Electronic Music, Unit 5

Assignment 1, Logic's Flex Time

The main ideas of Flex, as I understand it, is:

There is a mode in Logic toggled by the Flex button, which is the one that glows purple after you press it.
Flex mode uses a variety of different algorithms that are each slightly different. These are used to detect transients, etc.
Slicing algorithm - Best for percussion
Monophonic algorithm - Best for single-note-at-a-time instruments
Polyphonic algorithm - Best for chords and complex material
Tempophone algorithm - Creates special effects after tracks are modified
Speed algorithm - Plays material faster or slower
Those first three algorithms work similarly, they move around and modify transients, which are the sounds of individual notes

I had to limit the time I spent trying out all this stuff because there was so much text on this assignment. It is amazing that, at first glance such a small feature (Flex time) has so much power and and there are so many tiny things that make a huge difference but are easy to overlook. In my honest opinion, this is way more serious editing than what I did in previous units and I was having some trouble following the instructions, but I figured it out well enough. One especially complicating thing was the seven different types of Flex cursors that are all unnamed...

Assignment 2, Flex Pitch

Now this was easier and more straightforward than the last assignment... I read everything and did everything in like 15 minutes, unless I somehow skipped by something. The major thing that I pulled out of this, was, when 'Flex Pitch' is selected as the algorithm, you can edit the pitch of notes. So if any notes are out of tune, anyone can edit them. This is easy to do with MIDI but this is the way to go if you are editing a regular audio track.

Something that wasn't mentioned in the assignment: I right clicked the main window and saw some options and I selected "set all notes to perfect pitch" and it did it automatically! Probably the same effect as if I went through and did it all manually, but so much faster. The "perfect pitch" version of the song sample was not all that different from the original, but it did sound pretty good. One thing that was not corrected was the ending. The singer said, "Ok I messed that up" at the end, and I agreed, so I went and set some notes to a higher pitch and got it to sound a bit better. I also had a test where I duplicated the entire audio region and then set the duplicate to sing super low notes. It came out weird.

Finally, I was curious as to what that "MIDI In" button did, and now I'm glad that I know! I think it's easier to just move the note up and down and find the right pitch than to play a note and have it set to that, however.

Musique Concrete Project

Arrangement window: http://i.imgur.com/DD93dIo.png

This was an interesting project with an odd audio sample to work with. I really had no idea what I was going to do and so I just started in and doing whatever I could until I found some sound that could work.

I don't really like the way this project came out for me but at the same time, it was a really odd sample and I did what I could within time restriction. The function that I ended up using the most was time stretching a region. I had a slow part at the beginning, then another a little faster, and finally the fastest version of the laugh and repeated a few times. I isolated one "Ha" transient and repeated it to create a drum beat-like sort of thing (or at least that's what I was going for). In the section with the fastest laughs, I used three different tracks that layered on each other. One was regular pitch, one was low, and one was low with a bunch of other effects added in. Then for the ending, I used a slow laugh and no backing "Ha" beat.