Audio Lab 3

Task 1
In Audacity open and listen to the file OriginalJingleMix.wav. How many different types of sound can you hear? Can you name the instruments or other sound sources?

The various sounds in the audio track are drums, guitar, bass guitar, voices in unison, a keyboard and a gong. The bass guitar, keyboard and the drums play throughout the piece whereas the voices come in after a few bars of instrumental and then the gong closes the music part of the track. Each of these instruments don't play a particularly hard riff but the use of each one playing together creates the final upbeat piece. 

Task2
Session musicians recorded each of these tracks. Listen to each instrument track individually. Makes notes on the quality of each sound. Quality of sound is very subjective. Use any adjective that you feel is appropriate to describe each sound. Eg, Does the bass sound smooth or punchy? Is the guitar jangly or distorted? How loud does each track sound in relation to one-another?

The bass guitar sounds staccato and has a solid continuous ostinato that plays throughout the audio. The voices in unison sing in harmony with each other creating the sweet sound that is heard. The gong at the end of the piece acts almost as a signal for everything to stop. The piece is played in a simple time of 4 beats per bar. The piano plays a for a bar with a short descending riff.  The drum kit plays a simple rock melody that keeps the rest of the music at a steady tempo throughout the piece. The piece is played to sound major as it sounds upbeat and happy. 

Task 3 
Look at each track in the time domain and frequency domain and make note of any distinct features. Eg, what time does each sound event occur, loudness in dB, duration, envelope shape. What frequencies does it tend to occupy. How do these features inform your own personal impression of the sound as you hear it.

The Rickenbacker Bass guitar starts from the very beginning of the audio clip and hits a height of about -24dB of frequency. The wave changes as the strings on the bass are being plucked or popped as when this happens the waveform becomes erratic. 

The Sweep Bass guitar plays from the beginning similarly to the first bass. The frequency is about the same as the previous bass although the waves aren't erratic but rather form a smooth pattern.

The Timp and Piano are played at the beginning of the music and has a low frequency and a low wave form to match. The sound is about -36dB and it plays for about 5 seconds before fading out.

CEP voices start just after the Timp and Piano end. They fade out after 10-15 seconds in. The wave looks very consistent and has very few breaks or blocky parts to it. The sounds hits a height of about -24dB.

The D Loop and Announcer come into the audio at the same time as the CEP and stop in a few after seconds their part is played. Another part of this is played about 10 seconds after it ends and carries on for the same amount of time as when it was first played. This track has a waveform that is untidy and shows areas of high frequency changing to low frequency in a short time frame leaving the wave to look very inconsistent. 

Dop Organ plays just after the beginning of the audio and stops about 10 seconds afterwards. The repeating pattern in the audio matches the wave that has a repeating pattern that follows when the organ plays and then is muted.

The Drums begin as the intro to the track and have a fairly simple wave until the end when it becomes a solid block of high frequency. Out of all the tracks this audio has the highest amplitude as it is the loudest part to the full track.

Finally the Funk Guitar starts to play just a split second after the track begins and continues throughout most of the track playing in the background. There is a small spike in the frequency near the end but overall the wave is consistent and has a height of -39dB.

Task 4
Use the mix feature of Audacity for each track to create the final mix for this jingle. Be sure to use control-A to select all of each wav before mixing to the waveform mix waveform. Check that the waveform sounds as expected.

The waveform doesn't sound any different from the original jingle track.

Task 5

Using the previously explored features of Audacity, modify the component wav files before before mix to produce a new style of mix. 

1   Make the Bass Guitar less prominent, Make the guitar sound smoother and Make the whole mix sound as if it was recorded in a large room.

Here is the new bass that has been reduced. I lowered the gain to reduce the output the bass track gave.

Here is the new funk guitar which has been leveled to give it a smoother sound to the track.

2      Make a special mix to your own taste, you may edit each individual track before mixing as many time as you feel necessary experimentation is the key here. You can even record you own tracks if you wish or add wavs obtained from freesound.org in the mix.

For my own edited track I took a piano piece and used the cut and paste tool initially to lengthen it from about 30 seconds to 60 seconds. At the beginning I cut and reversed the first piano chords and then equalised it to bring the volume up creating a dramatic beginning to the track. Taking other bits of the track I pasted them and repeated them as they sounded major and pleasant to listen to.  

Task 6

In the early days this was called “Mickey mousing” where an organist in the cinema would improvise sounds to match the events taking place in cartoons and movies. This aimed to create a sense of drama, suspense, excitement and surprise in the mind of the viewer. We can do the same with video computer games or animation. Open the OldMovie file using Microsoft Movie Maker. Watch the film many times and make a note of any events that you consider important.

Using some old carnival music I matched up to the theme of the piece rather than what was happening. An old style movie would obviously deserve an old style theme and as such the old carnival music worked perfectly.