EQ Magazine - November 2008 - (Page 14)

PUNCH IN Explain how you make this work within the context of a musical instrument. A neuron is an object that has a voltage on it. The voltage builds up until it gets to a certain level, and then the neuron lets it go. The hundreds of other neurons that it’s connected to also receive these spikes, and you get all kinds of signals building up and feeding back. In our instrument, we use a mathematical model—a network of spiking neurons where when one of the neurons fires, it takes a fragment of sound from a sound file. This spiking then continues on down the network, grabbing other temporal aspects from different locations of the same sound file. What exactly can you do with The Brain? We can turn it into rhythms, we can create MIDI events, and we can create rhythmic events from other instruments. How would you describe its sound? We started the song “Evermore,” for example, by recording a microphone being dragged across the pages of a book. The 15-second sample was fed into the prototype that scans through it and plays bits or “grains”—20ms–100ms in length—of the original sample with no correlation. If you go below 20ms, you can’t hear any frequency in a grain, because there aren’t enough wiggles in the wave for your ear to detect frequency. So the user controls the lengths of the grain in order to play it—it’s not just indeterminate. With a few manual tweaks—such as duration, voltage, etc.—we had pulsing grains of sound that we added as an extra texture to build the song around. Call it the “sonification” of a network of neurons. But for an example with longer grains, one of my collaborators, Jane Grant, made a piece 17 minutes long called “Threshold.” She uses the instrument with grains up to a second, which sounds very different and surreal. It’s less “clicky.” Will you be marketing The Brain? What does it look like? We’re hoping to make these instruments available, but we’re not sure if we’re going to do something commercial just yet. Right now, it looks like a computer screen and a microphone. I’d like it to look like a box with four dials on it, and all the necessary inputs and outputs. You would plug a microphone into it, or load a sound file, and the dials would change individual parameters that affect the neurons— the number in a network, the geometry of how they’re all connected together, how to simulate the neurons more, and how long each grain would be allowed to play. NEUROGRANULAR SAMPLES To hear the newest versions of neurogranular synthesis, check out John Matthias and Nick Ryan’s Cortical Songs—an orchestral album with remixes by Thom Yorke [Radiohead] and Simon Tong [Gorillaz]. Also, click to www.thefragmentedorchestra.com to check out Matthias, Ryan, and Grant’s The Fragmented Orchestra, composed of streaming audio from 24 different microphones in public sites throughout the U.K., and mediated through a neurogranular instrument. This Month on EQTV Join us at EQtv—EQ’s own video channel chock full of tips, tricks, tutorials, behind the scenes footage of some of the hottest sessions, and tons more. To check it out, visit www.eqmag.com and click the pretty little link, or go direct to www.eqmag.tv. You’ll be glad you did. This month you’ll see: • Ryan Hoyle [Collective Soul] Shows You His New Studio, The Cave • Jeff Balding [Megadeth, Rascal Flatts, Jewel] Shares His Mixing Tricks • Ben Fowler [LeAnn Rimes, Brooks and Dunn] on How to Make Your Mix a Nashville Hit • Location Recording 101 with Chris Mara, WEBER, and High Crimes AND TONS MORE!!! CALLING ALL EQ READERS! EQ and JZ Microphones want you to share your favorite kick-drum miking techniques with our readers. In return, what we offer you is a shot at winning a JZ BH-1 Black Hole multi-pattern condenser (reviewed in the 04/08 issue of EQ, and archived online at www.eqmag.com/gear). That’s a $2,295 value! All you have to do is click on over to the EQ website, access our forums via the top menu, and leave a detailed description of your technique and a link to a sound clip or a tune that showcases said technique on our Letters to the Editor forum. The winner will be announced in an upcoming issue of EQ and hooked up with a brand new JZ BH-1 Black Hole. So what are you waiting for? Get off your butt and get posting! 14 EQ NOVEMBER 2008 www.eqmag.com http://www.thefragmentedorchestra.com http://www.eqmag.tv http://www.eqmag.com http://www.eqmag.tv http://www.eqmag.com/gear http://www.eqmag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EQ Magazine - November 2008

EQ Magazine - November 2008 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Punch In Brian Wilson Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Sony Acid 6 Abelton Live 7 Controller World New Controllers Analysis Room with a Vu

EQ Magazine - November 2008

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