WRITTEN BY ZANNE HANNA
OFFICE MANAGER, BOOM BOX POST

When I hear telemetry, I’m reminded of the music of twentieth century Austrian composer, Arnold Schoenberg. He used a style called Serialism, which took a mathematical approach to developing melodies and rhythms and focused on atonality. He developed a technique called the tone row, which takes the twelve chromatic notes of a scale, and places them in a random sequence. The sequence is then manipulated by flipping it backwards and turning it upside-down. This develops into a chaotic composition with a melody that is difficult to follow, much like a typical telemetry loop in a sound library.

I decided to challenge myself to create my own telemetry using the methods of the tone row that I learned in school. To make it more challenging, I used only stock plugins from ProTools AudioSuite. This way, I could maintain the methodical nature of the music style in my own designing.

To start, I highlighted four frames in a blank audio track in ProTools, and I opened the Signal Generator from the Audio Suite drop-down menu. I rendered a 1000Hz square wave because the odd harmonics of the square wave gave me a strong basis for a sci-fi technology sound, reminiscent of a telephone beep.

sig generator.png

Next, I made twelve duplicate tracks of the signal to represent the twelve tones, and I spaced out the clips evenly, each overlapping by one frame for a mono-rhythmic effect. To start my tone row, I typed the numbers 1-12 in random order in a blank document. This is what I came up with for my prime row:
5, 8, 3, 10, 2, 4, 6, 9, 11, 12, 7, 1

These numbers translated to the semitones I assigned to my twelve square wave clips using Pitch II in AudioSuite. I selected my first clip, pitched it up by five semitones, and rendered the clip. Then I selected the second clip, pitched it up by eight semitones, and rendered. I did this process for all twelve of my “notes” to follow the semitones I randomly listed above and create my prime row.

pitch.png


The next part of the tone row is to repeat the notes backwards to make the retrograde row. For this part, all I did was copy and paste each clip in an ascending stair-stepping order along the same tracks. My entire session looked like a capital V, and the clips were mirroring each other. For reference, the semitone values of my retrograde sequence looked like this:
1, 7, 12, 11, 9, 6, 4, 2, 10, 3, 8, 5

The following part of the tone row is to invert the sequence. To achieve this, I found the distance between two notes, and replicated that distance in the opposite direction. For example, the difference between my first note at semitone 5 and my second note at semitone 8 was -3 semitones. So in ProTools, I copied and pasted the first note onto the second note’s track. I opened Pitch II again with the second note selected, and I set the semitone to -3, and rendered the clip. Then, I copied the clip I just made onto the track below it, and followed the same process with my next equation.

My inversion calculations looked like this:
-3, -5, +7, -8, +2, +2, +3, +2, +1, -5, -6

The final part of the tone row is to create a “retrograde inversion” of the last sequence. To start this sequence, I copied and pasted the first note of my retrograde sequence, which was semitone 1. When I inverted this sequence, I referenced the equations from my retrograde line. So, for my first inversion, the difference between semitone 1 and semitone 7 was 6. In ProTools, I copied and pasted the clip of semitone 1 onto the track above it, opened Pitch II, added 6 semitones, and rendered that clip. This was then the same process as the inversion, just following these new calculations:
+6, +5, -1, -2, -3, -2, -2, +8, -7, +5, +3

At this point, my session looked like a capital W, which I looped and joined for the next part of the process, like this:

Screen Shot 2021-09-23 at 5.23.12 PM.png

The square wave tone row sounded like this:

Once I completed my tone row, I was ready to move on to the telemetric design of the project. I used the AudioSuite Sci-Fi plugin to process the square waves two different ways. For the first part of the processing, I used the Sci-Fi plugin’s ring modulation via the Sample and Hold method, and I set the modulating frequency to around 3000 Hz. This gave me a nicely spaced out, randomized beeping sound that developed the foundation of the telemetry.

For the second part of the processing, I created a grittier, dirtier modulation with FM synthesis in the Sci-Fi plugin, and I set the modulating oscillator to around 300 Hz. I further processed that with Mod Delay III, created a “chorus” effect at 15 ms and, and I used the built-in LFO to modulate the delay. This created more of a chaotic and alarming sound.

sci fi 1.png

Finally, after writing out my perfect tone row and playing around with the Sci-Fi plugin, I combined my processed tracks to create this design:

While I had fun with this challenge, I can’t say that I would ever do it again. Maintaining the methodical integrity of the musical style led to an over-complicated design process. Still, I can’t help but think that The Second Viennese School is smiling down on me, happy to see this obscure invention is still in use today.


WHAT ARE FUN WAYS THAT YOU CHALLENGE YOURSELF WHEN SOUND DESIGNING? SHARE IN THE COMMENTS BELOW!

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