 Hello everyone, please if you can hear us, please just write a message just to check that you can hear us so that we can get started Oh, we can so I thought yeah great. Okay, cool Very sorry about that delay. Thank you all very very much for waiting We just had a few technical difficulties and our side and as someone rightly commented We're doing the sound logo masterclass and obviously we wanted to make sure that the sound was working and it was all good to go So yeah, let's get straight into it because I'm conscious that we're running slightly behind So welcome everyone. I'm just clicking my clicker to the right slide my Clicker now doesn't want to work connection loss Sorry everyone. Okay. Here we go. So yeah, welcome everyone. Sorry about all of this We are here to do the masterclass in music production of sound logos And I'm sure you all know by now that next month we'll be launching We can make a Wikimedia's global sound logo contest, which we're really really looking forward to So as Wikimedians, we wanted to give you the first glimpse of the project and give you the essential information And the knowledge and skills that you would need to know to be able to create your own sound logo entry and to enter the contest And I meet the team so we are music And we are a global creative music agency founded just over 20 years ago And we deliver everything that a brand could need within the world of music voice and sound and one of those things is Sonic branding which you'll hear more about during this presentation and a huge part of sonic branding and a fundamental part of it are sound logos as Well, and so more personally, I'm Emma and I'm an accountant project manager in our London office And my conversations with the Wikimedia foundation started probably just over a year ago on this project And it's been really amazing to learn so much about the movement and all the amazing work that you do So it's been a real honor and privilege to be working on it And I'm really excited to be sharing our work some of our work with you today So I'll just pass over to Joe quickly so you can do a quick intro Thanks Emma I'm not sure if it's just me, but I'm getting quite a bit of feedback on the When you're speaking it's kind of doubling up so I'm not sure if there's anything we can do about that Yeah, it's the same for me. Actually. I haven't heard anyone else speak, but I'm getting the same issue Joe I'm not sure who can ask about that Yeah, just Hopefully the studio manager can join and help fix it. It's good to know the chat can hear us clearly It's slightly distracting To present when it's the audio is doubling up so hopefully we can Maybe we can just continue if it's okay for everyone else and we can just persevere Joe or a few I don't know on your settings on the left. There's different input and output. I don't know if you click Emma, I'm not sure I can hear you now. Are you still getting the feedback Joe? How's I can't hear you either Are you back? I was just wondering, um, yeah, if you could just I think there's a bit of feedback coming up When we all speak and then I couldn't hear Joe or Taz just then You still getting feedback Joe Oh, yeah, a little bit. It's very quiet and someone's just said they can't hear me speaking anymore Sorry Stella's just said it Joe if you can push through With echo that'd be great because I think it's coming through great on youtube and also in feedboot So if you could Shall we Joe can if you say something can be Okay, great. Well, if everyone can hear us, um Fine, then that's probably the main thing. Um, we're all doing individual slides So we could just go as is and not hear each other which is a bit of a shame But glad that you can all hear us. Um, let me just Message Joe and Taz um I can hear you now, Emma Okay, great Can you hear me? Yeah, yeah, awesome. Do you want to push on Joe? It doesn't seem to be an echo now. I think everything is yeah. Yeah, that's yeah Let's go ahead. Thanks for everyone's patience. Um, yeah, so I'm Joe. I'm a senior creative strategist I've been working in sonic branding. Um, and making sound logos for years and years now. Um, so yeah, it's good to be here Great. Thank you. Um, thanks everyone for waiting again. Um, yeah, let's get into the presentation and get started So Yes, so first thing we wanted to do is go through a bit of a basic audio terminology So give you some of the musical language of terms that we often use day to day and that become useful for you whilst entering the contest So the first thing we want to look at is track. So track is essentially a long form piece of music So it's anything from a one-minute pop song or it could be something much longer It could be a symphony or an opera Or also what we're going to be looking at today are sound logos Which are much much shorter and they're usually just between one and four seconds long Next we have keys. So major and mine you may have heard of these before They're fundamental when it comes to talking about music and music itself So we use major and minor keys for our chords scales notes and key signatures And I think for the purposes of this masterclass and for you to understand It is and recognize the difference between major and minor is to think about if you're listening to a piece of music And it sounds happy or bright and its emotion feels like that and it's probably in a major key And if something sounds a bit more sad or melancholy, it's often in a minor key And we've got two examples for you now of a major key and then a minor key Unfortunately, I couldn't hear those examples Please write in the comments if you could hear those examples. Hopefully you heard them They were working just before Oh, okay, great. Well, okay, perfect. Let's just carry on if you could hear them. That's the main thing Okay, great. So next up we have got tempo and speed So when we're thinking about music all pieces of music has a tempo And so Italian as I'm sure in Italian as I'm sure some of you know That is of course the word for time and we're talking about the pace and the speed of the piece of music Usually we measure this in beats per minute or bpm But often we also describe a piece of music as being either up tempo or down tempo So we've got two examples for you now one is a piece of music that's up tempo So it's faster in pace and one is down tempo. So it's a bit slower in pace. So we'll play those for you now slower, hopefully the last one finished and so Next up we have instruments and timbres. So Instruments are our tools that we need to be able to create music So it's anything from a piano an oud or even our voices our voices are fantastic instruments when it comes to creating music And also with instruments you have the difference between real instruments and synthesized instruments So when we're talking about real instruments, we're thinking of live instruments or acoustic instruments And if you're going to be creating music We'd quite often record a live musician playing that instrument and then use it within your composition or your piece of music And then also we have electronic instruments, which are synthesized instruments Also, we've got Bring from instruments we've got timbre as well and timbre is essentially the the characteristics of the sound So you could have two instruments playing exactly the same note On exactly the same for the exactly same length of time But because their timbre has a different feel or tone It sounds different. So that's for instance why you might choose one instrument over the other because of the different feel that it gives Um, I'm just checking you can all hear. Yep, everyone can still hear great good Um, just attacking that Joe and Taz can hear me. Sorry about this everyone um Okay, yeah, great. Um, okay, perfect. Um, I think For the purposes of making sure we can get through to the main bit of this This presentation I think I might push through these next few slides Just to make sure that Joe can get through the essential bit of why you're all here in the music production So, um, there is going to be a glossary that's sent around after this that we've already written that has these key terms on there So you won't miss out and we can send the examples as well. Um, but I'm just going to skip through them quickly I'll pass over to you Joe Okay, great. Thanks, Emma. Um, I hope everyone can hear me clearly. Um, so now we're going to talk about sound logos in particular So where does it all begin? Well sound logos have been around for Years and years and years, um originating back in the 1920s with wheaties Famous wheaties jingle Was used widely on the radio And really kick started, uh, the sort of jingle boom when people saw how effective it was Um, this continued up into about the sort of mid 1990s really for saturation points And that's when the the jingle kind of became a Cheesy um thing to use so brands kind of started to shy away from that But then what took over was technology. Um, you can see the Nokia classic phone there And the Nokia ringtone really became a big part of culture. Um, people realized that sound could be in your pocket Um and technology was a really good vessel for carrying sound and music. Um, and this is what we call The the audio and revolution really starting, um at this point So now we're in an audio driven world When you think about podcasts when you think about sound on platforms like tiktok or when you think about, uh In home devices like uh, there's amazon device here voice activation We are living in a sound on on world and that's why audio branding and sound logos are especially important. Um in this day and age We have a nice stat here, um about sound and how people react to it So people react to sound 17 faster than they react to visuals. Uh, this is from the university of gongan And yeah, it's a really insightful statistic to show you how powerful sound can be when it's used. Um in a branding application So why do we want to use a sound logo? Well sound operates directly on our subconscious So it's a really effective way to modulate emotions We react really emotionally to sound, you know, whether that's the sound of your mother's voice or, you know, the sound of Uh, a song we used to listen to you when you're a teenager Um, and you hear that again at any point in your life. There's a deep emotional connection created there Um, so yet the right sound logo will add significant emotional depth to how The wikimedia movement really is perceived So we have some examples of sound logos here Um, and really there are two schools of thoughts. Um, in a very simplistic way So firstly we have what we'd call a melodic logo. Um, this is a sound logo that contains a melody Something that you kind of replicate you could sing you could hum So let's have a listen to an example of a melodic sound logo now So you can hear clearly that melody there playing in that short form sound logo Alternatively, we have what we'd call an atonal logo and this is where the melody is removed and really we're relying on Kind of timbre and sound design elements to create the sound logo. So let's have a listen for that So there we go. There's two examples of what we could do with sound logos But obviously this is very very top line and there's a lot of detail you can go into One other part of this process process, which is really important is the idea of storytelling through the sound So why is storytelling important with this project? Well, what it means is it gives your sound logo a unique identity So we can translate the wikimedia movement's values into the sound by doing this And what this does is it helps make your sound logo more individual and have greater meaning You could have picked any of those logos that we just heard to represent the wikimedia movement But actually they have no relations to the wikimedia movement. There's no story there So we're asking why is that logo the one that we're going to use So we've got an example of a Concept really a story. We've we've created a fictional non-profit news organization called the optimist and the optimist share only good and positive news headlines through their app And their online publication So if you imagine this brand exists the brief for the optimist sound logo could be how to capture the sound of optimism And positivity and sound. So what does optimism and positivity sound like in music? Maybe it's the major scale as we heard earlier or maybe it's all bright sounds So there's a few different solutions that you could have to this brief If we go on to the next slide, we can see some of these so perhaps we could use a sound that Moves upwards in pitch or in volume. So some kind of rises up sort of suggesting that positive outlook Or perhaps it could be an angelic sound that also feels digital So the reason for that is we've got to remember that the optimist are an app. They're an online publication So the kind of uh juxtaposing an angelic human sound was something that maybe feels a bit more relevant So to where they live And then lastly an open free guitar strum in a major keys So a really simple way of distilling happiness and optimism in music there. So let's have a listen to these Here's the first example a rising sound moves upwards in pitch or volume So we get a simple sound there. What about the angelic sound that also feels digital? Let's have a listen to that So you can hear that angel there, but also this kind of digital sound underneath it And then lastly an open free guitar strum in a major key So that's all coming through clearly some just three simple examples of how to bring that brief for the optimist to life in music And this is similar to what we're going to be doing for the wikimedia movement of this project So now we have to look at music production and give you a little overview on that This is how we create the sounds that we're hearing This is it's really important to kind of get some knowledge on this Some of you might know some about this already. Some of you not So we're going to keep it very top line for this presentation So firstly, let's have a look at the tools that we can use to produce music Really on a computer There are a few different options that we're including in this presentation and these are all freely available options We have ableton live lights Audacity, which is an open source piece of software waveforms traction Pro Tools first and qbase le so these are all available for free to download and they have different kind of Styles really It's up to you which one you choose for this presentation. We're using ableton live lights It's something that we use our company a lot and it's a really good piece of software for getting really creative quite quickly with sound So moving on to our first step in the production process. We're going to talk about recording Recording is a vast complex subject But today we're going to distill it down to two really simple ideas. The first one is microphones And the second one is midi So microphones I'm sure a lot of you know what a microphone is or maybe you've used a microphone before If you use zoom or online meetings in any way, you definitely will abuse the microphone But this is how we translate acoustic sound in an environment into digital data essentially We can record what we're saying or what the hearing or an instrument and then that will be rendered in Our music production software of choice Then we also have midi midi is a Digital language essentially where we can program notation into our door our audio workstation And this can be played on different instruments You can select an instrument you like perhaps it's a piano Perhaps it's a kalimba and you can be really flexible with that information that you record So we've got two examples of these now the first one is microphones And this is a recording of me using ableton to simply record a finger switch. So let's have a look at that So there we are. That's me sat where I am now clicking my fingers into a microphone and recording it in ableton I now have that sound And the second example is me recording a simple white note scale in midi. So let's have a look at that So there we go that time the sound that's used as a piano But like I said, we could change that sound to anything you like the main thing is we've got that notation now And we can use that in many different really creative ways So now we're going to look at editing Um, there's again a big subject this but we're going to cut it down to these four areas Adjusting cutting copying and pasting. So, you know, we copy and paste all the time on computers Well, that's some word documents powerpoint presentations wherever it's the same with music and audio Um, so I think the best way to look at this is to look at an example of me doing some editing in ableton So if we can go to the next slide, you can have a look at that video and I can talk you through what's going on So here we are back in ableton What I'm going to do is I'm going to cut up my finger clicks that I recorded earlier So I'm just snapping your audio there Um, just at the start of those three clicks that I played in and what I'm going to do is I'm going to put these on the grid. So they're going to be in time They're going to be I'm going to drag them to a set tempo So they play as a pattern as a rhythmical pattern rather than a random pattern So you can see I'm moving them dragging them into place there I'm going to duplicate this last one and then I'm going to loop them and then we'll hear it So what was a random selection of clicks is now a very simple rhythm Um, and that's some kind of basic audio editing in in ableton Next up we have mixing Um mixing is how we start getting really creative with audio and how we start changing and transforming sounds that we have recorded Um five areas that we're looking at today are volume So how loud or quiet something is we're looking at eq which sounds for equalization Um, so this is how you sculpt sounds is how you remove or add frequencies to add more bass or add more more high end We have compression as well compression. Um is a tool which is essentially a way of automating volume over a period of time We have reverb which is how we give sounds a sense of space So you can make something sound like it's in a room or it's in a cathedral We can do that on a on a computer and then we have delay as well delay is the last piece And this is really like an echo essentially so a sound that repeats after you hear it So again, we have an example of these being used. Um back into ableton. Uh, let's have a look at what's going on So we have our clicks again, um that we snipped we snipped up just now So they're there. Um, but what I'm going to do is I'm going to eq some of the low end some of the bass out of these clicks So it's just a higher frequency sound So that's a higher frequency sound now. We've got rid of that bass I'm going to compress them so the volume is level over time Our rather than being as variable as it was Okay, now what I'm going to do I'm going to add some reverb. So I'm going to give it a sense of place I'm going to put it in like a hole So you can see that sort of has more of a hole and more of an acoustic environment around it And now you've got delay So you can see I'm giving a sound an echo there So what was a simple finger click has transformed into something with more interest Um and more of a story to tell essentially So now let's look at the wikimedia sound logo And and what we're doing uh with that So some of the objectives that we have for this project I don't know if you could skip on the slide that would be great Yep, so the objectives are to feature proof wikimedia for audio and new platforms like we saw earlier With amazon Alexa and things like that want to create this positive sentiment around the wikimedia movement Want to invite a global audience to engage with the wikimedia movement and its projects So what's the brief for this we saw our brief for our imaginary brand earlier But now we've got a real one for wikimedia So we want to create a sound logo it should be between one and four seconds in length Format wise we're looking for delivery of a WAV file an mp3 file or an ogg We'd like to use original sounds or the clear samples that have been provided for you The logo should contain multiple layers textures and sounds to create some kind of some story and to make kind of interesting The sound should also be global and not pertain to one particular culture or style because we want to represent the wikimedia movement So we want to represent something that feels sort of culturally and generally agnostic And we don't want to pertain to one place more than other want to be global in how we represent this So likewise for our pretend brief we have some creative prompts for the wikimedia sonic sonic logo So why we should do is imagine the sound of connections forming of question and answer of trusted information Free and open knowledge or knowledge growing and what I'd like to do is I'd like you to pick one of these to start with So think about how we could represent one of these ideas in the sound Just in the same way that we represent positivity with a big bright guitar strum How might we represent some of these ideas in sound? So we've got some examples. Let's have a listen to what connections forming could potentially sound like So an interesting sound there lots of different layers It kind of has two parts, but it also has these sort of percussive elements that to me feel like they're kind of Talking or forming or you know becoming something that's bigger than just their individual parts Next up we have question and answer. So let's have a listen to that So a logo there really of two parts this You know, you can get the sense of this question being asked and then the sound resolving and answering that question And lastly we have trusted information. So let's see what that sounds like So warm grounded sound there nothing to kind of out the box or too surprising. It feels very kind of calm Very trusting and very pure as well So that's just some examples of what these could be. Obviously, we want to look at some tonal prompts too So how the logo should feel when you're thinking about actually creating the sounds and the timbres So we want it to be human inspired smart and warm as a starter And we want to make sure we avoid things that feel too technological or cold or synthetic or aggressive You know, we want to make sure we're sticking on that human kind of real sound So we've got some examples of creating some of these logos now The first one we're going to look at is this idea of knowledge growing So for this we're going to go back into ableton and I'm going to make a very quick logo Around this idea of knowledge growing. So let's have a look So what I'm going to do is I'm going to drag in my my finger snaps again. They're being reused And I'm going to line these up on the grid like we did in the editing sequence And just to make sure they're in time with one another So as you can see I'm cutting out the audio deleting it and then duplicating So three very very faint finger clicks Um, but I want them to be slower than that. So I'm going to add some more space between them And I'm going to automate the volume so they gradually get louder over time So there you get in here Gradually getting louder. I'm going to add some midi in here. So add a melodic tone So a little jojo bell there instrument I'm using and I'm going to do is with this midi notes that I've recorded I'm going to line it up with those finger snaps So they'll be playing at the same time as one another kind of add another layer to that sound So that jojo goes playing in time now, which is great And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to add a human layer So I've got this kind of chatter sample that I've found Of people kind of talking in a room They turn the volume up on that slightly and I'm going to put that underneath everything I'm going to also automate the volume on that to rise It's a little bit too quiet for me though that chatter sample. I can't really hear it So I'm going to turn the volume up a bit more So I hope you can hear that kind of just underneath there Um, and I believe that's it for for that logo. Um, we can hear it on the next slide, um in full Sorry, just picking up the connection again There we are. Um, just a question. Do we want to Try and use some time for questions or should I continue with the the next example Taz? Um, do you think? Can you hear me now? Yes, yes, let's go with the next example for sure Great, okay So we've got one more example for you of a logo being created And this is the idea of connections forming So let's go in and see what we can do with this So back into Ableton and I've got the sample that's from the the library that's been provided to you It's a sound on a kitchen clock But the first thing I'm going to do is record some million. So I've recorded kind of like a An african instrument there and I've played a chord in on On Ableton there and what I've done is I've used an arpeggiator to kind of make them And though it's run through rather than have solid chord being played I'm going to do is just align that midi up so it comes in at the right time Just clean that clip up there And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to automate a parameter on the instrument that makes it more bright Over time. So last time we did volume this time we're going to make it sound brighter as it plays through So I'm just automating that parameter now. You can see there So you can see that that sounds just growing and opening up as we move through now. I'm taking my sample At the kitchen clock, but what I want to do is I want to speed it up slightly So the the second hands tick more quickly. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to warp this sample on Ableton Which is a slightly advanced technique right speed it up And now I'm going to lay that Again, that's a little bit quiet for me. So I'm going to turn it up in volume so I can hear it I'm also going to add some reverb So there we go. That's kind of coming together a little bit now But what I also want to do is automate the volume on that and Shelf out some of that low end to remove some of the bass from the sound Okay, and I'm also going to add a compressor to level out the volume of the clips Okay, so we're going to starting to come together again now But I want to make some more movement on our on our african sound there So I'm going to add a filter that sweeps over the frequencies As we play through the sound to give us a more movement So you can hear it's opening up a little bit there and we've created more of a An in-depth logo that has more layers. I know there's a little bit more complex So let's have a listen to that logo in full So clearly they were both made very quickly So you can spend so much more time on them than I have there But it does give you a good idea of, you know, how you make these how you start to build Music using using different techniques and different ways of recording as well So I believe that means we've come to the end of the presentation and we've got some time for questions If there are any Yeah, please feel free to just write them in the comments and thank you again all for for sticking around Sorry about those technical difficulties we had at the beginning, but yeah We've got a few more minutes just to answer any questions you've got And I also think Taz was updating some useful info about where you can find more about the contest on the chat So hopefully you've seen all of that Yeah, I've put some info in the chat I just want to say thanks very much to Emma and Joe for a great presentation Presentation will be available on commons Soon after Wikimania so everyone everyone can review And pause at their leisure and have a go at making some great cell logos just some information for everyone In case they didn't see the chat or on youtube They weren't able to either just to let everyone know The sound logo contest will launch on september the 13th And in the meantime, you should definitely familiarize yourself with the contest page That link is in the chat Also, we have five community liaisons that are working with the sound logo project team You can get hold of them and the sound logo project team at sound logo one word At wikimedia.org So we Myself and my three colleagues on the project team Mototo Mardad and Lena will be checking out that email address And we'll be forwarding on to the liaisons as well There's also a great collaboration space called the sound lab Where you'll be able to kind of get creative share thoughts And work with other Wikimedians as well If you have a concept and you're not really sure how to create it or develop it We'll be offering workshops Soon after wikimedia as well a bit closer to the contest So feel free to show your thoughts via that email That I gave you sound logo at wikimedia.com and lastly we're looking for Volunteers to join our screening team. So the screening team will be reviewing sound logo submissions as they come in. So they'll be mostly reviewing them for technical Factors like length and file type file size length vandalism things like that If you're interested, we'd love to hear from you. Please Get hold of us at the email sound logo at wikimedia.org to join the screening team as well Just checking if we've got any questions I'll hand back to Emma and Joe Just to see if there's any questions if not Yep, we do have a question from Ludovic who said Already asked in q&a but in case this doesn't get across how much uniqueness and originality Do we need for a sound logo in sort of legal and practical terms? So As part of the contest you can create sound logos Either using completely original sounds or you've also got the copyright free samples that are available to you in the sound bank So We obviously understand that within music you're not going to know every single piece of music in the entire world But you need to either make sure that any sample you're using is completely copyright free Or to very much the best of your knowledge. It isn't The same or very similar to something that you already know that exists So yeah, we encourage quite unique and original concepts or not concepts original ideas for those sound logos Hopefully that helps answer your question But there'll be more about it on the sort of FAQ sections of the contest platform as well Um, where can I get the tools to make the sound logos? So the list of Free production platforms that we shared today Will be I think if you google them or search them online You'll be able to find them very easily and they are all free to use But you are welcome to use any other music platform production platform that you know of If you prefer to do that then then go for it And that list will be available on the contest platform as well Is there any other questions I don't Think I can see any other questions. Probably got one more minute if anyone has any anything else I think that's probably it then and we are just about out of time. So yeah, thank you everyone Thanks so much for for sticking around to the end of this Masterclass hope you found it useful And yeah, we're really looking forward to this contest and looking forward to hearing your submissions and hopefully meeting you again Throughout the process and whether it's in the workshops or otherwise But yeah, thank you very much and thanks Taz and the sound logo team and and yes everyone and thanks Joe Thanks everyone Thanks Emma. Thanks Joe take care everyone