Digital Audio Production

Projects

Sound Windows (10%)
fashion your own audio collage or sound sculpture from various media sources, samples, and/or field recordings

soundhouse (20%)
participate in a remix project in which you will build your own works in whole or in part from the material of other students

SPACED: a reCreation (20%)
generate and mix original sound sources through software synthesis, data-bending, and real-time digital signal processing

Final (25%)
submit a final audio project that demonstrates your ability to integrate production concepts and strategies from throughout the quarter

DIGITAL AUDIO PRODUCTION explores the tools and techniques of digitized sound production by focusing on a series of individual and collaborative projects. We will cover: sampling and field recording; sound editing and effects processing; looping; multitrack mixing and sequencing; software synthesis, patch programming, and virtual studio design; performance with digital audio software; live recording; and final editing and mastering. Over the course of the quarter, we will explore three different ways to produce sustained works: non-linear sound editing and effect processing; multitrack sequencing; and live sampling, synthesis, and patch programming.

To contextualize our practices, the class introduces a number of recorded works in such genres as musique concrète, tape music, sound collage, mash-ups, dub, turntablism, techno and other forms of electronica, microsound, ambient, trip-hop, psychedelia, post-punk, and space rock. Works in these fields will model some of our core production techniques and strategies.

The class will also incorporate reading and discussion of a few texts to bring theoretical and critical considerations to our production work. These texts will help us to establish some of the cultural, social, artistic, ethical, and commercial frameworks through which we experience and participate in the culture of digital sound through our own productions.

Finally, we will have periodic auditions and critiques of the class members’ work.

This class counts toward DMS Technical / Production credits.

Syllabus
PDF download

Primary Technologies
Sony Sound Forge 10
Sony Acid Pro 7
Native Instruments Absynth 5
Native Instruments Reaktor 5
AudioMulch Interactive Studio

Movies and Documentaries
Modulations: Cinema for the Ear, dir. Iara Lee (Caipirinha 1998)

Better Living Through Circuitry, dir. Jon Reiss (Studio K7/Cleopatra 1999)

Scratch, dir. Doug Pray (Palm Pictures 2001)

OHM+, prod. Thomas Ziegler, Jason Gross, & Russell Charno (Ellipsis Arts 2005)

CD Compilations
Early Modulations: Vintage Volts (Caipirinha 1999)

OHM: The Early Gurus of Electronic Music (Ellipsis Arts 2000)

Haunted Weather: Music, Silence and Memory (Staubgold 2004)

Texts
Thom Holmes, Electronic and Experimental Music (Routledge 2002)

The Routledge Guide to Music Technology (2006)