A brief hopscotch tour through CCRMA, Fall 2010

Since Mae and I are having a somewhat lazy Saturday morning/early afternoon, I thought I would take the opportunity to post some photos of CCRMA.  Hopefully this will give a better idea of where I spend most of my time.   Over thanksgiving I plan to take some photos/video of a few of the other bits of CCRMA not represented here (especially the listening room).   Enjoy!

This is the back of the building on Halloween weekend.  For reference - the stage (shown later) is located on the top floor in the wing of the buildling shown on the upper right.  The classroom and ballroom computer cluster are on the bottom floor of the same wing

This room is labeled "Grand Central Station" - probably because it is the central hub of the building.  Ground floor from the back, second floor from the front.  This room houses the computer cluster shown and all student lockers, faculty/student mailboxes (the big rectangular thing behind the computers).

Foreground:  the ballroom.  This is where we have all of our labs and digital signal processing homework sessions.  Background:  the classroom (Knoll 217).  All CCRMA courses are taught in that room.  It has a four channel speaker system mounted around the ceiling, which is nice for in-class demos.

 

The main staircase winding through the building.  220a student scores of field recordings are hanging in the background on the left.

This is my score for music 220a.  We had to "notate" an hour long field recording from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. 

Downstairs - this is the main CCRMA lobby.  A bit messy in this picture, but it is a "museum" of sorts, with old equipment (some or potentially all of which is related to CCRMA work/patents).  The three arches in the background are mirrors.

Looking out the front door.

This is the CCRMA recording studio control room.  A few weeks ago I had an assignment which required me to test different microphone types and placement techniques while recording the yamaha disklavier (which can be seen through the window - top center)

Linux and Mac OSX workstations

Outboard gear/processors.

Old analog equipment which doesn't get much use anymore.

Spaced pair technique :)

XY coincident technique

Mid-side technique

Half of the recording room.  One of the great things at CCRMA is that these facilities are open to all CCRMA students with no prioritization.   Anybody taking a class at CCRMA can book these resources for free any time they are open (including the 16 channel listening room, the full recording studio, the stage, or any of the smaller studios/labs).

Back of the building on one of the few cloudy days we've had this fall

Look! The leaves are falling!  ...

This is where I park my bike every day.  Yes, those are oxygen tanks hanging from the tree.  The bottoms have been removed, and they are intended to be struck like bells.

This is the "Maxlab," which is on the lower floor of CCRMA.  It is so named because Max Mathews works on his projects there sporadically during the week. 

The maxlab is chock full of prototyping goodies - tools, electronics components, scrap metal/wood, etc.   It has the feel of a small garage workshop, which I really like.  Reminds me of Grandpa Carlson's basement workshop (albeit, less "basementy")

Max's desk

Electronics stuff

The full lab

This is the CCRMA stage (on the third floor).  This week I participated in a "telematic" concert with Pauline Oliveros's ensemble at RPI in New York. Our ensembles performed together in real time, transmitting multiple channels of CD-quality audio at very low latency across the country.

Getting ready for the concert/sound checking/debugging.

I played laptop drone  (controlled by tilting the laptop and brushing my finger on the trackpad.  Note the hemispherical speaker array (the upside down salad bowl with 4 visible speakers, 6 total). The laptop orchestra uses these for amplification.  We can send sounds to all 6 channels independently.

Here is the synchronization mechanism for the performance.  We all watched this clock for transitions between parts (the gray regions).  The performance was 25 minutes long and featured koto, guitar, cello, violin, percussion, two laptops, flute, modular synthesizer, turntables, experimental vocalizations, saxophone, bass guitar, and several other instruments.  It looks like we'll be getting a youtube video link soon, so I will be sure to post that when it arrives! 

Needless to say, I am very happy studying at CCRMA.  It's like living in a big, noisy (in the best sense of the word) playground!