Thursday, July 28, 2011

Blaster Beam Assignment

Whilst googling "pipe organ in star trek philms", i came across this wiki article for an electric musical instrument known as the "blaster beam":
BLASTER BEAM
  • used to model the sound of the V'ger cloud in Star Trek I. I remember this ominous and deep sliding sound best, however, from Star Trek III where it is used only once at an important moment- when the Enterprise is charging madly away from homebase, star station earth.
  • Also used to immense scare factor in "Black Hole"
  • Usual suspects: Kitaro
  • Also used by Lucas in Star Wars, but "heavily processed using cooledit plugins" so as to keep the Trek/Wars worlds in their appropriate separate universes... For more on the Trek/War dichotomy consult http://www.st-v-sw.net/ (not SXSW sex in sith-city star wars)
  • Model the blaster beam in computer music program of your choice. Using Karpluss Strong algorithms, it should be very easy. In fact you could say that the blaster beam is the "native" sound of the pluck opcode (obviating the need to physically make the inst, out of a 12 foot aluminum pole and heavy gauge steel wire, plus artillery shell for sliding stop).
  • Write a piece for pipe organ and blaster beam. This piece should capitalize on the immediate associations of:
  • Pipe Organ as voice of god, and in the context of sci-fi, a particularly massive and unknowable alien intelligence light years beyond our own (the words phlow from my fingers as these sci-fi scentiences are gilded in our culture)
  • Blaster Beam as "kirkus" or potent charger into the unknown in quest of knowledge but not afraid to use his mettle. Blaster Beam as black hole "quiddity place". Blaster Beam "heavily processed by cooledit plugins" to make a "type janky JarJarBinks" sound.
  • Perform the piece with a pipe organ and your new computer music patch!
  • Michael Stern and the beam.
  • Carl Sagan and Francisco's Beam Experience

  • Klingons versus power of the beam.
  • youngling uses FM synthesis to good effect modeling the beam, but not as good as K-S synthesis IMHO.

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