7. Diskussion
7.4 Vidare arbete
Ett vidare arbete innefattar bland annat att göra något som planerades att göra innan arbetets början. Det vill säga, att testa gränserna för vilken musik man kan skapa med denna form av musikskapande. Exempelvis testa hur komplexa melodier man kan göra, eller se hur många olika instrument instruktionsfilmen skulle kunna behandla.
En annan ambition, som dessvärre blev tvingad att åsidosättas, var att ge personer möjligheten att kunna spela in och arbeta med helt eget inspelat material inför användartestet, istället för att bistå med förberett råmaterial.
Referenslista
RedBull.com. (2019). The history of FL Studio and Ableton Live in 7 songs. Red Bull.
https://www.redbull.com/int-en/history-of-fruity-loops-in-seven-songs [2020-06-11]
TechCrunch.com. (2011). iMovie And Garageband For iOS Announced. TechCrunch.
https://techcrunch.com/2011/03/02/imovie-and-garageband-for-ipad-announced/
[2020-05-16]
Forbes.com. (2011). Why Independent Musicians Are Becoming The Future Of The Music Industry. Melissa Daniels, Forbes.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/melissamdaniels/2019/07/10/for-independent-
musicians-goingyour-own-way-is-finally-starting-to-pay-off/#35c267b714f2
[2020-05-16]
Forsberg, Jennie. (2013). Konkretisera mera. Institutionen för medier och kommunikation. Lunds Universitet.
Sigrell, Anders. (2008). Retorikens etik – och progymnasmata. I: Texter om svenska med didaktisk inriktning. Femte nationella konferensen i svenska med didaktisk inriktning. Maria Lindgren et al (red.). Växjö University Press. Växjö.
Zetterlund, Joakim. (1997). Teknikinformation, en outnyttjad konkurrensfördel. Liber ekonomi.
Tufte, Edward R. (1990). Envisioning information. Cheshire: Graphics Press.
Barnes, S. R. (2016). Studies in the Efficacy of Motion Graphics: The Effects of Complex Animation on the Exposition Offered by Motion Graphics. Animation-An
Interdisciplinary Journal, 11(2) ss. 146-168. DOI: 10.1177/1746847716637823 Yang, C., Jen, C., Chang,C. Yeh, TK., (2018). Comparison of Animation and Staticpicture based Instruction : Effects on Performance and Cognitive Load for Learning Genetics, Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 21(4), ss. 1-11. https://eds-aebscohost- com.e.bibl.liu.se/eds/detail/detail?vid=2&sid=a0e8b9f6-b707-44dd-9a3d-
a7618a22ad2c%40pdc-
vsessmgr01&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPWlwLHVpZCZsYW5nPXN2JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWx
pdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d %3d#AN=edsjsr.26511533&db=edsjsr [17-03-2020]
Kühl, T., Navratil, S. D. and Münzer, S. (2018) Animations and static pictures: The influence of prompting and time of testing. Learning and instruction, 58 ss. 201-209.
Clark, Ruth. C & Mayer, Richard. E. (2016). E-learning and the science of instruction, proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning. 4. uppl., New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/linkoping-ebooks/reader.action?docID=4418752
YouTube.com. (2017). How to make a GREAT Tutorial. Blender Guru, YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6o_6R2lbE4 [2020-05-20]
Weissman, Jerry, (2008). Presenting to Win: The art of telling your story. New Jersey: Pearson FT Press.
Bilaga A
En simpel förstudie för att säkerställa intresse hos en liten samling av möjliga testpersoner att arbeta med och undersöka deras tidigare erfarenheter.
Hur erfaren / skicklig skulle du kalla dig på att spela piano?
Person X: Kan läsa noter. Person Y: Kan några melodier. Person Z: Kan ett par melodier.
Hur erfaren / skicklig skulle du kalla dig på att klippa film?
Person X: Har grundläggande erfarenhet. Person Y: Har grundläggande erfarenhet. Person Z: Har grundläggande erfarenhet.
Om jag säger att det kan ta mellan en halvtimma eller 45 minuter i total tid att skapa ett kortare musikstycke och få en musikvideo på köpet, skulle du vilja skapa ett?
Person X: Ja. Person Y. Ja. Person Z. Ja.
Skulle ni tänka er att undanvara ungefär 60 minuter av er tid, för att vara med i min fallstudie, och få en ”workshop” i filmklippning på köpet?
Person X: Ja. Person Y: Ja. Person Z: Ja.
Bilaga B
Manus
INTRO
Some eight years ago, I made quite a unique project in high school. I blended video creating and music composing as an experiment to see if it was in anyway usable or if it would even work.
I spent hours of writing down notes from a note sheet or a piano roll, making sure that each note was not written down more than once, hence making a list of every unique note played in the song. After that I spent some time playing each note in front of a camera, playing the entire list of notes and telling the camera out loud which note I was going to play. Then, I painstakingly placed each and every note, in the right order and pace, in a video editing software –constructing a song note for note.
To my amazement, it worked out a lot better than I thought. So good in fact that I decided to take on an entire band ensemble. It technically worked, but it didn’t sound as good as I hoped. No time was spent setting up the instruments properly or to make sure the sound capture was decent. No external microphone was used, and the humming of the video camera (due to it being a camera that recorded to tape) was quite disturbing. And the video editing process: very inefficient.
Now, eight years later, and thousands of hours in various video editing softwares later, I kept thinking back to that particular high school project. I thought to myself; how would it turn out if I did this again? A lot of new revelations have passed and I kept thinking about things I would do differently or more efficiently. Now that the opportunity emerged to test and develop this kind of content creation and at the same time be given the chance to show and teach this to others; I lunged at it. So let’s get started right away.
PART 1 –RATIONALE
There are four vital components needed to make a project such as this. An instrument. A camera (preferably with a good external microphone) and a video editing software supporting at least two simultaneous video tracks. And of course, a song to play.
To guide you through this process, I’m going to use; a piano, a simple smart-phone camera with an external microphone. And Adobe Premiere Pro to edit this
together. And, when choosing a song, I am not going to choose anything complex or anything that requires interpreting a note sheet. I am going to choose a song that has a piano roll readily available, and only show a small portion of it.
PART 2 –SET-UP
There are many ways to go about the camera and instrument set-up. I am going to set the camera up on a tri-pod and face the piano and me towards it. But bear in mind, any set-up will do. When playing and editing the song together, it will almost give the resulting video the impression of it being stop-motion edited. To show how this is done step-by-step, I will play and construct the first part of the renowned theme song to a couple of my childhood heroes. Wallace & Gromit.
PART 3 –CONSTRUCTION BEGINS
A piano roll for this tune is available on YouTube thanks to the absolute legends at the channel Sheet Music Boss. Looking at this chart, you can see that not that many different notes are played, which makes this process easier. Looking at the piano’s typical scale it’s usually described like this: C-D-E-F-G-A-B, and the black keys being C#,D#,F#,G#,A# or Db, Eb, Gb, Ab, Bb. And if any notes are spanning over different octaves, they are separated by numbers. “Blong, Bling”. Also, in the piano roll, note how what the right and left hand are supposed to play is
conveniently separated by color. We will also separate what the left and right hand are playing individually.
So, let’s identify and write all the unique notes down. Right hand: Left hand:
C1 F -1 A#0 A -1, C0 A0 C -1 G0 E -1, G -1 D1 G -2 E1 G -1 F1 A# -1 D -1, G -1 E -1 G -1, C0
Now that we know exactly which notes we need to play. Let’s head over to the piano.
When recording, it is imperative that the sound capture is decent, so in the direct vicinity of the piano, I place a carefully tuned microphone. I set up the camera. And I check every note off as I play them. Also, before I play the note, I speak it out loud. This will make it a lot easier to organize the notes in the project later. This part should not take much time as long as the list is short and bereft of duplicates.
PART 5 –EDITING
And now for the final part that I reckon will take the most amount of time, but also will be the most rewarding. Editing all of this together.
I previously mentioned how an editing software supporting two or more video tracks is essential, but I didn’t elaborate on why. But I will now. The piano roll I used as a reference of what I was going to play; that will come into use once more. The piano roll will serve as a base for the timing of how the notes are supposed to be placed and spliced. I will just get started and take you through it step by step. Bear in mind that this tutorial will make use of Adobe Premiere Pro’s interface, but other softwares, such as Final Cut or Sony Vegas will use the same principles and shouldn’t be too different or difficult to replicate the same end result in. Also, beforehand I have synced and replaced the camera audio with the audio from the external microphone. There are plenty of tutorials on how to do this, so I am going to skip that bit. But, I will say this, I use a program called PluralEyes. In just a few short moments, the program can sync the footage for you. Now, onwards. I have created a blank project matching the setting of my footage with frame dimensions and frames-per-second. I have also imported the piano roll footage right here. In Premiere Pro, if you double-click the video in the project browser, it shows up in a pre-edit window. Here, a clip can be previewed and narrowed down to a specific start- and end-point before placing it in the editing timeline below. I will narrow the piano roll footage down to only span the notes that are going to be placed and played. Then, I will drag that footage down to the timeline and place it above the bottom layer, preferably two layers up, in Video 3. The audio track from the piano roll footage is not necessary to keep in the timeline at all, so I will unlink the audio from the video and remove it completely.
Next, we need to separate the notes we played and recorded into individual small snippets we can place in the timeline. I will create a new sequence and import my recorded and synced footage. I will place it straight into the editing timeline and then… I will listen to myself in the clip stating which note I play. As you heard, that was the C1. I’ll wind that back. *rewind sound* and I’ll step forward one frame at the time until I hear the note being struck. *Step, step, step, step* Okay, right there. I’ll set the start-point, and play the note for a bit. Okay, that’s enough. The
end-point being correct at this stage is not necessary, because the end-point can easily be adjusted afterwards. We will mark this clip with the same name as the note, and put in the browser for later. In Premiere Pro, you do it by simply dragging it to the Project Browser. We will do this for each and every note until we have marked, named and stored every single one. *Fast forward* Now that that is done, we can start constructing the song.
Let’s re-open the first sequence. We will pay a small bit of attention to the clip with the piano roll again. Select the clip in the timeline, open the effect controls and lower the opacity to 50%. In that way, we can place video clips in the layers underneath it and it will be seen through the top layer. To start constructing, I will align the timeline indicator to the first frame where the first note lights up. Now, I will just take the note labelled the same as the one that lights up. In this case, it’s C1. I’ll grab it and snap the note into place. Let’s just listen to how that sounds. *Rewind. Ding.* Perfect, let’s call it done! “Sweet child of mine/credits” No, just kidding, we’re just getting started. But this is about it. Just make sure to match the end-point to each note’s in the piano roll or to the beginning of the next stricken note. Sometimes notes might overlap. Place them in a layer above the note that is already playing, but still under the piano roll. Repeat this process for the entire note string… *fast-forward* -and you got yourself a melody! *Play the melody* Also, during the sequence, many notes are repeated or close to each other. A clip can be copied and pasted just like you would with text. Utilize this, and the editing becomes much more efficient.
Now, create a new, second sequence with the same properties as the others and repeat the process for every note played by the other hand. *Fast-forward* Note how a lot of the notes are played in a repeated pattern. Utilize copying and pasting for the first accurately played notes in the pattern, and this should be quick. *Fast-forward*.
In a third and final sequence; place the two previous sequences in it. Align and match the sequences. And now… let’s see how it sounds. *Play all* I consider that a great success.
[OANVÄNT MANUS]
PART 6 -USER TESTS
What you have just seen was shown to a few other people. They got to pick and choose from a varying assortment of songs that they might want to construct. To make it as efficient as possible, all of the notes had already been written down and
were all ready to be played from the start. It was all recorded. And then, I left them to it. This, is how it turned out.
*SONGS*
So, there we have it! Producing music like this opens up a window to produce (or construct) music if you know your way in an editing software. But how big is this window exactly. We have seen some basic examples of what you can do using this technique of music production. However, I want to delve a bit deeper. I want to see; are there limits to what can be constructed? While having a bit of fun, which is something you have to in a project with several monotonous processes, I took it upon myself to challenge the limits, and find out…