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 then a 4th channel for percussion. Percussion composition at low resolutions is a fascinating subject in general, and a lot of inspiration for getting it to work effectively in this project lends itself to similar achievements done via trackers in the culture of "demoscene", which generally just refers to a subculture that involved pushing hardware to its limits. In this case, all parts of the percussion use the same waveform (percussion is generally done via a noise wave), with different parts of a drum emulated using different pitches and tone lengths. Kicks are mid length and low, snares are long and mid-tone, while hi-hats are very short and high-pitched.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

12.02.17 | Week 14. Blog Debrief

Starting this week, I laid out my endgame plans for the project: - The Arduino will use three sensors: colored light, pulse, and accelerometer. - Pulse (or if none is detected, accelerometer) will both adjust the tempo and offset the key (up to 1 octave / 12 semitones in either direction) based on speed or heart rate. - As for actual compositions, there are four or five "layers" to go through, the main three of which were cannibalized from an old composition I wrote in Greg's class back in Fall 2016. The three musical tracks are a fairly barebones variant (uniform note times, volatile instrument changes), a jazzy version with frequent smaller notes splitting up the bigger ones at 90bpm as well as having lengthy instrument "solos", and a drum and bass variant at 192bpm that rapidly cycles through different instruments in a demoscene sort of fashion. - In the ambient state, the Arduino alternates between whistling / theremin tunes and chirpy sounds. - Af...
Read more

09.02.17 | Week 1. Blog Debrief

With the bulk of the homework out of the way since this course is a repeat, I don't have as much to go over as I would otherwise, although I did make a post documenting the Throwie lab. The project proposal (still a few weeks out) I'm considering most strongly at this point is doing something with software-based FM synthesis, but using physical hardware for the input and output (ex. a MIDI keyboard and the sounds returned), likely using an Arduino as a mediator. Software is generally my proficiency over hardware, and software-based synthesis is something I have a (tangential) familiarity with that would serve as a jumping-off point. More specifically, I feel like it would give me a frame of reference that would allow me to establish some deadlines and content quantities while still being able to realistically meet them by the end of the semester compared to something less familiar or more ambitious. Some elements of the project would also be an extrapolation of the "no...
Read more

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", ...
Read more