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Assignment 1:
Simple Pd patch that realizes Alvin Lucier's piece "I am sitting in a room".
     lucier2.pd
I recorded myself reading the text with a home-made mic from 220A in my dorm room. Here is the original file
     katia_original.wav
As I replayed and recorded this file again and again I noticed a reinforcement of bass sounds from my subwoofer,
and a growing high frequency pitch that probably resulted from feedback in my mic-speaker system.
     katia8.wav
     katia15.wav
     katia20.wav
     katia30.wav

These pitches overwhelmed my speech in volume but the words could be understood for much longer than in a reverberant room like the ballroom because my room is cluttered with bookshelves, clothes, curtains, etc. that absorb sound and diminish reflections.

Assignment 2:
I wrote a patch that takes in a mic signal, detects what pitch is being sung or played, and then resynthesizes that pitch.
Right now the resynthesis is an oscillator, but any patch could be built and plugged in. I will expand this in my final project.
     variations.pd

Final Project
To compose a piece of electronic music that looks at the history of CCRMA composers and inventors with regard to vocal music and vocal synthesis.

The pd patch vocal_main.pd has several components. In the module fm_voice, I take have a mic input going to the fiddle~ object which gives information about pitch and amplitude. I use the number box marked "calibrate here" as a threshold volume for the mic input. Only impulses above it will be read as the starts of notes. The FM synthesis uses the midi note of the input as the carrier frequency; the modulation freq. and index can be modified freely to produce vibrato and various inharmonic and harmonic tones for the synthetic voice.


Where it's marked "change length of synth note" you can choose to have a long or a short note synthesized. Transposition is available on the left up to 2 octaves above or below the midi note of the mic input. At the bottom are features for the recording and playing back of audio clips. Note that only the synthetic voice is recorded. This patch can be used live by a singer or a synth part can be recorded and played back.

The second module, spatial, implements an 8 channel spatializer with a delay line. There are several preset delay times and a number box to get any other time. The three check boxes represent three different spatialization patterns: clockwise, counterclockwise, and random. In addition to spatializing the synthetic voice, the spatializer can read in and playback samples using the soundfiler object and an array.
 

Future Work
Knoll Lobby - Stereo Impulse Response, which is loaded in the array above and seen in detail below, is something I recorded this quarter and hope to use in a reverb patch that uses convolution. Download and listen to the impulse response: knoll_lobby_imp2.aif