220B - HW 2 - Homebrew
My concept for this piece was exploring what can be done with a single sample through applying filters - I felt inspired by the prompt to create a "personal musical filter", which I can then apply to any sound. The sample I used, a 2.25 second squelching sound, worked very well for creating both long and short sounds, and I still feel like I could continue with just this one.
Here is that sample:
Overall, the piece is probably too short, and if I could I would expand the development in the second half so that it's a bit slower and you can sense the changes more gradually. I was also hoping to reveal the actual sample at the end, but it didn't feel right based on where it ended up - this was a challenge that I couldn't figure out in time. The feeling also came out a lot darker than I intended, but I had fun creating a super weird effect chain and playing with it - I've barely scratched the surface of what it can do!
Here are links to all the files you will need to run this piece yourself!
Milestone 1
I decided on a title for this piece, "Orchestrated Flatulence," and only worked with one sample - the one where my housemate makes a squelchy sound on a chair:
I then set out writing code that will work with any sample. I'm not sure I want to limit myself to one sample, but it's an interesting constraint. So far I have two separate parts of code that I will eventually merge together. The first is a feedback delay network with only 1 node right now, but which I want to build up to 4. I've been playing with this signal chain in Max, and having a lot of fun (this hasn't made it's way into a piece yet!). It looks like this: GAIN > DELAY > PITCH SHIFT > NOISE GATE > PAN. Even with just one node it's pretty fun. Here's two examples.
The second, is an idea I had from last class for making rhythms just by taking very small slices from within my full sample, shaping them into percussive sounds, and layering voices at different pitches. Right now I have a high layer and a bass layer, but would like to create more.
Also, time is very important to me in this project (I'm going for drum n bass inspiration - not quite there yet). I'm working at 160 bpm = 375 ms notes. I have sixteenth notes for the highest pitches, and quarter notes for the bass. In order to get variation of rhythms, I've thrown a lot of randomness in. I may use oscillators to shape these or a progression. Right now I'm at building blocks and composition will come once I finish these two parts of code and put them together!
And this last one is them together at the same time. Part of me wonders if they're better separately after reflection, so perhaps this will be more of a progression from one to the other...
Milestone 0
There's something endlessly entertaining about fart sounds, and last weekend, my housemate Bret discovered an amazing fart sound he could get just by moving around on a small chair.
Inspired by this, I went looking for other sounds I've recorded that have a similar quality, which included pig snorts (from a farm in Petaluma)
the washing machines at the laundromat that I use
I started playing with a simple comb filter combtest.ck, which uses snort_1.wav. Right now the result is quite metallic, and I'd like to figure out how to transition gradually from a synthetic filter to a more realistic one, so that it's not evident in the beginning what the sounds are. My concept for this piece is a rhythmic exploration of the threshold between rhythm and pitch. I've also been playing with a feedback delay network (4 nodes) in Max spatialized in stereo, so my plan is to implement that filter in ChucK!