Last updated Tue Aug 12 11:31:05 2008.
All content © 2006-2008 Christopher Ariza, unless specfied otherwise. All Rights Reserved.
Last updated Tue Aug 12 11:31:05 2008.
All content © 2006-2008 Christopher Ariza, unless specfied otherwise. All Rights Reserved.
The tools of modern music-making are based, at least in part, on quantifiable, scientific measures of sound. Analog and digital electronics and signal processors all employ, at various levels, these measures. The audio engineer or computer musician of today, however, can master these measures only through long hours of experience.
Post-Ut is a first attempt at directly training these skills. These exercises may help an audio engineer hear and adjust frequencies and bandwidths of a parametric equalizer; or they may help a computer musician determine a pre-delay size for a reverb; or they may help a sound designer determine a compression ratio for a drum pulse. Musicians trained in Western, notated music may gain a new perspective, beyond such historical concepts as A4, Mezzo Forte, or Allegro.
Where traditional ear-training systems often employ MIDI or other low-quality audio playback systems, Post-Ut employs a large database of high-quality, algorithmically-generated audio files. Some audio files are synthesized synthetic tones, while others are processed excerpts from samples available from the FreeSound project. The complete collection of audio files is expanded and replaced on a regular basis, ensuring that a constant supply of fresh audio examples are always available.
Post-Ut takes its name from Ut, the first syllable of the medieval hymn "Ut queant laxis." Taking the first syllable of each of the first six half-verses of this hymn, Guido of Arezzo, in the 11th century, demonstrated the use of these syllables as pitch mnemonics. While Ut was later replaced with Do, the remaining syllables are still widely used in solfege (solfège or selfeggio): Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La. (A seventh syllable, Ti (or SI) was later added.) Post-Ut attempts to develop an ear training pedagogy that goes beyond that of traditional solfege and Western, notated music.
Post-Ut was created and designed by composer Christopher Ariza. The design of Post-Ut is informed by years of experience as both a student and teacher of Western concert music, ear-training, sound design and recording arts, and computer music. Post-Ut is offered as a free service.
Post-Ut was created and is maintained with free, open-source, software tools and or open-licensed audio content. Audio examples are algorithmically generated with athenaCL. These event structures are rendered with Csound; some audio examples use processed audio files from The Freesound Project. MP3 files are created with LAME. The integrated Flash-based player is provided by XSPF. The site and remaining system components are built with Python and a MySQL database.
Post-Ut employs processed (creatively transformed) sounds drawn from The Freesound Project. These sounds are used under the terms of the Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0 license, where the following links serve as attribution for the original source sounds.
Violoncello Pizzicato, Violoncello Bowed, Bamboo Flute, Bamboo Flute, Celtic Flute, Saxophone Solo, Saxophone Solo, Saxophone Solo, Saxophone Solo, Saxophone Solo, Snare Drum, Snare Drum, Saxophone Multiphonic, Saxophone Multiphonic, Saxophone Multiphonic, Saxophone Multiphonic, Saxophone Multiphonic, China Cymbal, China Cymbal, Crash Cymbal, Djembe, Djembe, China Cymbal, China Cymbal, Electric Bass, Electric Bass, Electric Bass, Finger Cymbals, Snare Roll, Splash Cymbal Bell, Splash Cymbal Bell, Drum Set, Drum Set, Drum Set, Drum Set Toms, High Hat, High Hat, Ride Cymbal Bell, Ride Cymbal Bell, Crash Cymbal, Drum Set, Drum Set, Saxophone Solo, Saxophone Solo, Saxophone Solo, Splash Cymbal, High Hat Cymbal, High Hat Cymbal, Sizzle Cymbal, Cymbal
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