Student Engineering Magazine at the University of Illinois

Volume 127::Winter 2011

Tuning into Music Tech

2

COVER PHOTO: Brian Kennedy

Editor-in-Chief

Megan Reilly

Print Content Editor

Amanda Steelman

Presentation Editor

Brian Kennedy

Copy Editors

Minna Yung

Daniel Malsom

Presentation Team

Ryne Mante

Elizabeth Brinckerhoff

Adviser

Marissa Monson

Publisher

Lilyn Levant

Web

readtechno.com

Email

technograph@illinimedia.com

Mail

Technograph

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Champaign, IL 61820

Phone

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An Illini Media

Publication

Copyright 2011

From Green Street to Your Radio

Experimental Music Studios

The Continuum Continues

Going Viral

Sing-A-Long-Home

Plus sneak peeks at online-exclusive articles about composition technology and the math of music!(See pages 4 and 5.)

37

5

46

33

From Green Street to Your Radio:

PHOTOCREDIT: Brian Kennedy, Elizabeth Brinckerhoff

The Techie Side of WPGU

Radio is something that many people may take for granted. Turn it on in your car or at home and the music or the talk show just plays. In reality, the process that brings the sound from the radio station to listeners’ ears is incredibly complex. Kenji Nanto explained just how much technology and work goes into produc-ing WPGU 107.1 FM, the student-run radio station that is part of Illini Media Company.

Everything begins, as one might expect, in the studio. The sig-nal from the DJ’s mixer travels up to the omnia on the third fl oor of the Illini Media Building. This piece of equipment, according to Nanto, allows the engineers to “play with the sound” and balance the overall signal depending on what the station is broadcasting. Hockey games, for example, have a wide range of sounds (such as slapshots and checks into the boards) that make hearing the announcers rather diffi cult. The omnia gives the engineers the ability to bring out the sounds that are more important and dif-fi cult to hear while still having a feeling of live listening through those secondary sounds.

The omnia then sends the signal to a transmitting antenna on the fourth fl oor of the Illini Media Building, and it is then sent on to a receiving antenna on the top of The Tower at Third. WPGU has a transmitting room at the top of The Tower, and at least once a year, the student engineering staff goes up there to make sure things are running smoothly. From this room, the signal is fi nally sent to the very large antenna that can easily be seen atop The Tower at Third due to the red lights. This antenna sends the signal, at last, to radios all over the campus area.

For events outside the studio, the engineering team has a “pure remote production unit” that includes its own sound board and portable transmitting antenna. The signals from these events travel from the antenna via one of two frequencies (455 or 450 MHz, or megahertz), meaning that WPGU theoretically has the potential to run two different remote events at once. This signal

is sent back to a receiving box that goes to the production room and then into the studio where it can be controlled by the DJ and sent all over campus.

In the actual studio, the DJ has access to the sound board that controls what the audience can hear along with the volume. Pre-scheduled music is set in a program called “Scott Studio” that allows the DJ to play each track from a touchscreen at the proper time.

For live music performances of local and visiting bands that come into the studio, the engineering staff is able to bring in extra sound boards to add effects to the instruments and vocals. On top of this, they can change each channel to an “Auxiliary” setting in order to hear how the different microphones or instru-ments sound through the radio before actually going on air. Be-cause the power behind the signal decreases as it goes through the different mixers, these sound checks are crucial to a success-ful live performance.

The WPGU engineering staff is made up of music enthusiasts in a wide range of majors (from electrical engineering to creative writing). Those who are interested in the extremely unique expe-rience this group offers should email Kenji Nanto at:

nanto1@illinimedia.com.

By: Megan Reilly

Experimental Music Studios

The Continuum Continues

Going Viral

Sing-A-Long-Home

4

For over 50 years, the School of Music’s Experimental Music Studios, or EMS, have been at the forefront of electroacoustic music technology.

EMS students and faculty are responsible for many advances in digital music performance and creation, such as their contribu-tion to the invention of modular voltage-controlled synthesizers. Made famous and commercially available by Moog Music, these synthesizers were fi rst utilized by bands such as The Beatles and Kraftwerk and are still used by modern bands, including the re-cent Pygmalion Music Festival acts Cut Copy and Toro Y Moi.

Presently, EMS is exploring diffusion techniques using eight channel audio systems as a possible replacement of the live per-formance paradigm, said Scott Wyatt, director of EMS.

“What we’re trying to do with diffusion techniques is to im-merse the audience in the music,” Wyatt said. “We’re trying to bring the music around the audience and inside of the audience.”

He sees this as the future of live performances because of the crowd’s ability to better connect with the performers.

Typical concerts have two channel audio systems with speak-ers separating the performer from the audience. Another draw-back of this setup is that it fails to create a unique listening experience, Wyatt said.

“We’re trying to do what you can not get on your personal listening system or in your apartment or home theater system,” he said.

EMS students are taught to read diffusion scores so they may create these performances live, rather than simply play a prere-corded track. This is one more way to create a more enjoyable experience for the crowd, Wyatt said.

The quality of work from the EMS students is a testament to the teaching of Wyatt and the rest of the EMS staff. Students continue to win awards for their work and also routinely release albums of their work to be sent to similar studios throughout the world.

Though EMS has produced its share of new musical technolo-gies, educating students has always been its main purpose.

“The goal of this facility is to give our students the kind of ac-cess to not only the technology, but the concepts and general awareness of how to be effectively creative with technology,” Wyatt said.

Approximately 35 percent of EMS students major in something other than music, but they still “do very well in composition,” he said.

“This is a totally different environment than what they’re used to and they use this for recreation,” Wyatt said. “They love it.”

By: Thomas Thoren

Experimental Music Studios: Reinventing the Listening Experience

Mozart probably wrote many of his symphonies by can-dlelight, seated at his desk, a piece of parchment in front of him and a quill in his hand. So did Beethoven, Bach, and Pachebel, most likely. Today, most composers write music in a very different way – by the light of a computer screen.

The dawn and advancement of computers brought to musicians the possibility of using software to compose music. Music composition software offers many features to today’s composers that early composers went without, such as the ability to make quick changes, analyze parts, organize the presentation of notes on the page, and hear

the piece play back. To learn more about music notation software, Technograph spoke with Lucinda Lawrence, who serves as bands librarian at the University of Illinois, teaches composition classes, and composes and arrang-es many musical pieces herself. Lawrence explained that perhaps the most important advantage of music notation software is the time and money it saves during the com-position process.

By: Dave Korenchan

For the full article, go to readtechno.com:

Music Composition

PHOTOCREDIT: Thomas Thoren, Elizabeth Brinckerhoff

For over 50 years, the School of Music’s Experimental The quality of work from the EMS students is a testament to The quality of work from the EMS students is a testament to

Imagine: you listen to a piece of classical music. Beethoven, perhaps, or Bach. You hear the melodies and it’s pleasing, but you can sense that there’s more to the music than meets the ear. You’d be right. There is sym-metry in the music, and you only have to listen to see it.

In his Mathematics in Music and Art course, Professor Emeritus Graham Evans gives fi ve main transformations that create symmetry in music. The fi rst of these is trans-positions up and down. This is what you do when you change key signatures—just add the same number of semitones to each note. Another is translation forwards,

which entails repeating a sequence of notes, as in the opening of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.

There is also retrograde transformation, in which you “do it backwards.” As this description implies, when using retrograde transformations, you reverse the order of the notes.

By: Katrina Litke

For the full article, go to readtechno.com:

The Continuum Continues:

Listen to Symmetry

PHOTOCREDIT: Brian Kennedy

Exploring the Electronic Instrument Frontier

Engineering at Illinois has a rich and long tradition of innova-tion and invention. Be it the fi rst modern transistor, the modern LED or the fi rst supercomputer, Illinois was there in the thick of it. That tradition is still seen today: ECE Professor Lippold Haken continues to innovate and perfect his 25 year old creation, the Continuum Fingerboard.

This musical instrument is at the forefront of the newest era of electronic instruments and music. The Haken continuum com-prises of a long touch sensitive surface that is highly sensitive to the pressure and orientation of a player’s fi nger. But the unique selling point of the continuum is that unlike traditional instru-ments such as the piano or the guitar it allows musicians to play notes that are in between the chromatic scale. In addition, the instrument is capable of bending pitches (vibrato) thus allowing for a truly stunning variation of audio produced over the 7.79-oc-tave pitch range. To top it all off, the continuum is capable of polyphonic performance with up to 16 simultaneous voices.

Several world class, avant-garde musicians are players and proponents of this device, including the Academy Award win-ner and musical wizard - A.R. Rahman - and Jordan Rudess of the virtuoso band Dream Theater. Musicians from such disparate genres (Indian Contemporary to Progressive Metal) have inte-grated this versatile instrument into their music. These artists have also collaborated with Dr. Haken to improve the continuum.

The Continuum Fingerboard isn’t easy to master according to Professor Haken. Just like a violin, it isn’t easy to just pick it up and produce aurally pleasant output. This is antithetical to the common assumption that electronic instruments are easy to play and master. Dr. Haken acknowledges the presence of tablet apps that emulate the Continuum but he likens this to the relation between an iPad piano app and a grand piano in a church: both have their consumer bases but the instruments are vastly differ-ent in their complexity and skill level.

Professor Haken, despite having already tested several materi-als and solutions to the fi ngerboard over the years, continues to develop the continuum. The professor emphasizes the need for new types of synthesizers, as most existing synthesizers are built to be controlled by piano-style keyboards. Perhaps engineers at Illinois will invent new synthesizers optimized for control by con-tinuous devices like the Continuum Fingerboard!

By: Roshan Murthy

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In a world where Rebecca Black has over 2,000,000 hits on Youtube, and people spend countless hours watching videos like Charlie bit my fi nger, the question has to be asked: has our taste for entertainment worsened over the years? Has bad become the new good? How is it that given two minutes, someone from our generation will decide to watch a guy mesmerized by a double rainbow instead of something of better quality?

It turns out however that the average viral video has many qualities that would appeal to the 21st century person. In the fast paced, time consuming world we live in today, we need entertainment that will nicely fi t into our tight schedules and our short attention spans. So a two and a half minute video of Miss South Carolina messing up her interview round is enough of a break to make us laugh a little (and boost our egos).

“I think what makes viral videos so popular is that they’re so short,” said sophomore Sarah Frankland-Searby. “It’s just three minutes of getting your laugh and getting back to work.”

Current video technology has actually helped broaden the average viewers’ idea of entertainment. For those that are sick of mainstream entertainment, viral videos can sometimes actually

provide a good alternative. Sure, while many of these videos may not exactly represent the best of talent, there are a few that highlight great artists where you least expect it- like the Susanne Boyle Brittan’s got talent audition. Viral videos provide people with a medium to fi nd something truly unique and surprising.

“We’ve always had a viral video market,” said Frankland-Searby. ”It was just in the form of America’s funniest home videos and people fi nding things and reporting them, but now with YouTube it gets shared around faster and we get to see more of them.”

So all in all, viral videos have not necessarily reduced our quality of what we see as talent. True artists still garner great popularity and appreciation, but now people also have some room for something a little less genius but equally entertaining.

“Viral videos makes [entertainment] more accessible,” said Freshman Lily Hislop. “With viral videos you can be the one producing the content. Some stuff online is funnier than what a sitcom writer can make up. It’s not reducing the quality, its changing the quality.”

By: Aneesha Prakash

IMAGECREDIT: Brian Kennedy

VIRALGoing

77

Karaoke is just one of those things you have to try at least once. It’s the chance to put that song you’ve been practicing in the shower to the test, and no matter how good or bad or em-barrassing your performance is, it is always entertaining.

In 2008, the CU Taxi Express Kara-oke Party Bus service took karaoke to whole new level. The founders of the company didn’t really advertise. They left the existence of the Party Bus as word of mouth until one day a UIUC Business professor caught a ride with them and changed it all.

“He thought it was pretty sharp, and he started asking his students if they’d ever seen it,” Duane Edwards, one of the co-founders, explained.

Since then, the popularity of the Karaoke Party Bus has grown.

But why is the Karaoke Bus so enticing? Edwards sums it up to the fact that people simply like to sing. Whether it’s country music or the Backstreet Boys or anything in between, students and alumni alike love it.

“Even with the alumni it’s pretty popular. They like the oldies like the 70s and 80s,” said Edwards.

In order to make driving and karaoke possible, the Karaoke Party Bus has a separate DJ in charge of the music. At fi rst, all of the music came from CDs and riders couldn’t choose specifi c songs. Flipping through books of CDs was too time-consuming. Now, thanks to technology, everything is on a computer and rid-ers can pick from a selection of more than 70,000 songs.

On top of the fun factor, the Karaoke Party Bus also provides a safe way to get to where you’re going. It doesn’t matter whether you need a ride home or your night is just starting, it costs just two dollars per person for each ride. Edwards explained that the main priority of the Karaoke bus is students’ safety.

“I’d see girls walking home late at night and just be like, why are you walking home?...Our biggest problem right now is that students don’t think they can ride the Karaoke Bus, they don’t know it’s a taxi.”

But it is, and understandably, the Karaoke Party Bus is most popular at night. Edwards says that most nights people start call-ing in around 10.30, some just to go a couple of blocks. There’s no shame in singing your heart out and no doubt, it makes your night out all the more entertaining.

By: Amanda Steelman

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