Final Major Project
Tim Shepherd

Category: Creative

Categories
Creative Planning

Sound Advice

I’ve been reflecting on the process of creating these tracks over the past few weeks, and one of the main things that I’ve realised is the importance of sound/instrument selection. 

It has also been one of the hardest things to get right. For instance, Listen to the following (the main instrument for the melody at the start):

[LINK TO Track3.wav]

https://artslondon-my.sharepoint.com/:u:/g/personal/t_shepherd0320221_arts_ac_uk/EVqdlEVAY75MlRjiLQwzT7oB8w8hWXa17gctKCvDDWW90Q?e=c2bInb

Now, listen to the same segment with different instrument selection:

[LINK TO Track3-v11.wav]

https://artslondon-my.sharepoint.com/:u:/g/personal/t_shepherd0320221_arts_ac_uk/EdX5G-xOjQBOoIXS-tFIfW0BYmVFCRTCFJ9WKrn0ABLgFw?e=2DTe57

The original lead sound doesn’t have as much presence in the mix. So, why does the second one sound better?

I could have introduced EQ, compression, or saturation, to get the sound to sit better in the mix, and I will say, I tried that first. The results were fine. But I really wanted the lead sound to cut through. So, I decided to look for similar sounds that would sit better in the mix. It takes ages to do this, but it was a good way to keep myself overworking a sound.

It’s sometimes better to change the sound rather than trying to make incremental changes to get it to sound right. So, for that lead sound I changed the sound from (Figure 1):

Figure 1: Lead sound used in “Track3-v1”

To (Figure 2):

Figure 2: Lead sound used in “Track3-v11”

The original sound is a “purer” synth sound. And I loved the pitch shift at the start of the notes, but it didn’t cut through the mix enough. The second sound has more distortion but also a more organic feel. 

Other techniques used for sounds

Layering

I’ve also used a few techniques to get the best from a few sounds where using the stock plugins could achieve a sound that I was going for by itself. For these types of sounds I would sometimes layer them together (Figure 3).

Figure 3: See the three tracks have the same notes with different instruments all playing at the same time. 

Using layering, I was able to create and treat the attack of an instrument that I liked with the sustain of a different instrument that I liked too. While in Figure 3 the instruments are on separate tracks, I could have used an instrument rack. I have done this for a few of the tracks as it made automation easier, but for the example above it wasn’t necessary to achieve the sound I was after. And in this instance, I was using different octaves for the different layers, so keeping them separated made turning them into one instrument easier.

Modulation

I can’t say enough about how modulation can help with creating aural interest to sounds over time. While it’s possible to do this with automation of parameters using an automation lane, it’s usually a lot faster than easier to use an LFO. 

I can say though, there are a few drawbacks with using the LFO in Ableton. First, if it’s not synced to the grid (using frequency rather than note values), you can end up playing a version that is amazing but when you render it out, the start value of the frequency is in a different place every time you render it out. Meaning it never sounds the same twice. This doesn’t happen when the LFO is set to the grid. 

But an easy way around this is to freeze the track, see if it’s good, if not unfreeze and refreeze, listen and repeat until you are happy. Not ideal, but better than it sounding different every time. 

Categories
Creative Development Planning Research

Can you collaborate with an ANT?

Just kidding. But it does bring up the question of how do I collaborate with a non-human entity? Is it even possible? 

Well, from my perspective it is. However, let’s look at what others in the fields of creativity and sociology say.

I’ll start with a sociological perspective. A definition of Actor Network Theory (ANT) is a good place to start so that we can break down how this relates to my Final Major Project (FMP) and what insights working with a non-human collaborator bring up.

Actor Network Theory: Is a theoretical framework within the field of science and technology studies (STS) that examines how social, technical, and material entities (referred to as “actors”) interact to form complex networks that shape and influence outcomes. ANT challenges traditional distinctions between human and non-human agents by treating them symmetrically as participants in these networks.

This definition, while not specifically saying that non-human entities can be collaborators as an overt term, states that the interactions between human and non-human “actors” to influence one another. 

ANT is a contrasting view to Technological Determinism (TD), where the idea that technology develops independently of social change and drives social change (Bimber, 1990). For example, Karl Marx believed that the railway in colonial India changed social hierarchies by introducing new economic activities (ibid.). While TD can look like a good place to start when you take a cursory view of any technology and its impact on how people use it, I believe a more nuanced approach can lead to a better understanding of how we as humans interact with technology, and how we as humans shape technology. To gain a more holistic view of collaboration I’ll bring up Fraser’s “Collaboration bites back” (2022). In this paper Fraser creates a manifesto for collaboration as a tool for change. So, I thought it best to go through her 10-point manifesto and see/explain how working with ST4RT+ achieves her points. 

  1.  Collaboration should not be predictable:
    This is an easy one. While ST4RT+ is based on my melodies and data, it doesn’t create melodies that are 100% what I would do.
  2. Collaboration should not be clean:
    This one is a little more nuanced. I will say that when I was struggling with the outputs of the model at the start of this project, I had to get my hands dirty and get to the point where I started thinking more like a music producer and less like a developer. 
  3. Collaboration should not be safe:
    This whole project was a risk, using technology I’d never used before, and risking that it was going to work has put me in a place where I thought I was going to be lucky to generate anything worthwhile.
  4. Collaboration requires consent:
    Harder to do this with a non-human collaborator, however if the original generation of a set of melodies is objectively awful (all the notes are overlapped and on bar one) then I just regenerate. 
  5. Collaboration requires trust:
    This point is interesting, for me it was about trusting myself and the process. When I was fighting the models output it was because I wasn’t trusting my skills as a music producer. I wanted the model to generate clean melody lines. Trust in myself has really helped to get this project working.
  6. Collaboration requires time, and time (usually) costs money:
    This project has taken time to get working (far more time in the beginning than I anticipated). It has needed experimentation and failure to get to a point where the process and methodology are working.
  7. Collaboration requires vigilance:
    Regardless of a non-human collaborator, this still applies, though it relies more on me to do that work. 
  8. Collaboration is not compulsory:
    Nothing to see here… in this case it was compulsory.
  9. Collaboration is not cool:
    I disagree here. Only because using an ANT framework almost everything is a collaboration even if you aren’t aware of it. 
  10. Collaboration is a tool for change:
    I agree that any collaboration should challenge the status quo. For me the idea of creating an ethical use for AI trained only on the data that I have given it challenges how AI is being used and the data it is trained on. For me this is important and a point of difference with this project.

I think that when I look at Fraser’s 10-point manifesto that this project still works in terms of meeting what she defines as collaboration.

Bibliography

Bimber, B. (1990) Karl Marx and the Three Faces of Technological Determinism, in Social Studies of Science, Vol. 20, No. 2 (May, 1990), pp. 333-352. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/285094 (Accessed: 2 December 2024). 

Fraser, J. (2022) Collaboration bites back. Available at:  https://www.julietfraser.co.uk/app/download/11414030/Collaboration+bites+back.pdf (Accessed: 18 October 2024) 

Categories
Creative Research

Powers of Ten

For this project I’d like to emulate some of the sounds like Stephan Bodzin as I love his work and his aesthetic. Hence the need to do some research into how he got the sounds on his album, Powers of Ten (Bodzin, 2015). 

A live set by Stephan Bodzin:

Most of the information that I can find online has been what Bodzin uses for his live shows (McGlynn, 2021). Although his main setup is confirmed by Stephan’s Equipboard profile (2024), though it is important to note that on Equipboard that this profile is “This is a community-built gear list for Stephan Bodzin.”

What does he use?

  • Moog Sub37: Serves as the foundation of his music and live set. Used to play basslines and is used as the timing master for the Matriarch and the Mordor (ibid).
  • Modor DR-2 Drum Machine: Is a digital drum machine using DSP synthesis rather than samples to produce the sounds. There is no sample memory, it’s all synth based (Modor, 2024).
  • Moog Matriarch Semi-Modular Synthesizer: Is a “patchable 4-note paraphonic analog synthesizer” (Moog, 2024).
  • Ableton Live: Live (Ableton, 2024) is used to trigger sounds and MIDI, including drums and basslines. It also serves as the hub for syncing his hardware synthesizers and drum machine.

Stephan’s music

It is safe to say that his main genres are trance and techno. More on the melodic side when talking about techno. This can be heard in the opening track on Powers of Ten, “Singularity” (Bodzin, 2015). Where there is a main melody line throughout the track. You can hear the analog Moog Matriarch used to full advantage. It’s almost organic in the way he plays with both the filter and the pitch to generate interest in the main melody as it evolves across the track. 

In the title track “Powers of Ten” (Bodzin, 2015) Stephan uses a technique where the main rhythmic sound that is heard across the whole track is modified with adding in noise and changing both the filter cutoff and the filter resonance frequency. 

I’m also interested in the kick he has used in this album. It has a sound that really cuts though his mixes. This was harder to find, but thankfully over at KVR Audio’s forums there was a solution (KVRAudio, 2016). From this site it sounds like it is a saturated 808 kick with some EQ and compression. And I can confirm that  this works to create a kick that sounds right. 

How I’m going to create some of these types of sounds

Since I don’t have these specific pieces of hardware, I’m going to use a combination of Ableton Analog, and a series of LFO’s to modulate the filter cutoffs and the resonance frequencies (without syncing them to the tempo, to make them more organic). 

For the drum sound, while I have used 909 kicks for some of the tracks as they work better, I’m going to add 808 for some of the other tracks. The method found online works to create something that is indistinguishable from his kick when mixed. 

I have a friend who will let me borrow his Sub37, so I’ll use that to track and record some of the bass sounds (I’ve looked for a VST/virtual instrument to do this and there are none available). 

While I don’t think I’ll copy his style completely, even looking at how he has created his tracks is giving me ideas to further my own tracks. 

Bibliography

McGlynn, D. (2021) Stephan Bodzin: How I Play Live. Available at: https://djmag.com/longreads/stephan-bodzin-how-i-play-live (Accessed: 12 November 2024)

Modor (2024) MODOR Digital Polyphonic Synths | DR-2. Available at: https://www.modormusic.com/dr2.html(Accessed: 12 November 2024)

Moog (2024) Matriarch | Moog. Available at: https://www.moogmusic.com/products/matriarch (Accessed: 12 November 2024)

Ableton (2024) What’s new in Live 12 | Ableton. Available at: https://www.ableton.com/en/live/ (Accessed: 12 November 2024)

Equipboard (2024) Stephan Bodzin | Equipboard. Available at: https://equipboard.com/pros/stephan-bodzin(Accessed: 12 November 2024)

Bodzin, S. (2015) Powers of Ten. Available at: Apple Music (Accessed 14 November 2024)

KVRAudio (2016) Stephan Bodzin kick. Available at: https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=469969(Accessed: 8 January 2025)

Categories
Creative

OMFG! This AI is good!

I started working on this project not really knowing where it would end up. There was a fair amount of trepidation with this project working in terms of: 

  • Would it create output that I could work with?
  • Would it produce reasonable results with a reduced data set?
  • Would it still kind of sound like a version of “me”?
  • Could I work creatively with this AI version of “me”?

Well, I have to say, I’m very surprised by the results of my first track. Not only does it sound like me, but it also does a great job at making the production experience pain free. 

Now, this is only the first track, and other inputs may produce random outputs. But I’m happy with this as a first produced track for the EP. 

So, without further a due, here is a link to the WIP for my first track of the EP:

After listening I think it’s best to go through the thoughts that I was going through at the beginning of this process to see how and what has changed in my creative and cognitive conception of how the process is going, and the opportunities that this can have both creatively and in terms of workflow. 

Would it create output that I could work with, and would it produce reasonable results with a reduced data set?

I need to be honest here, the first outputs from the AI were not great. I tried with my versions of default weights with pitch, step, and duration, all at 1.0. The results were not great: 

It’s boring, and I’ve used a lot of techniques to kind of hide the main melody. Not a great start and it had me questioning myself for choosing to do this as a project. 

I thought it could be the size of my model data, or the input that I gave it. This led me to increase the amount of training data that I gave to the model. It also made me research how to use the “.repeat()” function in TensorFlow to selectively add more synthetic data into the dataset. After doing this, I still had issues with the output, so further research pointed me to the use of weights and their application. I’ll go into weights in a further blog post, but this important topic tells the model what I want it to find as important. 

Changing the weights to what you can see in Figure 1 made the outputs for Figure 2 and Figure 3.

Figure 1: Weights used for the first set of outputs that I used for “Track 1”
Figure 2: Output 1 from the weights used
Figure 3: Output 2 from the weights used

This created something that sounded a lot closer to the kind of output that I was looking for. And created a back and forth between me and the AI that isn’t too dissimilar to working with a human collaborator when brainstorming at the beginning of the creative process.

Would it still kind of sound like a version of “me” and could I work creatively with this AI version of “me”?

I’m not sure if my influence over this piece is purely my production values or that the melody is very much me. But I have to say that an interesting thing has occurred when getting output from the AI. Almost all the output that I’m getting from ST4RT+ is in the key of C minor. While I trained the model with pieces in different keys, the bulk of what I create when writing is to default to C minor. I have no idea why I do this; I just like that key. But I found it interesting that ST4RT+ both picked up on this, and the outputs certainly sound like me because of it. 

In a way, it makes the output more like it is a part of me. And that helps with the pieces feeling familiar. Does it sound like me? Yes. Can I work with the AI creatively? A resounding “YES”!