Homework 1

Description

This piece was generated from the dataset Total electricity consumption in US from 1920 to 1970. I was hoping to find some dataset that has an increasing trend to reflect my frustration recently.

Files

• Source Code
• Original Data
• .wav file

Questions

1. Why are the values for gain squared?

   For each frequency, loudness is measured in log scale (dB), which fits human perception of loudness. Having a squared gain will make the amplitude change sound more natural. It increases faster at higher gain, which is closer to log scale compared to linear scale.

2. Why use MIDI keynums for the freq values? What happens if they're mapped linearly, instead?

   Human perception of pitch is also lorgarithmic, therefore frequency changes logarithmically across octaves. MIDI keynums give us a linear scale of pitches, just like a keyboard.

   If they are mapped linearly, when frequency goes up, we will feel that the increment of pitch is getting smaller.

3. What happens if the 100 ms update rate is increased or decreased significantly?

   Increasing the update rate will make the sound play faster, and vice versa.