MIDI & Synthesis - Part One

MIDI is an acronym for Musical Instrument Digital Interface.

"Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is an industry specification for encoding, storing, synchronizing, and transmitting the musical performance and control data."

MIDIE is digital data that represents musical elements such as notes. A written notation is an incruction for a performer or composer and does note enter the audio realm unti the performer plays it.

A MDI note is an instruction (numbers) that does not enter audio unless it goes through a controller.

ALL MIDI messages contain either two or three parts: 


The first is - Status Byte - Specifies the type of message and which Channel of the 16 MIDI Channels the message is being sent out.

Second Part (Data Bytes) - Contains the data of the note being played.

144 = 1
145 = 2
etc

69 is the note A above Middle C.

Middle C is fixed as the note number 60.

First number is the MIDI channel, Second decimal is the Note-On message - Final number is another Data Byte Velocity of the note (volume).

What is Subtractive Synthesis


Subtractive synthesis is one of the oldest types of sound synthesis and the most common - harmonic etc.

Y axis is Amplitude, X axis is Time.

Square, Sawtooth, Triangle wave forms - Diagrams.

Sine Waves are made up of one pitch and a set of harmonics. 


The presence and strength of a wave form is distinguished bt it's harmonic frequency.

What is the amplifier?


A sound modifier that allows control of the volume of a sound (note) over time.

Attach - How quickly the sound will reach its maximum volume after a key is pressed down.
Decay - How quickly the sound will drop in volume after the end.
Sustain - How loud the sound will be when the key is held down.
Release - How quickly the sound will stop after the key is pressed.

A typical ADSR envelope.

ADSR Diagram

History of Radio and Television

Radio

In Australia the Federal Government through the Wireless Telegraphy Act of 1905.

National Anthem broadcast from one building to another at the end of a lecture by George Fisk given on the new medium to the Royal Society of NSW on August 19, 1919.

The radio during the 1930-1945 during the great depression meant that jobless americans could tune-in for relief and psychological support.

Franklin D. Roosevelt's "fireside chats" became enormously successful and attracted more listeners than the most popular radio shows during the "Golden Age of Radio."

Orson Well's take when interviews in the 70s... Back then radio was really big and the message in the Youtube clip was incredibly powerful as everyone believed it. 

The "Golden" Age - AM Radio is still thriving. Transistors made radios smaller. New formats such as Top 40s became popular (1945-1960s). 

FM increased in popularity during the 1960s to 80s. 

1980 meant the emergence of Talk Radio (a chance to "talk back") Rise of personalities, relaxed on ownership following 1980 deregulation. More stations per owner. Emergence of satellite radio, digital broadcasts and internet streaming. 

TV

1924 - Baird (UK) - Demonstrate the transmission of transporting images over the wire. 

April 30, 1939 the NBC officially began regularly scheduled television broadcasts in New York with a broadcast of the opening of the 1939 new York World's Fair. 

In Australia... 

Television began as early as 1929 in Melbourne, and later for example 1934 in Brisbane with experimental transmissions by an experimental station. 

The first line of a television broadcast - 16 September 1956, fifty-two years ago, and Bruce Gyngell greets Sydney on a night that made history: television was now here, finally. Australians had to wait twenty years for TV ....

"Good evening, and welcome to television..." - Talking television

The Print Revolution

The revolution of the printing press was a device for applying pressure to an inked surface using moveable handset block letters resting on paper or cloth and acting to transfer the image. 

Had replaceable and moveable letters. 

The invention remained largely unchanged until 300 years later when computer control became the norm. 

Prior to Benjamin Franklin, Johannes Gutenberg (A german blacksmith) was the first in Western Europe to develop a press.

The first known press was invented in 1450. 

By 1500 there was 250 places in Europe that had presses. By 1500, 13 million books were out in circulation. 

In 1833 the US rotary printing press meant millions of copies on a page in a single day - on rolled paper. 

In 1884 the Linotype machine allowed for steam powered presses to be installed and used that meant much faster printing could be completed. 

The effects of the Printing Press

The printing press changed a few things, allowed for the mass dissemination of ideas. Print allowed readers with a low position in the social and cultural hierarchy to study religious texts for themselves. 

Marshall McLuhan told of the shift from predominantly an oral culture to print culture. He says the affects was the nature of how the human consciousness in the print represented an abstraction of thought. 

Censorship

The press standardised and preserved knowledge. The Catholic Church had an index of Prohibited Books. It was a printed catalogue of books forbidden to be read. 

Problems with information management.

There was a rise in different occupation e.g. clerks, book-keepers, notaries, public writers, postmen. 

Public Opinion 

Newspapers contributed to the rise in public opinion (first recorded in France 1750, in English in 1781)

The printed image contributed to the natural sciences of astronomy, geography and anatomy. 

Was the printing press a revolution? 

Took place over three centuries. Illiteracy - populace still emerging from the Dark Ages. Was it the agent of change or a catalyst (like TV) assisting social changes. 

Growth of the railway mean the distribution of newspapers (could reach regional areas on the day of printing)

100,000 copies a day from Lloyd's Weekly News & News of the World. 

Commercialisation

It was profitable. Bestsellers as early as 1500 - The Imitation of Christ. Advertising appeared in print - around 1650 a news paper would carry six ads on average. A hundred years later it was about 50. 

In 1792, 15 million newspapers were sold. 

If half of Boston's citizens brought a newspaper three times a week, a publisher could become a millionaire. 

The power of news

Censorship followed. Cromwell after the beheading of King Charles 1, tried to suppress the newsheets but failed. 

During the Civil Ware in 1642 news became known as propaganda.

The Journalist

The word came into use in 1693. Daniel Defoe is considered the world's first journalist. The earliest journalists were called 'runner patterers' - They would run from thte courthouse or gallows to the newspapers offices with 'true confessions' from the condemned.

Why Photography

The camera has been know for communicating - It captures time. The lens draws the subject, the photographer defines it..

"The painter constructs the photographer discloses" ~ Susan Sontag.

Photography does not exactly reproduce what you see with your eyes, which is a pereception of reality created by eye and mindinteraction (digital photography)

Sometimes it is more easier to remember a photograph than it is to remember moving images.

"Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst"

First Week Back and Already Staying Back

It's the end of my first week back at JCU for 2012! Woohoo, only like another 12 more weeks to go...

Anyhow, you may recall my last entry I mentioned I was new to Adobe Illustrator. Well, I've stayed back at UNI for a bit tonight (since 6pm - Sunday) and I've actually managed to come up with a pretty usable design for the NM1401 Introduction to Graphic Design Course.

It's tutorial ones, submission for this week. Here's some JPGs of my work.

An example A3 Library Sign for shelving - Colour coded to the chart below.

Now I just need to get into these tutorials that the lecturer has left us to do - Click here for the Adobe Illustrator links.

The type of  fonts I have used in the Library signage image above are 'sans-serif' which means the font doesn't have the small projecting features that a 'serif' font has. 

Serifs are used to guide the horizontal “flow” of the eyes; The lack of serifs is said to contribute to a vertical stress in sans serifs, which is supposed to compete with the horizontal flow of reading ( De Lange et al., 1993 )

De Lange, R. W., Esterhuizen, H. L., Beatty, D. (1993). Performance differences between Times and Helvetica in a reading task.Electronic Publishing, 6(3), 241-248.

Introduction to Illustrator

Font play an important part in design as I'm learning in the very first practical for NM1401. So, Illustrator not as difficult to use as I first thought, but I still think I prefer Photoshop More even though both programs are designed for a completely different purpose.

Anyway, here's what I created in my first class today in the SOCA building for NM1401.

Illustrator is designed for creating vectors - That are scalable to any size!
Photoshop is BMP or Pixel based.

It's original size is A3 - Kind of a similar style to a press release.

Introduction to Graphic Design - NM1401

Where can graphic design take you? It can take you to running your own business or to a job with design company.

Understand the differences in thing you see - I.e. The FEDEX logo has an arrow in it. 

Develop an eye for detail and design for what people think.

Things to remember for this subject...

When submitting a subject submit in the following format...

OSULLIVAN_jc220304_NM1401_1 or for group assignments OSULLIVAN_SURNAME_SURNAME_NM1401_2A 

SOCA JCU Server Accessing Remotely

The SOCA server can be accessed remotely via any application that is AFP capable. Once connected to the JCU VPN instead of using soca.jcu.edu.au that is a local-network domain use the IP.

I.E. afp://soca.jcu.edu.au is afp://137.219.77.200 when accessing remotely.

Digital Music Media - NM1600

Students are introduced to a range of digital sound technologies and contexts in which these are applied. Music, film and multimedia contexts are examined, with a range of online tutorials providing practical grounding in the use of sound with text and image in the digital realm.


Audio Fundamentals - Midi, Recording, Mixing, Mastering, Sound Design, Synthiesis.

Styles - Film, Game, Rock Pop, World, Classical, Dance.

Assignment One - Is creating a classical or house style dance track.

Assignment Two - Involves using music and Foley techniques to create an original track to suite a short video-clip.

Assignment Three - The compilation of still images with audio to suite

In summary Midi and Synthesis, Audio for Films & Audio for Games.

Three tests covering all modules.

Software packages being used include; Reason 5.0.

TECH: Installing an OS via a USB Stick on a netbook

Occasionally in my business there comes a time when I have a netbook to repair. In which case if the IDE controller doesn't work with the usual external CD drive I have then I need to resort to installing XP via a USB stick.

Thankfully I ended up finding a good tutorial online that uses a tool known as RMPrepUSB to create the bootable disk. 


Anyway it was easy to follow and worked in the end here is the link to the site - http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/install-xp-from-an-iso.


What a lifesaver!