Noah Safian Week 4: 3 Videos

1. This song by one of my favorite producers does a lot interesting looping with the sampled singer's vocals. I think that using some of the vocal parts we have recorded to create melodic or rhythmic loops could be really cool

2. This video demonstrates granular synthesis affecting both audio and visual elements. Incorporating a visual aspect to our use of granular synthesis could be something we explore.

3. Similar to the granular synthesis video, this poem by Brion Gysin is only made of one phrase, but by rearranging the words, changing his vocalization, and adjusting punctuation, Gysin composes a highly varied and captivating piece. We could probably achieve a similar effect by using granular synthesis or sample chopping to re-arrange recorded vocal parts.

Nick Warren- week 4

Video 1: Drone Music with granular synthesis (glory to the Hypnotoad)


I was searching around for some granular synthesis stuff, and I found this. I really like the textures granular synthesis techniques can create when used for ambience/drones.



Video 2: Foo Fighters Meets 70's Bobby Caldwell - Live Looping Mashup by Elise Trouw



This is just a really well-done example of looping with acoustic drums. There is some looping of the acoustic drums and some non-looped playing along with the loop. I think both are valid, but I think I would prefer just having someone play along with a loop on drums.


Video 3: Willy Wonka w/ drums



I have seen similar things done with bass or guitar, but I just found this guy who does it on drums. I was thinking we could do something similar to this with the vocals we record, except probably loop smaller phrases or words with our piece.

Blog Week 4: Three new videos

You now have a team and a bit of an idea of where you are headed.  Search out at least three examples of work you didn't know about before that relates to the direction your team is headed. Feel free to take suggestions from your teammates in your search.  Post the example with some substantive comment. Please don't just repeat something that your teammates posted in week 1. Consider this not just an exercise, but part of the essential process of researching your project.

Blog Post #2

1. Resynthesis: a technology that strips a pre-existing audio signal to its core characteristics, pitch, formant and envelope. It allows you to manipulate each of these four characteristics individually and then reconstruct the sound how you please.

2. Wavetable Synthesis: audio’s sound waves are modeled on a single cycle waveform of a sound source.

3. Looping: Creating playback of a previously played sound allowing the player to overdub the original sound.

Misunderstood Term: EDM Producer

When people hear this they immediately attribute you to being a DJ. What they don't realize is the countless hours of sound design, mixing and other things that go in to making a really good, professional sounding dance track. 

terms and misconceptions

Drumming terms i like

Pocket - The best drummers can anticipate the areas where they may be tempted to rush or slow down based on how busy the beat is, and actively counteracting that. That intentional effort to stay on tempo while bringing style to the groove, is playing in the pocket.

Dancing - ‘dancing’ on cymbals is a skill used more in the gospel drumming world. A player will introduce rhythmic ideas across their cymbal rack before playing the main beat. Cymbal dancing requires a lot of attention to detail on accents and cymbal selection, to help bring out the most important ideas of the next big beat.

Ghosting - Ghosting is when a percussionist, or any player really, moves their body as if they were playing the full beat but only actually plays a few notes. Playing ghost notes on a drum set requires the ability to focus on the initiation and pausing of the muscles in your thighs and shoulders.

Misconceptions -

One thing that can sometimes bother me, is when people say that drummers can’t play anything else and that’s why they play drums….When in actuality, percussionists can play many different drums and accessory instruments. Drummers have to learn how to apply so many techniques across the board its insane. 

Three terms, conner

Implement - Referring to the material used to strike another material i.e - mallet, stick, thimble, rod etc...

4 way coordination - using all 4 limbs to create patterns and the limitations and possibilities inherent in the human body

Graphic notation - using pictures, symbols, images, scenes as a baseline for music making. Almost like a score, graphic notation can really be anything and is generally not part of an established notation system but may include aspects of one.

Misunderstood - "Ill just Improvise" - This may not be as much of a problem in the PAT community but in the classical music world improvisation tends to take a second class position in practice and education. It is commonly thought that to improvise means to play at random with little thought or practice. Improvisation takes practice to be comfortable in a particular situation just like any other form of music. It involves very active decision making as you need to navigate form, melodic and rhythmic material, and aesthetic in the moment, as opposed to working from a pre determined script.

Heather, Week 2

1. Cue: Music that is created specifically for a certain scene or moment in a film - can be of any length. 

2. Leitmotif: A musical phrase/theme/instrument used for a particular character, relationship, or place. This help create a sense continuity and can emphasize an emotional response to the story. 

3. Mickey mousing: When music is synced with the actions on the screen - hits occur directly with action. This can be effective when used correctly, particularly in comedy and animation. 

Misunderstood Term: 

Film music: I think the term film music, in general, is viewed negatively, and people make the assumption that all film music sounds the same. But I’m not sure that people understand the complex process that goes into composing, recording, and mixing film music and how many people are involved.

Noah Safian: Week 2 Terms

1. Quantize: Primarily found in digital music processing, quantization is the process of eliminating the imprecision of musical notes due to expressive performance. Because of the impeccably precise timing of quantized notes, the resulting sound is commonly referred to as “mechanical” and “manufactured”.

2. Humanize: In contrast to quantization, humanized music and rhythms have slight incongruences in timing, velocity, and timbre that are consistent with human instrumental performance.

3. Audio Automation: Modern digital audio consoles or mixers use automation, which allows the audio engineer to make adjustments to EQ, panning, faders, etc during the post-production editing process. A timecode is necessary for the synchronization of automation. Automation allows for the further manipulation of recorded sound, and can be used to evolve a particular sound in different ways throughout a track.

“Ghostwriting”: Throughout history, musicians and composers have composed music for other artists to perform, or performed work that was not their original songwriting. Nowadays, primarily in hip-hop, the concept of having one lyricist write a song for another rapper to perform is frequently scrutinized as being inauthentic. However, the fact that an artist did not compose the work they are performing does not necessarily negate the significance of their performance or its value to the performer. 

Gibby W2: Terms

1. Moment- a moment is a perceived unit of time in which something distinctly engrossing is happening. I think it is vital to organize a performance with balanced pacing of moments to keep the audiences attention. Moments can be musical or visual (or both), loud or quiet, and big or small just as long as they are distinct and entertaining.
2. Feature- when something is featured (is the feature), it is presented with great importance and priority. A feature can also be a moment, or a short yet powerful presentation of the subject. The feature carries the intent or message on a macro or micro scale.
3. Pocket- When everyone in the ensemble commits to the groove and the groove slaps, they’re in the pocket. When you’re in the pocket, it feels good.

Hipster- I’ve had people describe the music I make and the trajectory of my style as hipster which (although pretty comical) is a massive degradation of all art outside of the mainstream. I think labeling art as hipster is to lack openness to new experiences, and while I do agree that my focus is outside of the mainstream, my hope is to make music that can reach beyond that label. 

Nick Warren; week 2

Two terms from my practice:

1. Head- The (typically) 8 to 32 bar portion of a jazz tune at the beginning that establishes the chord progression and main melody of the tune. The musician's then improvise over the same chord progression.
2. Changes- the chord progression

One misunderstood term:

Sequenced- Many people use this term to imply that some music "has no soul" because it was sequenced on a computer or other sequencer. However, it is just that they don't understand the art behind this type of music.

Blog Week 2

In each discipline, and really in any human endeavor that involves a closed group, the members develop an internal language that has specific meanings and implications for them and either very different, or sometimes little or no meanings for those outside the group.  Even common words or expressions can take on new meanings within a group.

Your blog post should have two parts:

1. What are three of your favorite words or terms from the 'secret language' of your discipline, and why are you drawn to them, or why are they important to your discipline? Help the rest of the class by explaining what they mean to you, to your discipline, and why they are significant.

2. Conversely, people outside of the group can tend to reduce the inherent richness and diversity of a discipline by using an unfair condensation of one or two words to describe the totality of the group, or by misusing or misunderstanding these terms.  What is the outsider description of your discipline, or a term that people use to describe your discipline that you find to be most inaccurate, reductionist or plain wrong?

Between Saturday and class next Tuesday, read everyone else's posts, and comment freely.

Conner post 1, 2 videos


This is an ambient improvisation I recorded for an album that is in the works. I used vibraphone as well as a bowl of water filled with loose jingle bells and washers. This next clip interests me as a possibility for a collaboration between acoustic instruments and live processing.

Kam's first blog post

heres my first video - I chose thins one because i think it best represents the sort of music that I like to write, as well as my love for drumming.



and my second one - I chose this video because I love the way that Merrill uses her loop in and out of the song. Each member of her group is on the same page about where they are in the song based on the loop, and everyone is expressing the same level of energy as Merrill, which is one of the most important things to me when I'm playing with a group.

Heather Schmidt, Week 1

This is a piece of mine, combining piano with ambient electronic sounds, that is pretty reflective of my work. I like to play with the interaction between acoustic and electronics instruments, particularly with a cinematic/soundscape focus.





The video below is a similar concept, but adds more instrumentation and complex rhythms, which is something that I have been interested in doing. I would also love to use prepared piano, but couldn't find a video that I liked that showed a collaboration using prepared piano, electronics, and additional instruments.

Nick Warren; Week 1

This is a (sideways) phone video of a tune I wrote for the electronic hip-hop/jazz jam band I'm in with a few friends. We don't really have the chance to play very much, so we don't really gig around. However, this is definitely a pretty typical vibe I go for when I write tunes.




I would really like the opportunity to work with some modular gear. It is the perfect representation of how I think of music performance as an interaction– in this case between man and machine. It would be cool for me to be able to use something like a modular setup to do live processing of signal someone else is creating. One thing this video doesn't show that I would like to do with this performance is utilize some of the surround capabilities of the Davis studio.

This is a song that I took off my Soundcloud and I think it represents me fairly well.  When making this remix, the only thing I started with was the vocal stems.  The rest of the. music I composed and produced.   I really like combining acoustic and electronic elements in my tracks and I definitely do that in this one.




This is one of my favorite videos. I love the piano guys mainly because I play the cello and the piano but also because of their use of technology with their work.  I think this video is amazing cause they use 100 tracks to create the video. It's also not just playing the instruments traditionally, they use interesting techniques to get cool sounds from both the piano and the cello.  I think doing something live like this would be awesome (because I have an electric cello and a loop pedal).

Noah Safian Week 1 - 2 Videos

This first video is the closest representation I could find to a performance I led last semester in PAT 472. Each member of a 5 person "laptop orchestra" utilizing Chuck MiniAudicle coding software was given a piece of code for different sonic elements of a storm. This included the sound of high and low pitched winds, rain, and various thunder samples. A 2 minute storm time lapse video I created was used to conduct the orchestra, as they sonically imitated the storm they were watching in front of them.

















Building off of this performance, I would like to look into having sound affect some sort of visual element in real time (instead of having the visual influence the sound, like in my Storm Sonification). I plan on looking into different hardware and software that allow significant manipulation and can achieve this kind of effect.

Gibby W1: 2 videos

This first video is of the Bluecoats, a Drum and Bugle corps performing at Drum Corps International Finals competition in Indianapolis. I was a performing member of this group this summer and the previous and this show is titled "Session 44" and takes inspiration from Billy Holiday's "God Bless the Child" and her career. As a performing member I played keyboard and triggered samples that you can hear throughout the show. This kind of live performance with electronic integration is something I want to keep exploring.



The next video is of Wintergatan who you may remember from their viral marble machine video from several years back. I just recently got a music box like the one in this video and I want to make music with it and other various music toys and percussion instruments I've acquired over the years to explore a new and dynamic palette of sounds. I also like the aesthetic of this video and how they've created moving picture to accompany the music.
I really want to compose and perform something and add some kind of visual element, be it a sculpture or moving piece or a video that is projected or some kind of responsive or generative visual element.

Blog Week 1: Two Videos

Before Friday 1/11 at 11:59pm:

Post 2 videos or audio recordings:

1. Something representative of your current creative / technical practice (Could be something you have done recently, but not necessarily.)

2. Something collaborative that is representative of something you’d love to do (e.g., in this class) but don’t know how or haven’t had the opportunity?

Write 1-2 sentences about each of your videos highlighting why you chose them.

After posting your videos, between Saturday and class on Tuesday, watch everyone else's videos and comment on each one.

Winter 2019

Welcome to Electronic Chamber Music Winter 2019!

This semester, our concert will be on Tuesday April 16. The theme of the concert will be Einstein's Dreams. We will devise works that are responses to Alan Lightman's book of the same title.