Adambrinkmann's Blog

Since our last performance in front of the other laptop orchestras, Matt Hollis, Gabriel Halford, Jason Leech and myself went away and each recorded our individual piece. We then imported each file into logic in which we synced up all the files in time. We done this, so that by going into the next Laptop Musicianship lecture we would already be prepared with all our files imported into logic, then we would be ready to test our piece over the speakers in the lecture room. When the Laptop Musicianship lecture came along Julio was also very interested in playing our piece through the speakers, as each member from my orchestra would have a designated speaker. Whilst listening it was very interesting to hear how I perceived the piece compared to when we played the piece live through the laptop speakers. The piece had very deep moments and at times seemed very intense and I was impressed with what results we had so far.
After playing our piece to the rest of the groups we were then shown how to pan different tracks to different speakers.

We started by panning the start of Jason’s track coming from the back left and back back right speakers to the front left and front right speakers which gave a good perception as the track started to build up. I think we got a bit carried away after this as we panned a lot of things circling all four speakers which on some parts of the piece was nice but overall it sounded very messy. We went back over this and decided to circle certain parts of Gabriel’s piece as he had some good things which built up and it had a good effect on this.

We also used the volume tool to adjust certain parts of the tracks which were too loud.

We also added limiters on each members track as when it was played over the speakers certain parts would peak. The limiter took a lot of the dynamics of out the piece but I think overall it hasn’t taken too much away from the overall piece. We added some chorus onto my track as it gave a really effect and just made everything fit together more nicely. We also added some reverb onto Gabriel track which brought a different edge to the piece as it took the edge off some of the sounds he created.

Overall I think our laptop orchestra piece has been very successful although I would change some things if I done it again. I would re-record the whole piece as I think each member could of played it slightly better and I would of spent more time panning and organising the volume in logic.