Author: Keith Kothman

The Vocoder and the Phase Vocoder are Not the Same Thing The vocoder (short for voice encoder) that appears in musical usage like Imogen Heap’s Hide and Seek, dates back to the 1930s. It was necessary to transmit voice communications over long distances with small information bandwidths. The solution was to encode the voice as a set…

Since none of our texts provide information about the Fourier Transform, we will use the information in this post as our reference material in our Intro to Sonic Arts class (MUST 121). Background In 1822, Jean Babtiste Joseph, Baron de Fourier developed the theorem that any periodic signal could be represented as the sum of…

Audio Domains: Time and Frequency Audio data can be represented in one of two domains: the time domain and the frequency domain.  Editing audio in a stereo audio editor (like Audacity) or DAW (like Pro Tools) typically takes place in the time domain. When you look at a standard representation of an audio signal in an…

Download the take-home quiz. Answer the questions in Word. Save it with a title of your last name and quiz1. Email it to me, with a subject line of “Quiz1.” The quiz is due back to me (email receipt) by the beginning of class on Tuesday, 10/16/12.

Once you’ve finished a project in Pro Tools (all the clips are where you want them, cross fades and all automation are specified), you need to go through a mixing process to end up with a single stereo file. That process is called bouncing to disk, and it is similar to the mix and render function in Audacity.…

Just a reminder of upcoming due dates, and notice of a take-home quiz. Oct. 9, Listening Quiz 2 Oct. 11, Negative Space multi-track projects due Oct. 11, Take-home quiz handed out, covering all topics from beginning of semester.

Chapter 6 of An Introduction to Music Technology covers the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). You should read the chapter as outlined below: the transport (and main clock) tracks (output assignments) edit view mix view SKIP THE RECORDING SECTION monitoring and latency editing mixing (automation: volume and panning) bounce down Under the topic of editing, you only…

Because I haven’t written a full post on how to use Audacity, I thought I would at least put up some tips for common tasks. Signal Processing In Peak, most of your processing commands are in the DSP menu, with plugins in a separate Plugins menu. In Audacity, most of your processing commands are in…

Pro Tools and DAWs Unlike stereo audio editors, Pro Tools is an example of a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). Pro Tools relies (mostly) on non-destructive processing and mixing. The program allows for multiple sounds to be used at once by reading from the multiple sound files, applying gain changes as indicated by mix commands, and…

Negative Space Multi-Track Project (Due 10/11, at the start of class) Wikipedia defines negative space “as the space around and between the subject(s) of an image. Negative space may be most evident when the space around a subject, and not the subject itself, forms an interesting or artistically relevant shape, and such space is occasionally used to…