Blacksburg-barcamp-2008-06-14-ninja-audio-effects

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Contents 1 Ninja Audio Effects 1.1 Presenter 1.2 Proposal 1.3 Comments

Ninja Audio Effects

Presenter

Andrew Fabian

Proposal

We’re in a pretty remarkable time now, where just in the last few years laptop computers and inexpensive hardware have gained the ability to mirror the functionality of entire analog recording studios of the 80’s and 90’s. Consequently, personal recording is suddenly a viable option for bands, solo artists, podcasts, amateur videographers, etc. Of course, owning the technology isn’t everything.

Making music has been a hobby of mine for a few years now. I like to focus a lot on the technology side of music production – the part that starts AFTER the artist has been recorded, or the framework for a song has been put down. From tuning wobbly vocals, to generating keyboard parts from an automatic arpeggiator, to copying-and-pasting and changing the sound of instruments throughout the song, nothing is sacred in modern post-production.

I’m proposing a session that introduces the science of audio engineering. I’ll talk about the a recording engineer’s standard arsenal of compressors, delays, reverbs, filters, and some of the more fun effects like glitches, pitch correction, distortion, and vocoding. To demonstrate these, I’ll be running a full multi-track project inside Cubase, a professional “DAW” or Digital Audio Workstation. And there will be music! Shouldn’t every BarCamp have music?

During the Q-and-A section, we could also talk about the ideas of modern music being over-produced, and the “loudness war” and its negative effect on recording, as a sort of counter-point to the presentation.

So, is this something that people are interested in? It’s a definite departure from most of the computer-sciency talks, but still rooted in emerging technology.

Comments

Manu: I'd certainly be interested in hearing about that.... it would also be good since it's a bit different from the other talks but still has a great deal to do with software and emerging technology.