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IUPUI Music Technology Graduate Recital

Internet2: How Fast is Really Fast?

My class is giving a graduate recital Nov 30th that will be streamed live on the internet. To further compliment the concept of music used with technology, a few of us are trying to work out combined performances from remote locations. At least one of the students is planning on using Internet2. Here is an official definition:

Internet2 is a collaborative project by over 120 U.S. research universities, working with partners in industry and government, to develop a new family of advanced applications to meet emerging academic requirements in research, teaching, and learning. This collaboration is addressing the major challenges facing the next generation of university networks by:

• First and most importantly, creating and sustaining a leading edge network capability for the national research community,
• Second, directing network development efforts to enable a new generation of applications to fully exploit the capabilities of broadband networks, and
• Third, working to rapidly transfer new network services and applications to all levels of educational use and to the broader Internet community, both nationally and internationally.

Here’s what it really means: It’s really fast. As much as 6.63 gigabits per second (Gbps)!

Why do we need these kinds of speeds? The Tim the Toolman Taylor theory would simply be, “We need more Power!” And really, that’s not too far from the truth. Scientists and Universities are ecstatic, because it takes that kind of computing power to come up with crazy quantum equations and to stream live video and audio from around the world with near zero latency (delay).

For example, scientists keep building fun things like $10 billion particle accelerators, such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This bad boy will produce 15 petabytes of data per year for scientists to analyze. Here’s how the math works (to simplify things a bit [ha,ha] I am using an extra fast 10Mbps home download speed for my example):

First, you should know that 8 bits = 1 byte.

A megabit (data transfer) is a mere 1,000,000 bits.

A petabit (data transfer) is 1,000,000,000,000,000 bits (1Pb = 10^15 bits). That’s 1 Quadrillion folks (I.e. million, billion, trillion, quadrillion…). In other words, a petabit is 1 billion times greater than a megabit! 1Pb/1Mb = 1,000,000,000 bits.

A petabyte (data transfer) is 1Pb/8 = 125,000,000,000,000 Bytes (1PB = 125^12 Bytes). So, 1Pb x 1/8 = 1PB.

The LHC is supposed to create 15 petabytes of info a year!

With those kinds of mammoth numbers in mind, it is easy to see why there is an endless need for speed. A fairly fast home internet connection (cable modem) will offer about 8 megabits per second (Mbps) or 8,000,000 bits per second download speed. I’ll be honest, I tried to do all the detailed math on this and was never 100% sure I had the right numbers… There quite a few digits to deal with here, and one slight miscalculation throws the whole thing way off. …But it looked like to me it would takes hundreds of years to transmit the same amount of data the LHC can produce versus only several months at about 10Gbps. Lets just say, I wouldn’t hold up any other plans waiting for it to download right now. If anyone out there is a math geek, feel free to drop me some real calculations… I just do music.

On a sort-of-related topic, this gargantuan amount of information that will be produced by the LHC will be delayed at the very least. While I was researching the LHC, I discovered that while it came online in September 2008, it had to be shut down due to a problem with two superconducting bending magnets. It is scheduled to come online again in November. But here’s the weird part… Though no connection has been made or suggested, a researcher and his brother working on the project were just arrested on charges of terr*rism. They are suspected of passing information to al-Q*eda. It kinda makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

Article on LHC researcher arrest

LHC Description

More Detailed LHC Info

Classical Hip-hop

I am always a little puzzled as to why so many people out there don’t seem to like classical music. It is the basis from which pretty much all of the music today is formed. We wouldn’t enjoy most of the movies we can think of without it… Taking a greater interest in the foundation of western music can only serve to enhance one’s musical endeavors.

Recently, I received an email from my kid’s teacher asking for help motivating the students to go to the symphony on a field trip, as they all seemed to think it would be boring. Even I will admit that symphonic concerts are often way over-programmed, but the music is beautiful, exciting and intellectually stimulating none-the-less. Leave at intermission, if you must. I’ve talked to many people who seem to have nothing good to say about classical music, but I wonder how many of them would tell me they actually hated listening to Dvorak’s New World Symphony or Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto. I think people secretly like a lot of classical music (or would if they heard the right selections), they just don’t know or realize it. Maybe no one has the patience for it in this fast-paced society in which we live. It would be a very interesting experiment to take a random group of people and subject them to a selection of great classical music to find out what they really think of it.

Some artists have, of course, already successfully merged various style of music, including classical. Miri Ben-Ari comes to mind as an obvious example of success in this arena. Her classical/jazzy violin style do a lot to add to the texture and enhance the quality of music she is performing. Here’s what Wynton Marsalis has to say about her work:

“Miri’s playing is wonderful, beautiful, exquisite, unpredictable, original and spontaneous. Her creative energy can set a band on fire and it does!” -Wynton Marsalis

Visiting her website, you will no doubt get the impression that she leans a little more toward Hip-hop than classical, at least in wardrobe… One thing for sure in the world of pop music in general is that image is everything. Perhaps the greatest obstacle faced in my case is that I am definitely not the popular image of anyone associated with this kind of music. I’m am certain I could never pull that off. Is there a category of Hip-hop for nerds?

With all that in mind, I embarked on a collaboration with a fellow artist known as Phoenix Jay. He is a Hip-hop artist, and I am obviously a classically trained musician and composer. I wanted to see how much I could manage to fuse his art with mine and still make it work. As mentioned in previous posts, this was a much more difficult task than I had supposed it would be. At first, the two mediums seemed incompatible, but once I learned the standard forms used by the Hip-hop artist, the kinds of sounds and orchestration they require, and what a “beat” is in Hip-hop terminology, I was good to go. I rather enjoyed the challenge and will likely try to compose some more beats in the future. Hopefully, this sort of collaboration will not only yield a fresh, new sound, it will also give those out there with a low opinion of classical music a better perspective on it’s usefulness and validity.

Sonar 8 – Project Number 3 – Adding Some Video

Project number three was really a test run for project number 4. You see, video was not required, but I wanted to see just how difficult it would be to incorporate it into my final project. It proved to be even more difficult than I had imagined, as I ran into just about every problem you can think of. In fact, I almost didn’t get the project turned in on time.

The first thing I did was finish the audio portion of my project. Since the assignment was audio-related, not video, I felt it would be wise to finish the part I would be graded on first. I decided to really put Sonar to the test and do a project that would allow me to use as many features as possible without ruining my work. That’s where the video game promo idea came in. Now I could make a bunch of sound effects, do voice-overs, and combine midi and live instruments to create Half-Life 2 game environments.

I began with a storyline only loosely based on HL2, adding a few characters and not really making an attempt to integrate the plot into existing HL2 games. In fact, I couldn’t seem to remember everyone’s names correctly and mixed them up a little. Given how little time I had, I didn’t feel it was necessary to fix. My intention was to create a game-based environment and storyline. HL2 was just sort of a model.

Once a story was developed, I recorded the voices and began to manipulate them as needed to simulate alien or foreign characters. I believe the PowerPoint that I will attach describes the kinds of effects that were used to create these characters. Essentially, I experimented with all kinds of reverb and started messing with effects like time/pitch stretch, amps, modulators, and distortions. Time/pitch stretch is particularly effective when trying to change the character of one’s voice. When I just needed something completely different, I brought in the kids to do a little voice acting. For this project, I ended-up only using a very brief portion where my daughter’s voice is made to sound sort of haunting and distant.

While I didn’t use much of the kids’ voice acting for this one, I did use a surprisingly large amount of instrumental and sound effects that they helped create. My daughter played a toy lap harp and a triangle, while my son played the tambourine and the sleigh bells. I played the recorder separately. To my delight, Sonar allowed me to completely manipulate the instrument sounds into train sound effects. Almost all the effects you hear throughout the piece are created in this fashion. Only a few, such as weapons fire and the train-track sound, were generated from my keyboard.

The effect that I am most proud of is the steam-release effect during the train station scene at the beginning. This effect was created by making a recording of my daughter over-blowing a plastic recorder. The clip was then subjected to tons of reverb, but not before time/pitch stretch was applied, raising one layer of the sound up a couple of octaves. Once layered, I added a very long decay to the sound. Finally, I had to add a track “envelope” that allowed me to very precisely change the volume and pan of the sound. Specifically, the initial attack of the over-blown recorder was enough to make your ears bleed. Using the envelope, I was able to even that part out with the rest of the clip, then add a pre-defined decrescendo.

Another reason I chose the video game concept was my determination to find ways that midi generated sounds would actually sound appropriate for the work. I used a distortion guitar from my Yamaha PSR-3000 keyboard and another cool completely digital sound (called Fargo) underneath. Putting the two together seemed like a perfect match for the game, so composing a Euro distortion guitar theme to end the project was effortless. Using my keyboard sequencer again, I added a beat that worked very well with the feel of the piece. Strangely, it was a Salsa…

After the voices, effects and music were all put together, I moved on to the video. Well, a series of slides that were turned into a video using a Creative Labs program called MuveeNow 2.0. It offered some nice transition effects and definitely made the slides more interesting. However, it nearly melted down my PC during the video conversion process. This seemed to be a problem unique to this program, as my other video processing products don’t cause the same problem.

Once my PC cooled down for a bit, I imported the video into Sonar and made sure it was approximately the right length. Sonar does not allow any video editing, so I exported the whole project as a video file, then imported into WinDVD (because that’s what I had on my computer and I couldn’t get Windows Movie Maker to work at the time). Here I was able to crop and match up the video to the audio (just enough to kinda follow the storyline). I imported a few of the stills used to make the original slide show and inserted them where I needed to extend scenes or wanted a high resolution still. Lastly, I added a title and date to the beginning.

Now it was time for a final product. I spent hours and hours perfecting the balance between voices, effects and music, then normalizing and compressing them for extraction.

TIP: If you recorded something at a low level, normalizing will bring all the highs and lows into a normal range, making it a lot easier to hear and work with.

I made several versions of the audio portion, extracting them in sequence (initial bounce, normalized, compressed, normalized and compressed) so I could hear all the different versions. Once I was happy with the version I was going to use, I imported the final audio and video into a freeware program called VideoPad. You can find all kinds of great free software from NCH via this link: http://www.nchsoftware.com/software/index.html

DEFINITION: Bounce – This is a track that is a composite of other tracks. For example, I used over 25 different tracks to create Black Mesa, but you only want one for the final product. The bounced track is the one track made from the 25 original tracks.

TIP: If you have the time, bounce from real-time audio, not a “fast” bounce. This will sometimes yield better results. Also, make sure you have all the tracks that you want bounced selected and that the appropriate tracks are soloed or muted as desired.

Until I discovered VideoPad, I was at a loss concerning the conversion of my video to a .mov format. People in an educational setting love to use Macs, so I was required to make it work for Quicktime. To make it even more complicated, Sonar refused to properly import any .mov videos, though it is supposed to be able to do this. It would not export to .mov either. I recommend exporting in a basic format from Sonar and using another program to convert to the format you really want. VideoPad works very well for this and it does it quickly without over-heating your PC. I also used it to convert videos to an iPod format. Don’t forget, you convert video for other reasons too, like the size of the file. Original raw AVI files can get easily into the GB range. By down-converting, I was able to get a clean 720×480 version at 29.97 FPS that was only 19.7 MB compared to its original 887 MB.

NOTE: Use VideoPad NOT Prism, as Prism only converts the video portion. If you are not careful, you will suddenly discover that your video no longer has audio!

Below is the PowerPoint show that describes the process I used to create this project in Sonar 8. Each slide is 9 seconds long and the original audio portion of the project plays in the background. If you wish to just read the slides, mute the audio and pause/fast-forward as necessary.

Below is the actual final version of the project.

Introduction

This will be my first post, so I felt an introduction might be in order. The purpose of this blog will be to discuss various applications of music technology and provide examples of personal and study-related projects. I will include details on the processes used to create each project in addition to tips, tricks or obstacles I have encountered along the way. Initially, I may be spending more time on learning how to blog than posting anything useful. I may go ahead and post the completed projects and add explanation as time permits.

Currently, I am working with Sonar 8 Studio Edition and have found it to be more powerful than any tools I have used to date, yet limiting and frustrating at the same time. As my posts progress, they will describe not only the projects created in Sonar, but the process of learning how to use the program as well. The learning curve will be apparent from my first projects to the last.

I will present various other projects and/or compositions that may be useful to discuss and hope to talk about the work other people are doing too. I want to learn as much as I can and share what I have already learned with others that might be interested.