Final Project
Requirements
- 4-6 minutes
- Some virtual instrument tracks, some audio tracks.
- Record your own audio.
- Mix for 5-channel surround sound.
Guidelines and Suggestions
- We’d rather hear something of modest length that you’ve wrestled with and thought deeply about than something very long that seems thrown together casually.
- The balance between virtual instrument and audio tracks (that is, the number of each) is up to you.
- Your piece must be an original composition, not an arrangement of other music, or even an arrangement of an earlier piece of yours.
- Avoid using sound made by others, if you have not received
permission to use it. (Keep in mind that a recording of old
music that is in the public domain — any Baroque piece,
for example — still carries the copyright of the people
who made the recording. You would have to get their
permission to use the recording in a derivative work.)
Even if you have received permission, be careful that you’re not using their sound as a shortcut. This applies also if you incorporate a recording of one of your acoustic pieces. If you try to use this as a quick way out, it will show.
- We strongly discourage you from making use of copyrighted sources for which you have no permission. If you want to release your music on a CD some day, this will cause you no end of trouble.
- Your piece — both the MIDI and audio portions — must be thoroughly and thoughtfully mixed for 5 channels (i.e., “5.1 ITU 775,” but without putting anything in the subwoofer channel — the .1 channel).
- Your piece should sound like you worked it over and tweaked things until it seemed just right to you. That doesn’t mean that your piece has to sound smooth — it can sound noisy and rough, as long as these qualities aren’t the result of negligence.
- Use the subwoofer to evaluate the low frequency content of your mix. If you listen all the time without the subwoofer, you may have lots of low frequency energy in your piece that you’re never hearing. When you play it on a system with better bass response, you’ll be surprised.
- Leave time for the final bounce, which can be more complicated when you have MIDI tracks. Don’t leave it for the last minute!
Submission
- Please complete one digital audio workstation (DAW) project
that satisfies the criteria above.
Keep this project in your account on the MC 304 computer.
- Bounce your project to a 5-channel interleaved sound file in either AIFF or WAVE format, 24 bits, 44100 sampling rate. Submit this file in an IU Box folder for which you will receive an invitation.
- Submit a program note that includes the title of your piece. The note should describe the basic musical ideas of the piece and any techniques you’d especially like us to notice. Bring to our final playback event enough copies for everyone to read when we play the project in class. (These can be on little strips of paper.)
Grading Criteria
Grades will be based on overall conception and execution, the quality of the source recordings, your sonic imagination, attention to detail, sensitivity to spatial (panning, reverberation) and spectral (EQ) qualities, following the instructions (including submission requirements), and completion of the program note.
This assignment will receive a letter grade. The highest grade is A.
A portion of the grade for the project will depend on you making regular progress, as demonstrated during tutorials. So don’t leave this all to the last minute — it won’t work!
Late projects will be accepted only with a valid medical excuse from a doctor, stating that you were incapable of completing the work. Loss of materials is not an acceptable excuse, so back up your data to at least two different places (e.g., flash drive and cloud storage)!