Posts

Showing posts from October, 2017

10.28.17 | Week 9. Blog Debrief

Image
I don't think I'm going to be using it in the end, but to get some louder samples on the minimal hardware I have I was using toneAC for a little bit to get about double the maximum volume output. Connor Nishijima's got a volume level library that plays nice with his waveform synthesizer library for Arduino so I'm probably going to be using that. toneAC works by adjusting the waveform itself so you end up getting screwy output at lower volumes because they start sounding closer to saw waves, while the Nishijima library alternates between tone and ultrasonic frequencies so it sounds like traditional modification of volume. To try and get the ball rolling I went ahead and made good on my concept of taking a more programmatic / formulaic approach for producing frequencies based on traditional music theory, more specifically the chromatic scale. Most libraries I've seen online break up each and every key (which gives you anywhere from like 70-100 different notes, depe

10.21.17 | Week 8. Blog Debrief

This week I took some time refining the mechanics of the music process. I think it's going to play out something like this: - There's 4 voices or tracks per the entire song. The first three are tonal, which could be broken up into something like lead, chorus, and bass, or all three could be used for polyphony to emulate hitting multiple tones on a single instrument, like guitar chords or harmony with a pipe organ. The fourth channel is used for percussion. - The three melodic tracks are on a single "buffer" while the percussion is on its own, although the two are going to play in lockstep to avoid desyncing. What this means is that the melodies can be of a different length than the percussion, but due to how the clips are built at specified lengths, they won't ever fall out of sync. - For example, "jazz_1" might be 1 measure long, and could be played in tandem with any drum clip, like "dnb_1", "dnb_2", "amenbreak", &qu

10.14.17 | Week 7. Blog Debrief

Note: class was canceled Monday, 9 Oct. due to Hurricane Nate. My parts arrived, so I started looking into existing waveform / FM synthesis libraries for Arduino to make sure I could produce sounds to begin with. Ultimately, I decided on using Connor Nishijima's "Arduino-Synth Volume2 Library" because I was trying to make sure I could achieve a few specific benchmarks using minimal hardware (in this case literally just a speaker and a couple of wires): - Produce different waveforms (square, triangle, saw, etc.) - Produce multiple voices concurrently for polyphony or being able to use multiple "tracks" (evident in the lead and percussion). - Make sure I could get sound at all. It's not the loudest thing in the world, but I have a video demonstrating the test here:  link While the library for synthesis is unaltered, the composition / melody in this case is custom. The "lead" is composed of 3 separate sine synths (to test polyphony), and th

10.07.17 | Week 6. Blog Debrief

To start, I ordered some hardware: - 2pk of 1.5" speakers - 4x4 matrix array keypad - 5pk of ultrasonic sensors - color recognition sensor - pulse sensor - 4-line LCD display I didn't get much done this week because my orders got delayed into the following week.