The Look New Site

So I learn things once again the hard way…

My old WordPress / Website went down when our old community server died, so I’ve been struggling whilst working to try and get this back up and running. I found the old database file backup but my media is fried ahhh the story goes on.

As of now I seem to have sorted part of the importing process but I’m sure that some links may not work or that some downloadable content will be missing so there’s still a chunk of work to do. But for now it’s alive!

Peace

De Novo [posted]

Finally posted!

Here’s some fantastic modern orchestral works that Ryan Somerville composed.  I assisted with  recording, mixing and mastering on this one but it was a very large team effort indeed!

I’m so happy for this to have ‘gone live’. Please have a listen and contact myself or Ryan if you’d like to work with us on this kind of work.

 

An….tici…….pation.

Just a quick post to say that I am excitedly sat here waiting for my studio shipment from the UK, to arrive tomorrow. I can’t wait to get my grubby mitts and ears back on my studio gear. I’m also slightly freaking out that it’ll all be smashed, in pieces and soaked…

I shall post again once it’s all here and I’ve had a closer look.

Wish me luck.

 

Peace…

Impulse Response Recorderizer (…bad name I know…)

I needed an Impulse Response plugin for a ProTools project I’m working on. So I spent some cash and bought Liquid Sonics’ Reverberate 2. I tried the demo and was well impressed with the flexibility, options and of course sound quality. The price point, which on the horrid consumer mad ‘Black Friday’, I never did get why it’s called that, was -%30 off the asking price. Win!

I would’ve gone down the Altiverb route but it’s (worthy) price point was a little high right now. Cash is tight at the moment since I’ve recently moved over to live in Sydney, Australia and had to pay for all manner of things in order to do so. Not to mention the awful feeling that my entire sound studio is in a shipping container bobbing around somewhere in the Indian ocean hopefully making it’s way eventually to New South Wales.

One of the best things about Impulse Response plugins and software is being able to create your own weird and wonderful IRs, in whatever space you happen to find yourself. Or as most sound designers do, use them ‘incorrectly’ just to listen to the happy accident results at the other end.

One thing I have realised over the years making my own IR’s, is that it isn’t quite as easy as I think it should be. Sure the process is once you have all the correct hardware, speakers, mics and so on but which software to make them with?

There are various utilities out there but most are proprietary and linked to their specific piece of host software. Altiverb can easily make IR’s by simply dragging and dropping your recordings in to the plugin interface. Great. It also sounds fantastic. Logic Pro X still comes with the Impulse Response Utility, even though Apple seem to want to hide it away from everyone. Residing inside the Logic .app package now and anyone that’s spent any time working with this knows what an absolute pig it is to use. It’s also not been updated in forever…

The results aren’t fantastic either in my experience, as there’s usually some strange alias ringing / resonance in the results. I’ve A/B’d the same all AES-EBU signal pathway via a TC System 6000 using both Altiverb and Logic’s Impulse Response Utility and the difference in the results were shocking. Altiverb, subjectively speaking, whipped Logic’s Impulse Response Utility completely and truly. Sadly I don’t have the A/B files here with me now to add to this post, since they too are on a boat somewhere in the ocean…

Ableton’s Live Suite, since about version 9.x has included a Convolution Reverb device as well as the IR Measurement Device so that you can create your own and save them out as .AIFF files. Neat. 

These are Max 4 Live devices so you need to have Max MSP from Cycling’74 as well. Which I would highly recommend anyway for a myriad reasons, but that’s for another post entirely.

So when thinking once again about making some more groovy IR’s for use inside Reverberate 2, these Live devices got me a thinking… ‘What if I made a Max MSP application as a stand alone which anyone could use?…’ In the spirit of Open Source type thinking. And so this leads me on to the 1st version of the application which can be found below:

Impulse Response Recorderizer

I took apart the Live Max4Live device and copied it in to Max MSP, added, tweaked and sorted as was my want. Please try it out for yourself and let me know what you think. It was created on Max MSP v 6.x using Mac OS X El Capitan. Sadly I haven’t got any other versions of Mac OS with me at the moment to test. Please see previous boat type comments above.

It should work with any Core Audio compliant sound card and once you have completed your sweep, hit the SAVE button to save out your IR file as a 24bit 44.1kHz, 48kHz, 88.2kHz or 96kHz .AIFF, depending on which settings you had selected during the creation process. This can then be used in whatever convolution plugin you use. One small reminder is that you will have to have Java installed in order for this to work. Most newish Apple OS’s no longer come with that installed as standard. Just a wee heads up.

DO NOT take any credit for the work as 99.9% of it relies on other people’s genius and skills. Such as Alexander J. Harker, The HISSTools Impulse Response Toolbox: Convolution for the Masses and their Max MSP externals, supported by the University of Huddersfield. If you want to read more about HISS please do so here.

I haven’t written any documentation for the .app but it’s pretty straight forward to use, as far as I can tell. For any comments, ideas and suggestions please contact me and I’ll do my best. I hope it works for you and that you have many happy hours making IR’s.

 

Peace,

 

Mr Hay.

Collaborators

Please see the following list, here as much for me to remember as for you to have a look through, of people I have worked with, collaborated with, recorded, mixed, advised and so on during my time in Edinburgh, Scotland.

mrhay_LOGO_simple

‘SkypeBack’ performance @ Inspace. The Edinburgh Science Festival 2013

On Saturday the 6th of April Tam Treanor and I were lucky enough to be invited to perform ‘SkypeBack’ at the Edinburgh Science Festival 2013. The venue was the fantastically modular and somewhat THX inspired, in my opinion, Inspace. With their fantastic array of projectors and flexible routing matrix we were able to up the visual side of things and explore the use of light within this performance piece. To blend in with the colour palette of the space we also purchased and put on some neutral white outfits, which transformed us in to moving projection surfaces. Please have a look at the edited short version of the video.

 

Below is the full live audio recording taken from the concert.

Here is the short edited live audio recording taken from the concert.

 

The pictures below were kindly taken by our friend and colleague Tracy Foster:

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B.Y.O.B

Just a quick post to say that Tam Treanor and I revisited ‘Feedback Study’ and a scaled down version of ‘Skypeback’ using only mobile phone calls last Friday the 30th of November. The venue was The Glue Factory, Glasgow, Scotland and man was it cold. Nothing quite like a huge empty warehouse in November to chill you to your core but also provide you with a fantastic night of interesting visuals and sound.

We were invited by the lovely people @ BYOB (Bring Your Own Beamer) which is a series of one-night-exhibitions hosting artists and their projectors.

Anyone can make a BYOB exhibition. It’s very simple:

– find a space
– invite many artists
– ask them to bring their projectors

Bean eater?

Firstly I offer the Windy.app. A wind sound thingymajigy made from filter, modulated white noise with a few user tweak-able parameters. It might just be me, but sometimes I like just leaving it on whilst I’m wandering around the house doing other things to make me feel like I’m on the top of a big ol’ mountain. Is that weird? Have a go and see what you think…

It’s Mac OS X (Intel only) I’m afraid not out of any real choice other than that’s where I work these days. Please let me know what you think… This little ditty was very much inspired by the master of Procedural Audio Andy Farnell.

PayPal donations in support of my work can be made here. 

Touretteshero – ‘Changing the world one tic at a time’

 

Recently I’ve been back in touch with the incredible crew working on the Touretteshero project. Both Left Wing Idiot and Touretteshero herself are very busy and hard to pin down these days due to all their superpower superhero work but isn’t that the way of those in the superhero business?

Clearly famous for it’s audible output, Tourettes is a condition that many have heard of and usually for the ‘wrong’ reasons, such as Coprolalia which is the rare sweary version of the condition. Should you want to read further about some frequently asked questions that relate to the condition then you can do so here. We’ve done some amazing sound work with Touretteshero although I can’t really say much more than that at this point. Please stay tuned to the their fabulous website which is full of amazing user generated artistic responses to documented tics in various multimedia formats. I’m so happy to be involved on the sound front. Think music, sound installations and parodies a plenty and you might be in the right area, might…

 

Stay tuned…