For this assignment I decided to make a voice changer, I found a tutorial online for a robot voice, so I started there then I explored the [gizmo] object and added speed and pitch shifter. Here’s the gist, if you have time, record your voice in and play around!
https://gist.github.com/alexesreed/0d02756669b748476983e9fff502652d.js
For funsies you can listen to Trevor Noah do a set as a speedy robot.
For my first project, I want to create an audio controlled lighting system that uses delay, fft and data smoothing techniques to transform audio signal, and presents the sound pattern via multiple ways. Here are 2 ideas of how I might visualize the audio:
I am interested in how 3D meshes can be incorporated into Max using audio as a generative controller. I have been recently working on 3D modeling and visualization using Blender, and seeing if/how I can attach a mesh to data points that can be controlled by various audio signals would be the main goal of this project. This is primarily an audiovisual exploration, and I plan to use it with my next musical performances that include electric guitar, voice, samples, and miscellaneous noises and ambient textures.
I have always wanted to be able to control the way music sounds just through hand gestures. I hope to use a Kinect camera, along with max to produce an effect similar to what an orchestral conductor does during concerts.
Similar to my project in Experimental Sound Synthesis, I want to work on making rave visuals. Now having a better understanding of jitter and video processing, I think I can make even more interesting visual patterns. I also want to make these visuals responsive to a sound input similar to our FFT in class examples instead of relying on MIDI clock data. Also, instead of taking videos and altering their playback like I did in the last project, for this project I want to do more generative original visual patterns.
I am taking an arduino class and I am really into the temperature/pressure sensors. For project one, I would love to link up max and arduino to see some sort of artistic representation of pressure/temperature to eventually come to a conclusion about the beauty of being able to physically touch somebody, the art of a hug if you will.
I decided to use one of my favorite songs – We No Speak Americano (by Yolanda), as my original signal. In addition to convolution, I also periodically varied the amplitude of the convolved signal which added an interesting “twisted” effect to the resulting signal.
The original version of the song sounds like this:
(you could also hear this on youtube)
The first IR I used was a recording of the popping of the balloon in the CFA hallway, which sounded like this:
After convolving my first IR with my original signal, the resulting music sounded like it was coming from a distance or getting reverberated in a large room:
The second IR was a recording of the popping of the balloon near the stairwell in Baker Hall:
The convolution of Papa Americano with IR2 was less muffled since the ‘pop’ of the balloon was more defined and the sound was contained within a short span of time:
For my third IR, I recorded myself clapping twice- the first clap being louder then the second one:
When I convolved my original signal with the third IR, it produced an effect of an echo because I was essentially convolving my signal with two claps (impulses) at different times:
My fourth IR was created by extracting a piano piece from another song in my playlist- a mashup created by Conor Maynard:
On convolving this piano piece with my song, I got an abstract sound that was pleasing to the ear:
Lastly, for fun, I decided to convolve a convolved signal with my original signal. So, I decided to use the signal which was produced by convolving my original song with my claps, as my IR. The end product was surprisingly good:
Below is my Max code:
For my Project 1, I am thinking of creating a patch that could detect the different audio effects from an audio file (reverb, delay, high/low frequencies etc) and would trigger the proportional amount of effects visually, manipulating a video input. If I have the ability, I would also like to include other features such as generating certain patterns across the video also being dependent on the audio changes.
An inspiration source I am having for this project is as follows:
This is a lot more advanced than what I’m hoping to achieve, but definitely includes certain artistic styles that I’d like to imitate in my project as well.
For this assignment I took a midi mapping of the Gravity Falls theme song and ran it through a electric piano instrument in Ableton to create a totally reverb-less audio track. I think fed it through the convolution reverb with a IR taken from my bedroom, an IR taken from popping a balloon in my backpack while recording from the outside, a church bell, and an accordion. I then took each of these tracks and cross-faded between them to create a piece. The IRs and individual tracks can be downloaded here.
For my assignment 3, I convolved a series of impulse recordings with the quintessential audio clip of Dobby (the house elf from the Harry Potter series) being freed from his master (which I obtained a twenty second clip of from SoundBoard.com).
Original Audio Clip (Dobby is Free):
My two acoustic space IR recordings were taken by recording the audio of a balloon popping (with its accompanying reverb). The locations I chose to record were the women’s bathroom in the basement of Baker hall and the overlook present on the second floor of Baker Hall.
IR from Women’s Bathroom in Baker Basement:
Convolution of Dobby and Women’s Bathroom IR:
IR from Overlook in Baker:
Convolution of Dobby and Overlook in Baker:
I then explored a little bit of what the Dobby recording would sound like when convolved with common soundtrack noises that might be present in a bad movie. Specifically, I chose gurgling water, seagulls cawing, applause, and crickets soundtracks that I downloaded from SoundBible.com.
Gurgling Water IR:
Convolution of Dobby and Gurgling Water:
Seagulls IR:
Convolution of Dobby and Seagulls:
Applause IR:
Convolution of Dobby and Applause:
Crickets IR:
Convolution of Dobby and Crickets:
After making these samples, I started exploring some of the built-in Max examples and ran into one named “convolution workshop.” A bit curious about what it would do, I merged our original convolution reverb patch this patch. Specifically, I pushed the “Dobby is free” audio and the “applause” IR through the original convolution and then pushed the result into a source filter convolution with the “Dobby is free” audio again. The result sounds significantly more noisey than the previous results.
Further convoluted Dobby and Applause:
The final Max patched used to create the last audio piece can be found here: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/37367ee3fca07b4a057610ee7ff6630d