You can try to create a structured sound...


Or just see what your drawings sound like!


You have too much time on your hands

sndDraw

by Ben Olson

sndDraw is a framework for user interaction with ChucK built using OSC, c & openGL. The user draws animated "streams" that define parameters in the sound, such as frequency, reverb, panning, filter levels, playback rate, etc.
sndDraw is my final project for MUSIC220A.

Requirements

sndDraw requires some form of openGL, so unless you are using a computer from 1994 you should be OK. However, sndDraw has only been built in Windows; there is a link to the source at the bottom of the page & you should be able to build a linux or mac version using it.

Setup

Run sndDrawServer.ck on MiniAudicle. Open sndDraw.exe. As long as server port 7000 is open, it should work.

Usage

Editor Window

The editor window is a small sketchboard on which the user draws their streams. To start, select stream [1-8] by pressing the 1-8 keys on the keyboard. Then drag the mouse around to create a stream. A bar at the bottom the same color as your stream will show you how long your stream is; once it gets to the end you cannot extend it any further. Press backspace or click while holding Shift to reset the stream.

Play Mode

Press the space key to initiate your animation. The current positions of the shiny things will modify parameters of the sound, hopefully creating awesome new sounds that no one has ever heard before. You can go in and edit the non-OSC parts of the ChucK script (they are fairly modular) to experiment further. Basically, there are 8 callback functions for handling each stream, which you can define to do whatever you want. The example script uses the first three streams as SinOscs whose frequency changes along the y-axis and pan to the left or right along the x-axis. The next two are SndBufs which play the sample whenever their position is below a certain point, their playback rate changes with the x-axis. The last three are reverb, lowpass and highpass filters for streams 1 and 4.

Download:

Download sndDraw (windows executable, .ck file to run in ChucK)
Download sndDraw windows source
The code requires the use of the glut and oscpack libraries. I built the executable in Visual Studio 2005