Monthly Archives: July 2015

Amy Hanley’s Peer Portrait

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For my Peer Portrait in New Wave Radio, I have teamed up with Amy Hanley.

My aim was to create a rich audio vignette using voice over, original music and archived sounds, I wanted the audio to be dynamic with a good volume level sans distortion. I also wanted to explore vocal montage as heard in Just Another Fish by Molly Menschell.

This very short biography of Amy looks at her passions and aspirations, I had given Amy a run down of some questions that I was going to ask a formal recorded interview just incase there were topics that were off limits.

The recording began at The National Gallery of Victoria where I gathered sounds of the fountain. From there, we trekked to RMIT in the hope that someone in the AV department might be so kind as to lend us a sound proof both. Techie and true gentleman Lambros was our knight in shining audio/visual equipment that afternoon.

My questions to Amy for the interview were fairly simple; favourite movie, favourite music, who were her influences and what had inspired her through life, hobbies and profundities etc. It  became  evident that the ocean has played a big part in Amy’s life, she is a surfer from the West Coast. Naturally, I felt that water could be a good motif element throughout my piece.

The recording device that I used was an H6 Zoom recorder, set to the X/Y axis microphones. A tripod mount for the H6 might have minimised some of the inconsistencies in the audio, as my fatigued arm was struggling to remain still for 20 minutes as I held the device up to the optimum distance from the subject.

The music was my own, it was recorded with a Rode NT1000 microphone and a VST piano on Protools, the edgy opening sound was from the www.freesounds.org file sharing database.

I was most happy with the sound of Amy’s voice, her story (though most of it ended up on the cutting room floor so to speak) and the reflexive introduction. I was most torn by the ambiguity of the duration set in the brief, do I produce 30” or or 2’30”?, and further to this, I most challenged by the compression of 20 magical minutes to 30 seconds. But, one of the biggest hurdles that I faced and am still facing right now as I write, is one involving software. I run Protools and I have it on my iMac at home and in order to put this on my new laptop, I have been advised to update the software though this has caused major problems such as a vicious white noise file conversion. I’m back and forth with Avid tech support and I’ll spare you the jargon and the tears because luckily, I bounced a draft copy to which I am using for this submission.

Protools

Protools

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– Menschel, M. (2005) Just Another Fish Story, Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, audio, USA

– Oymaldonado, Guitar Feedback 2, shared on www.Freesounds.org

-Thank you to Yield’s Tin Llama for the use of their SoundCloud site.

Setting Up the Grill

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Amy and myself were lucky enough to be granted access to a sound proof room in the uni. The amazing Lambros, the name of the scholar who found the room for us, wasn’t happy with the original room that we had annexed and took us to the bowels of the campus to work in this padded gem. Sonically, it was blackhole that allowed us to record audio with our Zoom recorders with zero echo or interference.

The aim was not only to get to know the equipment, but to get to know one another for the purposes of the portrait, the method was to fire questions in a panel setting that resembled a scene from CSI… minus the remedial acting.

I found Amy’s question, poignant, philosophical, thought provoking… and somewhat abstract in comparison to the naff speed dating questions that I had prepared.

We ended the session with me jamming on my steel guitar, my playing was as rusty as an old axe and I just hope Amy can salvage something that doesn’t make me sound like a complete hack.

I left meting thinking of how I could have answered the questions better which lead me to reflecting on my own existence.

 

Amy Hanley setting up the panel.

Amy Hanley setting up the panel.

POETRY IS A TOWN IN TEXAS!

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“Poetry is what gets lost in translation”
– Robert Frost
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“Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows and of lending existence to nothing”
– Edmund Burke
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… it is also a town under the orange dot.

 .

Poetry

Poetry

Conceptualising

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The medium was the message today as our time was spent analysing the historical progression in audio’s capture and dissemination.

Thanks to Gulielmo Marconi’s inadvertent intertextual homage to Benjamin Franklin’s maniacal yet world changing “old fart flying kite in the fields by himself” episode, long distance radio transmission was assumed to be possible.

Hurrah!

Hypothetically speaking, say, these two gentlemen, trans time and space, had a conversation about their life’s work, would the topic of discourse reveal dense scientific theorem, or, would it be more of a chest-beating psych-out stare-down season to determine who will win in the next kite  derby battle? Or, do you think that both men would be more interested in sharing advice about how to sustain a healthy relationship with their significant others considering their ‘don’t stop me, why the party’s just begun’ pastimes of flying kites? [Insert wind and cricket noises].

FullSizeRender

Our group brainstorm was ‘electric’ though we were on the wrong train.

 

 

Not Such An Avid Fan

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Here’s the thing, I’ve spent 15 years working with Protools, they have always given me exactly what I need as far as audio design is concerned and never have I had a qualm… until now!

All I want to do, is install Protools software on my new laptop… software that I purchased several years ago, and Avid, the company that facilitates the program, are putting me through the ringer with licensing. I paid good money for this program so why are they being so damn cagey about their licensing agreements?

Does the proverb ‘the customer is always right’ not mean anything in this rapidly growing yet precocious digital industry?

The Avid caged beast has been let loose. Gnnaaaaarrrrrrr!!!!

Semester 2 Has Begun!

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Getting straight into the the nuts and bolts of what to expect for the rest of the semester gave me the sense that we should emerge from this leisurely holiday gait and be prepared to hit the ground running.

Our tutor, Kyla Brettle, gave an informative speech on the concept of New Wave Radio, though, being an avid podcast listener, many of the points discussed were not so new to me, however, I had several light-bulb moments relating to the historical topics expressed by Kyla about radio’s progression through the years.

In class, we had the chance to practice our interviewing skills on a Zoom H4 recorder, preparing us for our first assignment. We were asked to buddy up with a fellow class member and interview them about their lives. I got the chance to interview Amy and Jarrod, though, I opted to focus on Amy’s story for the assignment… I didn’t mean to fob Jarrod off but I had already devised an idea for Amy’s self portrait.

Editing The Llamas on Protools

Editing The Llamas on Protools