and âunfinished compositionsâ from their own records to engender cinematic soundscapes and imaginary scenes. Graham Dunningâs turntable construction sequences patterned discs, which trigger auxiliary instruments through the turntableâs rotary motor operations. These mechanical movements embody rhythmic loop structures with temporal inconsistencies, creating a mechanical techno.
Having been considered redundant following the introduction of digital media, the vinyl record has recently witnessed a revival. As a post-digital tendency, contemporary musicians using live electronics seek to recover tactile and physical actions in performance. This thesis shows the ways in which the turntable allows artists to develop personal instruments from ready-made products and to emphasise specific sensual-bodily aspects
Metadata for phonograph records : facilitating new forms of use and access
This dissertation presents a new metadata design, as part of a large digitization management system being developed, to assist in the consistent creation of digital libraries of phonograph records. The Metadata provides digital libraries with an effective tool for the description, discovery, management, control, delivery, and sharing of digital objects of phonograph record. The metadata design is the outcome of two pilot projects for the digitization of phonograph records that took place at the Marvin Duchow Music Library at McGill University. The new design offers an approach to maintaining and using digital sound and ensures the long-term viability of digital libraries of phonograph records.The dissertation discusses key areas of preservation and addresses the most common retrieval problems of music in digital libraries. These problems include challenges in the digital context of bibliographic control, cataloging, distribution, and copyright protection. The dissertation revisits traditional cataloging approaches, summarizes historical music cataloging and metadata development, sets up preservation principles and rationales for digitizing phonograph records, and presents state-of-the-art techniques for preserving phonograph records in the digital domain.The dissertation contains three main parts. The first is an introduction to the new metadata design for phonograph records. The second is a metadata dictionary, which assigns precise syntactic and semantic meanings to metadata elements, to guide digitizers working in libraries, archives, museums, and heritage sectors. These will be followed by two case studies of phonograph record digitization projects using the Metadata and the Data Dictionary. The dissertation concludes by examining three challenges that are critical to future development in both the preserving of and access to phonograph records: the issue of interoperability between different metadata standards, the need for usability and quality evaluation of digitization management systems, and the importance of further development in digital library retrieval services and tools
The turntable as a musical instrument and the emergence of the concert turntablist
The turntable played a significant role in the evolution of 20th century Western music, both as a recording/playback device, and as a musical instrument in its own right. The focus of this thesis is my original compositions that feature the turntable and the history of the turntable as a musical instrument. The 20th century delivered significant progress in turntable technology, but produced limited innovation for the turntable in new music composition. Except for a few outliers, the same techniques for the turntable have been recycled among experimental composers, sound artists and pop music producers since the 1930âs. This thesis embraces those techniques from the past, and moves forward to explore new potential for the turntable. My original folio of work featuring the turntable is informed by my research into: (1) conceptual barriers to understanding the turntable as an instrument (2) turntable notation (3) amplification options (4) public opinion of the turntable in the concert hall (5) original turntable techniques as well as my adaptation of existing techniques (6) composers who embraced the turntable-as-instrument
The turntable as a musical instrument and the emergence of the concert turntablist
The turntable played a significant role in the evolution of 20th century Western music, both as a recording/playback device, and as a musical instrument in its own right. The focus of this thesis is my original compositions that feature the turntable and the history of the turntable as a musical instrument. The 20th century delivered significant progress in turntable technology, but produced limited innovation for the turntable in new music composition. Except for a few outliers, the same techniques for the turntable have been recycled among experimental composers, sound artists and pop music producers since the 1930âs. This thesis embraces those techniques from the past, and moves forward to explore new potential for the turntable. My original folio of work featuring the turntable is informed by my research into: (1) conceptual barriers to understanding the turntable as an instrument (2) turntable notation (3) amplification options (4) public opinion of the turntable in the concert hall (5) original turntable techniques as well as my adaptation of existing techniques (6) composers who embraced the turntable-as-instrument
Vox Machinae: Phonographs and the Birth of Sonic Modernity, 1870-1930
In late 1877 Thomas Edison cobbled together a crude mechanism of metal and wood he called the âphonograph,â a device capable of mechanically reproducing sounds as varied as speech and birdsong. The scientific community and the general public hailed Edisonâs invention as a wonder of the age and speculated endlessly on the practical applications to which it would soon be put. But as Edison and his financial backers discovered, making money from sound recording was no easy task.
âVox Machinaeâ draws on business records, newspapers, trade journals and advertisements to detail the first five decades of the business of sound recording. It begins with the technologyâs origins as a staged spectacle in the 1870s before detailing its application to office work in the 1880s and 1890s. Following an examination of the nickel-in-slot phonograph parlors of the 1890s it explores the technologyâs evolution as a form of âhome entertainmentâ in the twentieth century. âVox Machinaeâ argues, first, that each of these business models was an historical artifact produced by a give-and-take between phonograph entrepreneurs, the public and sometimes-intransigent material things. The story of twentieth century music is not only one of race, class, gender, taste, capitalism and consumption. It is also one of motors, batteries and hand-cranks and it involves production and distribution no less than consumption and meaning- making. Secondly, this dissertation argues that the search for a profitable business model also enlisted phonograph entrepreneurs and the public in a project of determining exactly what kind
of things phonographs and recorded sounds were. Did the phonograph represent a âtalking machineâ in the European and American tradition of the speaking automaton? Was it a âsound writer,â inscribing spoken messages on sheets of foil and then reading these scripts aloud? Or did oneâs phonographs and records serve as frictionless conduits, channeling the actual singing, playing, preaching, and joking of distant (or even deceased) subjects? Sound recording technology was not a stable entity to be packaged and sold to the public. Rather it represented an ontologically-fluid cluster of material, cultural and social relations requiring that those who wished to sell it must first determine what it was.
âVox Machinaeâ complicates the existing historiography of recorded sound in two ways. First, it draws insights from Science, Technology and Society as well as the ânew materialismâ to show how the materiality of sound recording technology shaped its commercial evolution. Rather than a blank slate on which to project commercial ambitions, the phonograph presented would-be entrepreneurs with a tightly entangled set of commercial, material, social and cultural âproblemsâ to solve. Secondly, it seeks to bring together the nuance of recent cultural histories with an older interpretive rubricâthat of the âculture industry.â In so doing, it lays bare the tight relationship between production and consumption, without succumbing to the totalizing, historically âflatâ conception of the recording industry offered by Theodor Adorno and other mass culture critics.PHDHistoryUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146079/1/jacquesb_1.pd
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The instrument in space: The embodiment of music in the machine age
This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The body exists in space and time. It moves through cultural spaces and temporal rhythms. In the combination of instantiated actions and environmental conditions a context is created, this through embodiment. In this thesis I will attempt to link definitions of embodiment with the process of creating and performing new sound theatre works that involve live interaction with media technology. I will also examine terms such as inscription or incorporation and their application to processes of learning and memory within a particular context of inter-disciplinary skills. Finally, in the light of this genre, I will approach the problematic of analytical procedures that change the very parameters of embodied knowledge.
The term sound theatre could be defined as a shift of play between music, image and text, incorporating elements such as gesture, choreography, audio and visual technology into a compositional dialogue. However this approach demands a re-examination of the spatial and temporal aspects involved in such inter-activity and their consequent relation to the performer. Taking the starting-point of sound and movement within the body of the performer, my research involves investigations into medial extensions of embodiment that have developed through a discourse with machines.
This project takes an essentially practical basis for its research in the form of collaborations with musicians and practitioners of media technology towards a creative product. The result is a series of written compositions, each of which examines a different aspect of sound theatre. The valuable exchange that takes place during such a situation of experimentation becomes equally as important as the final product, providing much of the material framework for issues such as terminology and analytical procedures that concern my investigation
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Imperfect Sound Forever: Loudness Wars, Listening Formations and the History of Sound Reproduction
The purpose of this paper is to provide some historical perspective on the so-called loudness war. Critics of the loudness war maintain that the average volume level of popular music recordings has increased dramatically since the proliferation of digital technology in the 1980s, and that this increase has had detrimental effects on sound quality and the listening experience. My point is not to weigh in on this debate, but to suggest that the issue of loudness in sound recording and playback can be traced back much earlier than the 1980s. In fact, loudness has been a source of pleasure, a target of criticism, and an engine of technological change since the very earliest days of commercial sound reproduction. Looking at the period between the turn-of-the-century format feud to the arrival of electrical amplification in the 1920s, I situate the loudness war within a longer historical trajectory, and demonstrate a variety of ways in which loudness and volume have been controversial issues in â and constitutive elements of â the history of sound reproduction. I suggest that the loudness war can be understood in relation to a broader cultural history of volume
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