NM1600 Final Test Revision

This is my revision for the final test for NM1600 for 2012 that I believe covers Game music and movies. (foley)

Games - Are designed using an engine that's been programmed to incorporate many different modules such as keyboard and mouse access but they also have engines devoted to the sound within the game.

FMD is a common example found in game engines that's a middle-ware audio specific package.

Composers are often found working side-by-side programmers to ensure sounds and effects are called at the right part in game play.

The sound engines are able to deal with loops, adaptive audio and effects etc.

Sega consoles had a game called Sonic that incorporated the use of a short loop track that replays until a life is lost. Where as a game like Myst has a minimal approach to it's loop track such as instruments come in at different times but there's never a full sound.

Interactive Audio - Is a sound that reacts to the player's input. Adaptive Audio reacts to the game's state such as audio ques for time remaining and health left etc. Dynamic Audio is found in more complex games such as Halo. This audio changes throughout game play i.e. the audio would sound like your walking down a corridor if you were inside a building compared to being outside where you might hear wind etc.

Arcade style ames have an arcade game engine -Slicing 3 fruit at one time produces a sound effect which may change if the player has a blitz to a slightly more higher pitched sound.

Consonance and Dissonance - Has to do with the harmonics above a fundamental pitch. All acoustic instruments have a set of harmonics. This is referred to as the harmonic series or overtone series.

When conflicts arise within the notes it is called dissonance.

Texture is the layering of sounds and instruments within a period of time.

Dynamic refer to the volume of the different instruments within the texture.

FOLEY for Movies... Radio, TV and even New-Media

Foley is a concept thought of by Jack Foley. It was originally used for a movie that Foley was working on to create more of an impact so rather than use the original sounds recorded when filming he re-recorded sounds to make the audio track stand out.

Foley can contain dialogue, music and event effects. This is referred to as DME... Dialogue, Music and Effects.

Foley is used to support the visuals of the film.

Combining Foley within realism can create an aery atmosphere. Alternative sounds to the real-life sound are often used as they sound better and have more effect. i.e. two coconuts clanged together can sound like horse's hooves.

Suspension - Is when Foley has a lack of sound which produces a dramatic effect.

The first films with sound where between 1891 and 1895.

Digital Sound Recording was born during the 90s.

Mickey Mouse's original film from Disney between 1928 and 1933 incorporated the use of a click track that was used to tell the conductor what rate to conduct the orchestra. The orchestra played music which accompanied the track often mimicking what is happening in the film.

Sound  is a change in air pressure. A guitar string when vibrated changes the air pressure.

Time-Domain Representatiion can be shown on a graph with Time o nthe X and Pressure on the Y.

The frequency of the music is the cycles which is known as Hertz or Hz.

Sound is the combination of many frequencies which results in a complex tone.

DSP - Refers to the digital signal processing - Which is applied when a device such as a delay or compressor processes the digital audio data.