"我坐在一个房间里"
"I AM SITTING IN A ROOM" by Alvin Lucier

“……我们是要倾听房间，而不是听声音……并非所有的音乐都是由声音材料发展而来的，我们周围的任何环境因素都能作为音乐中的材料。这也使得我想要改善我房间的声学品质……”

“……we are listening to the room, not to hear the sound……it told me that not all music made by sound materials, any environment around us can be the material with my work. It also makes me want to improve the quality of my room……”

“我并没有坐在这个屋子里，坐在这里的是我的化身。”

这是一个虚拟版本：我坐在这个屋子里，虚拟人物和虚拟空间。

“……使用普通的数字音频工作站，在音轨中加一个IR（脉冲响应）混响，再将其加入到第二个音轨……依次在各个音轨中重复……但听起来只有IR混响在起作用，其他混响类型的存在只能让混响效果更大……当重复次数不断增加，IR混响的声音会越来越大，而非IR混响的声音会越来越小……”


"I'm NOT sitting in a room, my avatar does"

Here is a virtual version of "I'm sitting in a room" - by a virtual man, in a virtual room.

"……with ordinary DAW. Add an IR (impulse response) reverb module on a track, routing it to a second track……Repeat the process through many tracks……It seems ONLY IR reverb works. Any other reverb module only make the reverb larger……as number of generations increased, IR version gets louder but non-IR version gets quieter……"

I believe that Martijn had done a lot of preparation before the class and I got some keywords like phenomenology, acoustic space, formant. he dares some pictures to explain these theory, that made me understand them clearly and I love pictures. these keywords not only let me know something about the theory, but also I begin to consider the relationship between these theory and my composition, think about how to use these factors when making music and the mixing.

The contents of that morning was wonderful by our interactive. The composer use the nature characteristic of a specific room, kept saying a word "I`m sitting a room…" That real-time experiment made meunderstand the word Martijn said: "…we are listening to the room, not to hear the sound…" It told me that not all music made by sound materials, any environment around us can be the material with my work. It also makes me want to improve the quality of my room..terribly, I had recorded many songs in that environment. I think I must consider the recording environment and make it best as far as possible before recording activities in the future.

Martijn reconstructed the history to do the experiment with Max/msp, he made a patch to increase the resonant frequency to the extreme, until we can hear the sound only with rhythm. I think it`s pretty meaningful for my five-days study of Max/msp before. By the way. I found that Max/msp is so powerful, it can do whatever “effect” people want, it`s interesting..

"I'm NOT sitting in a room, my avatar does"

Here is a virtual version of "I'm sitting in a room" - by a virtual man, in a virtual room.

First, I got a record of text I want, generated by a speech synthesizer (I admit I'm very lazy… and that's why I made this version…), the easiest way to get it is from the link below. Just type some text in the blank and click download button, it's a *.wav file.

http://www2.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php

Then using a stupid little tricks you all know with ordinary DAW. Add an IR (impulse response) reverb module on a track, routing it to a second track with same reverb added. Repeat the process through many tracks.

Each track you have added will have a similar result comparing to each generation of original piece.



For those "Make Versions":

- Changing the IR sample of each track, you get a "through many rooms" version.

- For different languages? A piece of cake~ I mean, for speech synthesizer, not for me…

- Connecting a microphone to the first track, you can get a realtime version. Actually you can directly listen to any "generation" by solo the specific track.

- For moving microphone to different parts of room in each generation is coming soon. Testing on it...


Importance:

What I found that is really interesting, strange but reasonable phenomenon is: It seems ONLY IR reverb works. Any other reverb module only make the reverb larger.

And there is a another difference between using IR and other reverb: as number of generations increased, IR version gets louder but non-IR version gets quieter. I have not figure out the reason yet.

Caution: If you want to try it yourself, TURN THE VOLUME DOWN BEFORE YOU START!


Update:
You can also hear some strange thin resonance from non-IR version if you raise the volume high enough.

In terms of virtual, maybe those non-IR version is the true virtual version! The resonance from a non-existing space!