Digital Audio Production Final by Larry Nguyen

Introduction:

Many things can happen stylistically to a person in ten weeks.

I like to think that my experience in the Digital Audio Production class in the last three months or so has drastically and positively changed the way I think about, produce and, most importantly, listen to music. The most incredible methodological revelation I've discovered in Digital Audio Production is the power of intuition. If the listener goes through all the tracks on this website in sequence, he or she will see the varying, but direct, gradation that takes place. The audio experience starts with gratuitous order and structure, and ends with unabashed chaos and recklessness.

Apparent in my first track, "track01," is my background in traditional music. The piece is jarringly structured. The nature of my process in producing the piece wouldn't allow otherwise. In my process, I sampled beats of traditional music—drum beats, guitar melodies, and bass notes—and then, meticulously and systematically wiped out any varying pitches, tones, tempos, and beautiful idiosyncrasies, into a streamlined, crisp, uniformly colored and paced composition. The drum beats line up seamlessly. The melodies are in major and minor thirds. Catchiness in the strictly overproduced sense is exhibited in place of originality. The whole song is a painstakingly seedy, "motel-room" fling with modernism.

Now, let's take a look at my last track, "f_o_m."

It's a reckless mess. Pure, sweet, "let's-not-book-a-motel-room-and-just-do-it-right-here" intuition. The piece is not really an improvement on structure, harmony, or even melody. However, in terms of creativity, experimentation, and concept, the last track shows much more complexity and evident referentiality in its contradictions: maturation in childishness, intention in randomness, melodic themes in noise. Repetition here becomes a feature: the thumping loop is a reference for swirling skips and beats. The "vocals" are used in a componential way; they embellish upon the noise and demolished sounds rather than the traditional vice versa configuration. Guitar solos are replaced by one-time occurrences of mutated and bizarre samples.

Much of this reckless mentality is evident in the other three tracks in varying degrees. "Seed01," the remix of Matt Brown's exquisite sample piece is a demolition of all things traditionally musical, whereas the softsynth piece ("softsynth") is a prime example of restrained tonal attribution towards "noise" as a an unobtrusive element. "Seed02"he destruction of Nicole Spahn's highly melodic piece into blippy, crude organically disgusting sounds, is a subversion of character and, some would say, gender. The beautiful and articulated "feminine" melodies of Nicole’s original work are transformed into the rumbling, crotch-scratching characteristics of stereotypically masculine cave culture. Ultimately, the demonstration of intuitive experimentation is far more engaging critically and aurally than the calculated and indeterminate feel of the first track. There's simply more to say about the last four tracks individually than the first.

This class was my first venture into the realm of audio design. The use of intuition through fully practicing the "act of doing" has affected my design perspective across the board. The principles of experimentation in, perhaps, a gear shift into the "hyperactive" mode of the concept-create-reflect cycle in design science is much more explicitly available to you in Digital Audio Production than in any other class I've taken. This doesn't mean, however, that there is no emphasis on concept, for popular belief tends to debilitate the idea of conceptualization as a practice that, in all respects, should be slow and drawn out to be intelligent, original and responsible. I entirely agree that a designer must be smart, accountable, and fresh in his or her work, but, honestly, responsibility, originality, and intelligence in design concept do not necessitate lengthy and sluggish execution.

The Digital Audio Production course, in its nature, boldly presents the option of synthesizing work that derives its sense of originality, responsibility, and intelligence from energetic and intuitive experimentation. These intuitive strategies have become invaluable resources in my other coursework as well. These strategies played significant roles in my first venture into site-specific art this quarter. I execute conceptualization and process more rigorously now than in the past because of the intuitive practice in Digital Audio Production. Aural design, in this sense, increasingly becomes an important player in design thinking, and not, as it has in the past, just an afterthought.

track 01 | seed02 | softsynth | seed03 | f_o_m | home     Copyright 2004 Larry Nguyen