In the previous posts we looked at the creation and delivery of ambisonic and surround audio. Enough. Although more technical information has come up, I’d like to get into the music – after all this is not just a matter of technical prowess, I actually have good reasons for the work in progress.
Let’s start with a common question – why bother with multichannel sound? Which quickly reminds us – why bother with stereo sound? Why bother with amplified sound? Why bother with polyphony? Why bother at all? Two rocks are good enough. All were good questions at one time, but not really worth asking since.
There’s a more sophisticated question – what specific benefits come with multichannel sound? Current music doesn’t orchestrate the way we once did, with set roles for strings, brass, percussion etc. And the decision to form a traditional rock band with bass, lead, rhythm guitars et al. is just a decision referencing the past and its comforts. Since the Moog we’ve had instruments that can vary their timbre just as they vary their pitch. We also have means to place these instruments by EQ and reverb. A single note can be percussive in close proximity and then become a string at great distance all in one flow. That an instrument can be in front or behind or below as part of a performance or score is simply an extension of the way we already compose. I look forward to music where position is the entire ‘pitch’ of a melody.
Yes. Surround music has been wrapped in pretension and gobbledygook – there’s been far too many MaxMSP blurts through sixteen speakers over the years – but that’s due to expensive and complex tools being in the hands of technicians and academics. Failed ventures into VR have opened up ambisonic production to the rest of us to form a popular culture. Let’s do it!
Music Server
My main concern is the Sevcom Music Server project which began under difficult circumstances in 1998, was commercially licensed in 2004 and has only just restarted. The project was first about ‘difficult muzak’, but over time has wobbled about different themes. Only four albums were produced before it was licensed, but I’m working on the last four albums which (god help me) are supposed to add up the eight hours of muzak in a working day.
In 2017 YouTube began streaming video with ambisonic audio. That seemed like a great idea for relaunching the Music Server as an actual server and I got a fair number of tracks remixed and uploaded. This 1st order ambisonic is ‘pretty good’ – you can turn the phone around your head and get a constant remix. But uploading a whole slab of videos confused people and was a very untidy way to ‘box’ a set of music. I also better understand ambisonics these days and regret not making higher quality masters. I’d like to get the whole thing reworked as best I can and put together into a coherent form – perhaps as a single long video with markers. That’s one reason for all the investigation into delivering higher ambisonics. Expect Music Server to be a living document for quite a while yet.
Games
Another reason is for games. I’ve done two ‘walking simulators’ for music – HH and Snowglobe and am slowly working on a bigger one – so far the sound has been stereo, because in 2013 I didn’t have the technical knowledge. Games can have sound quality from 5.1 up to ambisonics – it’s produced on the fly by middleware such as FMOD to whatever system you have available. In some ways, being object based, game sound is the step after the ambisonic mixes I plan for Music Server.
Live Performance
Severed Heads is very dead. But I am alive and have some interest in live presentations in ambisonics or surround. This is possible online (using Twitch) and perhaps someday in the real world, where cinemas have large and complex speaker arrays. Again, it’s about mastering the music in the best possible format that can be down mixed into a delivery format.
Remastering
Do I dare remaster some of the older music in these expanded formats? Since the Ambisonic Accident? I’m not particularly confident about taking lo-fi music and wrapping it into such an elaborate presentation. I know that it’s happening for SONY albums on Tidal and Deezer etc. I’m going to check out what the results are for the top end of town – and perhaps let’s just play.
For example, the Beatles albums were mono, and stereo an afterthought – but I heard most of them in stereo and it didn’t kill me. I’m thinking about the Love album which reworked the original recordings and that was pretty good to be honest. If we keep the original recordings available then a few ambisonic versions might be a curiosity, or wonderful or who knows – but cause no harm.
Remastering requires pulling apart frequency bands with very hard filters. Then these bands are re-positioned and rotated by phase changes. All of this creates artifacts that aren’t too bad in artifact-laced Music Server – but in more familiar music could lead to … Clifford-spew.
Hey, I love Clifford-spew.
