6 minute read

Deadline

Due at the start of Week 7: 13 Oct.

Prerequisites

Before beginning this assignment, make sure you’ve:

  1. downloaded and installed IRIN from our Resources page;
  2. listened to the micromontage audio excerpts on our Schedule page; and
  3. collected a library of audio samples for exploration (during in Week 4). These can be sounds you downloaded that interest you, but even better is to combine them with sounds you record (using our high quality condensor mics and field recorders).

You’ll have 2 weeks to complete this assignment. It’s expected that you use this time to edit your DAW session, since you’ll be using many small edits and transformations of your material. Therefore, please be sure to spend the week prior collecting sounds to get yourself started.

Introduction

Micromontage is a technique associated with composers such as Horacio Vaggione and Bernard Parmegiani, where music is constructed from very small sound fragments (tens to hundreds of milliseconds). The pieces of sound are arranged traditionally using analog reel tape and splicing techniques, but later evolving through digital audio workstations (DAWs) such as ProTools and Reaper. Through precise editing and layering, these extremely short fragments create dense textures, discontinuities, and emergent sonic forms.

For this assignment, compose a short 2–3 minute micromontage piece in IRIN, optionally in combination with Reaper for additional editing or mixing (see description below). Work with IRIN to explore how microsounds (i.e., very short audio samples) can be selected, transformed, and assembled into coherent musical gestures and larger structures. This project emphasizes critical listening, experimentation, and detailed construction at the micro-time scale. Unlike Reaper, IRIN allows you to more easily visaualize and manipulate sound segments at a microscopic level.

Learning Objectives

By completing this assignment, students will be able to:

  1. Identify and manipulate audio at the microsample level using IRIN.
  2. Construct short montage-based passages from a library of small sound units.
  3. Experiment with density, discontinuity, and repetition as structural parameters.
  4. Integrate IRIN output into Reaper for further editing or spatialization (optional).
  5. Evaluate how different micro-gestures combine to form larger perceptual units.

Duration of Sound Segments

In micromontage, individual sound segments range from tens to several hundreds of milliseconds in length, but sounds typically are less than one second:

  • 20–50 ms: shortest fragments, near the perceptual threshold of pitch/noise
  • 100–250 ms: very short, perceived as distinct sonic impulses
  • 300-800 ms: less typical, but still short enough to function as “micro-objects” rather than full phrases

Micromontage Technique

In micromontage, longer sounds and gestures are made by concatenating shorter ones; that is, by juxtaposing shorter sounds, or placing them side by side and crossfading them, or in layers (i.e., vertical tracks in your DAW session) which overlap slightly in time, say, by a few miliseconds, to “connect” shorter segments and to make longer sound events. Think of a chain, where each link in the chain, connected on either side, creates the larger structure.

Occasionally, repeating the same short segment, over and over again, create the impression of one longer sound object. Finding novel ways of doing this to create musical phrases is where all the fun is in micromontage.

It’s particurly revealing to take the smallest sounds you find, which typically can’t be heard on their own as sound (e.g., about 10 ms), and concatenate them to produce longer sounds that are audible. Use your short audio segments to make gestures of sounds that don’t normally appear together in nature, which “connect” into some new gesture of your own creation. Create clusters of tiny sonic particles. Create clouds of miniscule sonic components. Before you know it, you’ll have something that sounds quite musical going on in your DAW. Explore the endless possibilities!

Watch Before You Begin

Study this playlist of IRIN video tutorials to familiarize yourself with the interface and workflow, We’ll also talk about it in class during the week:

Assignment Instructions

Step 1: Source Material

  • Do this part a week before we assign this project: Prepare a short library of sounds (anywhere from 8–12+ recordings, depending on how long they are). Put your sounds into a new folder on your computer that you’ll access later. Sounds can include combinations of the following:
    • Voice fragments
    • Instrumental tones or noises
    • Environmental recordings (field recordings, mechanical sounds, sound effects, etc.)
    • Your own recordings made in our studio, using our field recorders, etc.
    • Sounds downloaded from the free online libraries listed on our Resources page
  • Each source should ideally be 5–20 seconds long. Keep them diverse to maximize your sonic pallette: In other words, don’t create a library with only variations of the same sound (e.g., a library of only piano and violin samples). Collect things that seem diametrically opposed to one another. This will greatly enrich what you have to work with, compositionally.

Step 2: Import into IRIN

  • Launch IRIN and create a new project.
  • Import your chosen sounds into the workspace.
  • Explore basic transformations: trimming, slicing into micro-units, layering, looping, and applying simple filters and envelopes to “shape” the small “grains” of sound.

Step 3: Micromontage Construction

  • To help you achieve variety, you can use the following plan to create at least 3 contrasting sections in your 2–3 minute piece. If you have another approach you’d like to use, go with that, but here is a simple 3-section plan to get you started:
    • Texture A: dense layering of many short fragments.
    • Texture B: sparse montage with sudden, abrupt silences or discontinuities.
    • Texture C: a rhythmic or patterned use of fragments.
  • Pay attention to duration (tiny vs. longer fragments), density (few vs. many events concentrated within a single second), and spectral variety (how many low or high frequencies does your cluster of sounds produce?).

Step 4: Export from IRIN

  • Render your micromontage to a stereo audio file.
  • If desired, import this file into Reaper for additional editing, EQ, spatialization, reverb, or combination with Reaper’s built-in samplers that we looked at previously.
  • To be sure, we did not speak in detail about EQ, spatialization, or reverb yet. Don’t feel pressure to use this if you don’t have time; we’ll get there in class together. But you can use them if you want to.
  • Save your session and final audio in a single project folder.

Step 5: Submission

  • Export your final mix as a stereo WAV file (48 kHz / 24-bit).
  • Ensure that all your files are collected into 1 project folder.
  • Filename: Lastname_Firstname_Micromontage.wav. Include this in your project folder.
  • Make a .zip archive of your folder with everything in it.
  • Submit your IRIN project folder that contains your .wav file via Lyceum or cloud link (WeTransfer, Google Drive, etc.).

Evaluation Criteria

  • Completeness (20%) — 2–3 minute piece; minimum 8–12 sources used and as many tracks as you need in your DAW to create textures of overlapping and juxtaposed microsounds; contrasting montage sections or global form of your own choosing.
  • Technical Execution (20%) — Proper use of IRIN tools; clean exports; correct file formats.
  • Creativity (20%) — Inventive use of microsamples; imaginative transformations.
  • Structure & Form (20%) — Piece shows contrasts, development, and coherent design.
  • Critical Listening (20%) — Attention to sonic detail; effective balance of density, silence, texture.