Music Technology Forum – Week 12: Final Presentations

This week in Music Technology Forum, the remaining students in the class presented their production, consisting of their mix, analysis, research and notes.

Ken Mossman did his presentation on ‘What You Are’ by Joi, which is a World/Dance song. Ken approached this project as a remix, rather than as a mix. He chose to avoid listening to the original song so all his ideas were unique. He had done most of his work in another program – Ableton Live. After creating the song, he found out that the original tempo, 110 BPM was, as he put it, ‘a little too pedestrian’. He upped the tempo to 124BPM and it sounded a lot better and didn’t show any obvious errors. He moved all the loops into Pro Tools and bounced his final mix with a compressor. I believe Ken’s mix was of high-quality, sounding completely different from the original.

Josh Bevan presented his mix on the song ‘Shock The Monkey’. He believed some of the recorded audio didn’t have good sound quality to it. He didn’t like the vocals either, but decided to use them to maintain the overall feel of the song. Josh went for a laid back sound with his mix. He has taken out a lot of samples, but kept a few that he thought would be useful in his mix. He has emphasised the bass, as it has a very rich sound to it. Overall, I believe Josh’s mix was a bit too long, but he constructed a great mix.

Lisa Lane Collins presented her mix on the song ‘ Afro Celt Sound System. Lisa used a large range of effects, including EQ, reverb, echo, flanges, phase inversions and vocode’s. She turned this dance song into a cliché ‘doof doof’ techno mix. After importing all the audio files, she sampled a few of the percussive sounds and decided to go for the bodhran/percussive sounds. She didn’t like the vocal sounds, but used them in a minor way. She had used the vocals in a very smooth way. Her overall song sounded techno and industrial. I believe her mix was the best in the class.

I had missed the remainder of the class because I had to catch the train home. Sorry :(

References:
Steve Fieldhouse - University of Adelaide (2007)
Ken Mossman - University of Adelaide (2007)
Joshua Bevan - University of Adelaide (2007)
Lisa Lane Collins - University of Adelaide (2007)