For the Musicians / Music Hobbyists

[_asbestosman]

You'll be great at reading music, Asbestosman. Math and music go hand in hand. :)

So they say. I get the stuff about harmonics, perfect 5ths, perfect 4ths, symmetry and a bit about chords. What I don't get is the art of it or how to put feeling into it. That and I have a poor sense of timing.

I can read music like your typical 6-year old can read a novel. It's a very slow process. I think instead of trying to play something myself, I'll try to get my computer to play it for me but with the effects I specify. I have some ideas and the book gave me a few others for new synthetic instruments and also for some different effects on existing sounds. We'll see what happens if I ever figure out how to use CSound.

What dorks.

Hey, most of my friends were band dorks. My wife plays piano, bassoon, and flute. She also has a guitar, but never quite learned to play. At least I can whistle better than she can.

[_Doctor Steuss]

[…]
Phase cancellation might be a bit harder to address depending on exactly the cause and extent. Since phase cancellation is sometimes harnessed for effect, just removing it might not be optimal. What may need to happen is to adjust something in the line such as reverb or flanger. Adjusting a signal's phase is actually fairly simple using digital techniques--possibly use a hilbert-transform or maybe a phase vocoder (with which you could even choose which frequencies need to have a phase adjustment).

I have two tube pre-amps that have phase reversers on them, but I’m not having full-on phase cancellation (to where a phase reversal would fix the issue), but it’s enough to where it’s annoying -- I’ll turn up one track [A], and the bleed of another instrument [B] in that track’s microphone [A] will be out of phase enough to mess with the other instrument’s [B] track. I’ll then have to boost track B to compensate for the out-of-phase bleed in track A, and then I’ll have to boost everything to compensate for the increased boost in track B… and so it goes until I’m out of head room.

(I hope the “A,” “B” junk made sense).

I’m not really worried about it, because it’s just toss-away recordings of band practice to see what tweaks need to be made to songs, but it does cause me to have to spend more time than I should mixing the stuff down for the band mates.

What kind of stuff are you thinking of creating with this new-found knowledge?

[_asbestosman]

(I hope the “A,” “B” junk made sense).

Yes, and it sounds like either Hilbert-transforms (which do quarter phase shifts instead of reversing (half-reversing)) might help.

What kind of stuff are you thinking of creating with this new-found knowledge?

Mostly I want to mess with the harmonics / overtones of sounds. For example, in the DAFX book it talks about morphing the sound of a voice into a Clairinet. There are many possible ways to do this and similar things. I also want to try "inventing" new sounds that don't follow regular harmonic patterns possibly by swapping the fundamental notes with various overtones, or by changing the spacing of overtones. I'm wondering if using the latter technique I can make consonant chords sound dissonant and vice-versa.

I also might try playing with different scales and temperaments such as one with 24 half-semitones per octive, musics for the Bohlen–Pierce scale (octive + perfect fifth) or other Tritave scales.

[_cinepro]

I play piano (mostly chord style, but I can sight-read with a gun to my head), guitar and ukelele. I was out of practice on the piano and guitar, but my kids wanted to learn so I had to get back into gear so I could teach them. As an incentive, I've told them they'll get to take lessons from someone else when they're better than I am

We never had a piano after getting married until a few months ago (10+ years), so my wife hadn't ever really heard me play. After a few days, she was shocked that I actually knew how to play. I replied "And all this time I thought you married me because I knew how to play...?!"

About a year ago, they played the first songs they learned for their school classes and I put them on youtube. PM me if you want to see them.