L02 : Simulated Acoustics

Characteristics of different acoustic environments simulated acoustics (effects)

Here is a print screen I took In Cubase 5 of lots of different simulated acoustics.

Delay- “Delay is an audio effect which records an input signal to an audio storage medium, and then plays it back after a period of time The delayed signal may either be played back multiple times, or played back into the recording again, to create the sound of a repeating, decaying echo”.

A delay could be used on things like vocals to add a more dramatic intro to a track with the decaying echo sound you get using this audio effect. Echoes are an effect used in a lot of modern music.to build in tension or atmosphere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay_(audio_effect)

Distortion- “A distortion is the alteration of the original shape (or other characteristic) of an object, image, sound, waveform or other form of information or representation. Distortion is usually unwanted, and often many methods are employed to minimize it in practice. In some fields, however, distortion may be desirable; such is the case with electric guitar distortion.
The addition of noise or other extraneous signals (hum, interference is not considered to be distortion, though the effects of quantization distortion are sometimes considered noise. A quality measure that explicitly reflects both the noise and the distortion is the Signal-to-noise-and-distortion (SINAD) ratio”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distortion

A distorted sound sounds like the original sound coming from the instrument but it changes the sound and changes the initial sound.
An example of distortion be using in music today would be a modern Dubstep track. The producer has distorted the bass sound to change the sound and make it have a different and original sound.
“Ibenji – Seems”

http://www.beatport.com/#label/section-8/15549

It’s often used on electric guitars to wobble and bend the sound into another shape to change up how it would normally. Many famous rock stars were known for using their Distortion pedals to produce a nice sound in a life performance.

Talk Box – An example of a Talk box used on popular piece of music is “Bon Jovi – Living on a Prayer”
A talk box changes the sound according to how you move your mouth when you’re singing and it can be used as a good effect as you can see from the track “Living on a Prayer”.
This is a photo of a Talk Box that Peter Frampton used to own.  Talk Boxes where often used in old rock music.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_box

Dynamics- Dynamics are the combined sounds in a piece of music that make a pattern which can they be copied and used later in a track , this is why when you look at the wave form for a piece of recorded music you can see clear patterns.
The Dynamics can be compressed to change the wave form, they will use things like compressors on kick drums because it can overpower the sound of the music but if you put a compressor on it you can control the volume and levels of the drum and it way that

“A process that intentionally reduces the dynamic range of audio signals”

“A talk box is usually an effects pedal that sits on the floor and contains a speaker attached with an airtight connection to a plastic tube; however, it can come in other forms, such as the 'Ghetto Talkbox' (a homemade version which is usually crude) or higher quality custom-made versions. The speaker is generally in the form of a compression driver, the sound-generating part of a horn loudspeaker with the horn replaced by the tube connection.

When activated, the sound from the amplifier is reproduced by the speaker in the talk box and directed through the tube into the performer's mouth. The shape of the mouth filters the sound, with the modified sound being picked up by the microphone. The shape of the mouth changes the harmonic content of the sound in the same way it affects the harmonic content generated by the vocal folds when speaking.
The performer can vary the shape of the mouth and position of the tongue, changing the sound of the instrument being reproduced by the talk box speaker. The performer can mouth words, with the resulting effect sounding as though the instrument is speaking. This "shaped" sound exits the performer's mouth, and when it enters a microphone, an instrument/voice hybrid is heard.
The sound can be that of any musical instrument, but the effect is most commonly associated with the guitar. The rich harmonics of an electric guitar are shaped by the mouth, producing a sound very similar to voice, effectively allowing the guitar to appear to "speak".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_box

Filter- A filter can be placed on an instrument and you can allow it to let certain wave frequencies to get through for example if you put a low pass filter on a bass wave that would create a deeper sound than would be appropriate to something like modern drum and bass and they often put effects like reverb to have a low frequency reverberated Baseline.
Here is a more in depth explanation of filters used in music
“An electrical circuit that emphasizes or eliminates some frequencies from a signal . Filters are used in electronic music to alter the harmonic content of a signal, which changes its timbre. Many of the filters used in synthesizers are voltage controlled filters (or a digital equivalent), which allows the filter to be controlled by a signal generated elsewhere in the synthesizer, in addition to or instead of a panel knob.
The essential parameters of a filter are its cutoff frequency and its slope. The cutoff frequency is, basically, the demarcation between frequencies that the filter allows to pass, and frequencies that it tries to eliminate. A filter's cutoff frequency is determined by a panel knob, or, if it is a VCF, a control voltage input. The slope is determined by the design of the circuitry. Slope is specified either in decibels per octave or in "poles", where (to simplify somewhat), one "pole" is equivalent to 6 dB/octave. Two-pole and four-pole filters are commonly used in synthesizers. Many filters used in synths also use "resonance" to sharpen the response of the filter. Resonance basically means feeding back some of the filter's output to its input, so that part of the signal gets run through the filter multiple times. Resonance tends to make the cutoff response sharper, and also produces a response peak at the cutoff frequency. Excessive resonance may cause the filter to break into self-oscillation; that is, it produces an output tone at or near the cutoff frequency, without any input applied. Performers disagree on the desirability of this; some find the ability to self-oscillate a useful trait in a synth filter”.

• Low frequency which tries to eliminate all frequencies above the cutoff frequency.
• High pass, which tries to eliminate all frequencies below the cutoff frequency.
• Band pass, which tries to eliminate all frequencies that are not within a specified band on either side of a center frequency. (A band pass filter can be thought of as a low pass and a high pass "back to back", with a gap between their two cutoff frequencies. The gap constitutes the pass band.)
• Notch or band reject, which tries to eliminate only the frequencies that are within a specified band on either side of a center frequency.
• Comb, which consists of a series of notches.

Here is a list of every filter than you can use on a piece of music or on an instrument.

http://electronicmusic.wikia.com/wiki/Filter

Here is an example of a low pass filter used on a modern drum and bass track.
I also included a photo of its wave form to show the low frequencies show up. If you don’t compress them they can sometimes overpower the rest of the track completely, which could result in you not being able to hear vocals or drums properly.


Reverb – Reverb or reverberation is an effect you can place on any sound or instrument to add a drawn out echo sort of sound to your piece of music. Often in modern music artists will use reverb on their drums to give them more impact for example if you put reverb on a kick drum it would make the drum sound bigger and as if it was in a larger room.
Reverb basically takes a sound and changes it so that it sounds like it was recorded in a different acoustic environment.
Dubstep is well known for its constant use of reverb throughout the genre , they use on snares and kicks to give an atmospheric sound drum loop which works well with the low bass sounds often associated with Dubstep.

Here is an example of a song that uses reverb to add atmosphere to the drums.
  
http://www.beatport.com/#track/drawn-original-mix/2997818

This is a more in depth explanation of reverb and how it works.

“Reverberation is the persistence of sound in a particular space after the original sound is removed. A reverberation, or reverb, is created when a sound is produced in an enclosed space causing a large number of echoes to build up and then slowly decay as the sound is absorbed by the walls and air. This is most noticeable when the sound source stops but the reflections continue, decreasing in amplitude, until they can no longer be heard. The length of this sound decay, or reverberation time, receives special consideration in the architectural design of large chambers, which need to have specific reverberation times to achieve optimum performance for their intended activity. In comparison to a distinct echo that is 50 to 100 ms after the initial sound, reverberation is many thousands of echoes that arrive in very quick succession (.01 – 1 ms between echoes). As time passes, the volume of the many echoes is reduced until the echoes cannot be heard at all”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverberation

Chorus

“The chorus effect can be simulated by signal processing equipment. The signal processor may be software running on a computer, a ROM-encoded effect in a digital effect processor, or an analog effect processor. If the processor is hardware-based, it may be packaged as a foot pedal, a rack-mount module, a table-top device, or built in to an instrument amplifier (often an acoustic guitar amplifier or an electric guitar amplifier). Some keyboard instruments have an electronic chorus effect built in, such as some electronic pianos and some Hammond organs.

Regardless of the technology or form factor, the processor achieves the effect by taking an audio signal and mixing it with one or more delayed, pitch-modulated copies of itself. The pitch of the added voices is typically modulated by an LFO, which makes the overall effect similar to that of a flanger, except with longer delays and without feedback.

Stereo chorus effect processors produce the same effect, but it is varied between the left and right channels by offsetting the delay or phase of the LFO. The effect is thereby enhanced because sounds are produced from multiple locations in the stereo field. Used on instruments like "clean" (undistorted) electric guitar and keyboards, it can yield very dreamy or ambient sounds. Commercial chorus effect devices often include controls that enable them to be used to also produce delay, reverberation, or other related effects that use similar hardware, rather than exclusively as chorus effects”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorus_effect

The chorus effect will take your original sound you’re putting the effect on the will duplicate multiple times and with each duplication will alter the sound slightly using delay and pitch alternations. Once enough alterations have been placed on the duplications is made into one sound which will sound the same as the original but with a delay sort of sound and often higher and lower pitch at certain points.

Chorus is often used on vocals as the combination of pitch shifting and delay that this effect brings can make boring vocals sound much more interesting to listen.

I produced a track the other day and to change the original vocal sample and add some atmospheric sounding changes to it I placed a chorus effect on them. The vocals play throughout the intro and stop at the first drop and I think the chorus effect helped add to the buildup.

Here is the track I produced.

I used FL studio 9 as my DAW.

I used Native Instruments Massive, for the modulated bass.

And finally I used samples from several packs that I had paid for off www.primeloops.com so that I could create my own drum loops whilst using high quality one shot drum samples.

I used effects on all the samples that I used , mostly using the well-known ones that I explained earlier chorus and reverb.

http://soundcloud.com/trakscene/the-matrix