Michael J. Wilson
Music 256a Fall 2010
Homework #4

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IDEAS / COMMENTS:

I wanted to make something where you send a signal out to the void and
possibly get a response.  I also had the idea that it would be
entertaining to send dolphin noises back and forth.  I'm combining
this with the old text adventure / BBS aesthetic, which I think is
appropriate for sending signals out to the void although perhaps not
as well-suited to dolphins.

The basic idea is that you can send chains of echolocation pulses to
another "dolphin" using a simple command.  Rhythms and
call-and-response patterns are possible.

Although the idea and implementation are very simple and "toy"-like, I
actually learned a bit about dolphin sounds from working on this.
Apparently some dolphin modes of communication involve frequency
modulation.  It makes me want to write a more realistic and complete
dolphin noise generator, although that will have to wait for another
time.

I tried to tune the frequency components and timing of the impulses to
be more dolphin-like.  I also made the "remote" dolphin sound 1/2 as
loud as "you" to give a rudimentary perception of distance, although
on testing this was not very noticeable.

Despite its simplicity I found the program to be fun to play with.  It
does get a little tiring listening to impulses, however.

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DIFFICULTIES:

I had to modify the oscpack files slightly to get them to compile;
some of the #include directives were missing or incorrect for my
environment.

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COLLABORATORS:

Mike Rotondo suggested being able to send a chain of click patterns
with one command in order to make the program more musical.

The dolphin ASCII art was taken from Cetus's Dolphin Page
(http://tursiops.org/cetus/art.html), used without permission.

I referred to this Nature article for the frequency components of the
impulses:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v423/n6942/full/nature01727.html