dylanr@ccrma.stanford.edu
For this assignment, I started out by listening to the nature sound track in Audacity. I wrote down sections which had interesting sounds and progressions and used them to sketch a simple score for the recording. The three parts which I chose to emulate consisted of some loud birdsong over the breeze, some deeper throated bird calls (ducks maybe?), and an insect (a bee?) buzzing close to the mic at the end of the recording.
I then tried to emulate these sounds and their progression using computer generated sounds and modified recordings. For the songbirds, I recorded some friends chanting melodically and changed the reverb and added a heavy echo effect. I then used Chuck to add some computer generated sound (the Songbirds file above) which resembled the background breeze. The duck calls were made by running a short harp piece through the Duck Calls script above, which produced some throaty, deeper sounds. I used a Clarinet and shifted through deep frequencies according to the FFT value of the harp playing. The Clarinet's forcefulness was also modulated by the harp's FFT. Lastly, for the bee sounds, I ran a different script over the harp music with piano accompaniment. The effect was a more frenetic, changing noise which I think emulates a bee's flight reasonably well. To tie these disparate elements together, I recorded a simple drum rhythm as a unifying tempo and added some FFT modulation to it. The final product is a short piece which is obviously computer based yet intrinsically resembles the nature sounds which inspired it.