Based on Paul Lansky's Homebrew

Final audio:
Homedrone.wav

Chuck Files:
Run Samples.ck before running Dronebrew.ck.
Samples.ck
Dronebrew.ck

Having done this sort of musical found sound collage before, I wanted to play to ChucK's strengths. I knew it can be tedious to arrange and edit sounds in a precise, conventionally musical organization, so I wanted to make something more abstract. I also knew that it can be difficult to find everyday sounds that can serve conventional musical roles in a piece, which further pushed me towards more of a sound-painting approach. (At the time, I was not aware of the comb filter, which is a great technique that I employed in the compositional phase and was integral to the harmonic coherence of this piece.) I though of all the droning sounds like fans and engines around campus, and drone music, specifically drone metal from the likes of Sunn O))), came to mind. I wanted to recreate its heaviness and pleasant, trance-inducing quality. So, I went on a walk and collected audio from around campus, specifically searching for fountains, fans, and engines that can be found behind engineering and science labs.

I had a lot of audio, and it took some work to sort through and edit it down to about 100 samples. To deal with the large amount of material I had, I organized the samples into different categories: Drones, Sprinkles, Sweeps, Tones, and Hits. I designed a ChucK Samples class that takes in a list of file names of audio samples in a particular category and can play them back at different rates with variable amounts of comb filtering. I begin my composition by creating a ~40 second loop of a few drone sounds that flow into each other. I add on another loop of some "sprinkles," interesting, more distinct audio clips. I add more comb filtering to the samples over time and use a couple of long, sweeping samples to developing the energy of the piece. The sounds reach a climax, at which point a big wave of noise and percussive and tonal samples enter in the finale of the piece. I try to introduce the sampled sounds before adding effects, and never have them stray to far away from their original feel. I center around a key, but only use a few pitches from a scale at once. This piece is primarily textural rather than harmonic.

My initial implemenation of the Samples class declared all of the UGens in arrays upon instantiation. Since I have many samples the virtual machine was having trouble processing all the UGens in parallel. However, at any given time, I only use a small subset of the samples. So, I changed the class to instantiate the UGens upon a call to the play() function that plays back a sample. This greatly improved the efficiency of my code. There were also times when I wanted to add a parameter to a function that I had already used in many places. Since ChucK does not have default parameters, instead of changing each place I had aready used the function, I wrote wrappers with less parameters that call a function with more parameters with the desired default value of the new parameters.

With this piece, I want the listener to embrace the alienation of an absurd world. Rather than feel intimidated or helpless in the face of these strange sounds, I ordered them such that the listener can see a certain beauty in their unintelligibility. The drones that are the center of this piece sound harsh and unfriendly, and they move at a rate slower than is suited for musical perception by humans, making the listener feel insignificant as a fly seeing people hundreds of times its size who will live a thousand times as long as it speaking words it will never understand. The sounds in this piece have no regard for the listener's humanity. Yet, this piece is meant to be enjoyed. With my choices of patterns and sounds, I made order of this absurd sonic universe. Let its warm waves embrace you. Let its incomprehensible patterns lull you into emptiness and acceptance. Find comfort in your alienation.

Audio Files (not all are used in the piece):
Drones:
Air.1.wav
Engine.1.wav
Hum G.1.wav
BA_Long.wav
Engine2.2.wav
Machine.1.wav
Back Patio.1.wav
Fans.1.wav
Wet Noise.1.wav
Buzz.1.wav
Fans.1_1.wav
Whine.1.wav
Buzzong.1.wav
Fountain G.wav
nnnnooooo.27.wav
Ee Pan.1.wav
Go.1.wav
Engine G.wav
Green Fountain.2.wav
Sprinkles:
Awful Scrape G.wav
BA_Door.wav
Bike Park.1.wav
Bike Ring.1.wav
Bike Sounds G.wav
Crinch Crunch.1.wav
Door Open G.wav
F3.wav
FS_Floor Squeak.wav
Far Roadwork G.wav
Fence.1.wav
Fence.2.wav
Gravel Growing.1.wav
Gravel.1.wav
Groan.1.wav
Intense Bike Sounds.1.wav
Jog.1.wav
Kataka Velcro.7.wav
Key Jingle.1.wav
Kitchen Plates.wav
LOL.1.wav
Leaves.1.wav
Leaves.2.wav
Long Sweeps.4.wav
Passing Bike.1.wav
Pothole.1.wav
Psht Psht.1.wav
Pumps.1.wav
Scary.1 G.wav
Scrapes G.wav
Short Sweeps.4.wav
Skitter.1.wav
Slight Left.1.wav
Squeak.3.wav
Squeaks.1.wav
Sss.1.wav
Summer.1.wav
Wooddonks.2.wav
Sweeps:
Car Passing Brakes.1.wav
Car Passing.1.wav
Cart.1.wav
Desc.1.wav
Fountain Grow.1.wav
Growing Wet Noise.1.wav
Helicopter G.wav
Hum Grow.1.wav
Plane G.1.wav
Runner.1.wav
Skate By.4.wav
Union Fountain.1.wav
Hits:
Batump.1.wav
Bike Thunk.1.wav
Bonk G.wav
Buzz Click.2.wav
Crunch.1.wav
Crunches.2.wav
Dom.wav
FS1.wav
FS2.wav
Key Snatch.1.wav
Leaves.3.wav
Pew.1.wav
Pssh G.wav
Schrunch.1.wav
Shoe Scrapes.4.wav
Shumkash.1.wav
Skate Drop.4.wav
Skate Jump.4.wav
Snare.2.wav
Snare.3.wav
Squelch.4.wav
Step Pft.4.wav
Thomp.1.wav
Triple Thunk.1.wav
Wumdum.1.wav
Yop Yip.1.wav
Tones:
Dading.2.wav
Ding.3.wav
TIng.1.wav