I got my new computer, and I’m up and running again! I’m so happy. It’s still going to be a little while until I can catch up with everything. So in the meantime, I will share an old project from last March.

In the beginning of the year, I really got into Andy Farnell’s book on procedural audio, Designing Sound. It’s one of my favorite sound design books, and I strongly recommend it.

This book really got me excited about being able to separate and control each element of a sound. This inspired the Mini Mood, an iPhone application that allows you to create your own personalized mix of cozy sounds. I chose three ambiances I thought made for a cozy athmosphere: fireplace, weather, and old record player.

You can download the Mini Mood for free!

Concept and Sound Design: me (Andrew Spitz)
Programming: The awesome Mel Gray
Icon Design: The great Thomas Hancock

how it works

For now, the interface is a bit plain and confusing, but we may go back to it, design a new interface, and add more sounds.

There are four windows. The first is the Master Mix of the other three windows.

The second is the Fireplace Mix, which is where you can mix together each element of a fireplace: the roar, crackle, and hiss.

The third is the Weather Mix, which is where you can mix the rain (hitting the window), the wind, and the thunder.

The fourth is the Record Player, which is where you can mix the noise and the crackle of a record player. You’ll notice there is a missing slider.  I wanted to add an E.Q. slider to make your music sound like an old record, but at this moment, you can’t access the iPhone’s music library from an app, so we left it empty.

the process

In March, I put together a patch in Max/MSP to serve as a prototype. Mel Gray over at Clever Collie took over the coding for the iPhone/iTouch.

As an iPhone/iTouch app, the Mini Mood triggers looped samples and the user mixes the volume of each element. Nothing very exciting, but it was valuable for understanding the process of submitting an application to iTunes. The procedural aspect involved creating each separate stem to bounce into a loopable track. One advantage of modeling procedural synthetic sounds is that the recording is clear of all unwanted sounds. However, some of the synthesis didn’t sound convincing enough to me, so I mixed in some real-world recorded sounds.

This has been a good experience, especially seeing Apple’s side of things. Future plans include adding more sounds and improving the interface.

I am so excited! I can hardly contain myself. As I’m typing this, I’m downloading the Max for Live public beta.

You can download it here. Hurray!

Since Arduino 17, many people have been having issues with getting Arduino and Max/MSP communicating. Hans-Christopher Steiner posted a comment in the tutorial How to Set up Arduino and Max/MSP saying that he has released an update, which should sort some bugs out.

Here’s what Hans-Christopher wrote:

The StandardFirmata in 0017 turned out to be kind of buggy, unfortunately. We have things mostly fixed in SVN, but would love to have more testing and bug reports! So here’s a new release. I fixed all bugs that I knew about, including the one where analog pins sometimes acted like they had a log curve on them.

http://at.or.at/hans/pd/objects.html#pduino

Just download the Firmata.zip and then install the StandardFirmata included in that. I tested this on a Diecimila, I hear there are troubles with the Arduino Pro and others, but I only have the older ones, so testing and bug reports on those are very helpful.

In the Max forum he writes:

The maxuino version should work with Firmata 2.1 as long as the baud/bitrate is set to 57600.

I still can’t try anything myself until I get up and running again with a computer. But if you do try it and it works/has bugs, please post the bug reports and feedback in the comments or directly to Hans-Christopher via his site, which will help him with the testing.

[photo by Fatty Tuna]

My beloved girlfriend went back to the States for the time being,
but I have my computer so I’m OK…

I had an opportunity lined up then it fell through,
but I have my computer so I’m OK…

I almost got scammed selling something expensive on Ebay,
but I have my computer so I’m OK…

My computer broke,
but I have… oh wait, I’m not OK!

This sucks. Literally a day before releasing Sound Doodle, my computer said “au revoir” and wouldn’t switch on. After a long wait, Apple told me the motherboard is dead, and it will cost €1100 to fix, eerrrggg! So I apologise for the delay. I have backups and it seems my hard drive is fine, so the second I get a new machine I will get Sound Doodle out.

I’ll put it out there: my bags are packed and I’m ready for an opportunity. If you or anyone you know is looking for someone, please contact me andrew(at)soundplusdesign(dot)com.

P.S. In dire need of some feel-good comments…

[photo of my dead computer]

The irony of this social sound design quest is that I have become as unsocial as it gets. I have been spending a lot of time sitting in front of the computer by myself working on a new piece of software that is almost completed. This software is called Sound Doodle. It is somewhat along the lines of Tweet A Sound but this time it is sample-based and uses audioboo.fm as the primary platform for sharing sounds.

To get a feel for your preferences, I set up a poll asking you “What are your three favourite effects when designing a sound?” Out of 100 people that voted (Thanks to those that did!), 38% voted for granular synthesis; 33% voted for reverberation; and 29% voted for delay. Also, through The Sound Designer’s Telephone Game I was able to get an idea of what plugins and effects are popular.

So after all this, Sound Doodle includes four main effects: reverb, multi-tap stereo delay, resonators and granular synthesis. You can also play the sound in reverse, and change its speed.

Here is a little example of what the granular synthesiser sounds like:

I won’t say much more until it is finished. But may I suggest that you pre-emptively get an account for audioboo.fm and The Freesound Project?

Two of my friends, Mike Greer and Yann Seznec (The Amazing Rolo), just finished their awesome iPhone app Mujik. It’s very fun, sounds really good and looks great too! For a short period of time you can download it for free. You can get it from here.

Explore sounds in a new and fun way with Mujik! Pick the books off the shelf, flip them open, and chase the dust mites across the page to make the music your own…or just float away on a sonic balloon…

It has been far too long since I have written a post. I am totally absorbed in designing a new programme continuing with the theme of social sound design. It is no doubt keeping me very busy! I will give more details a bit later.

Max/MSP/Jitter Course
Last week I was in London attending an advanced course on Max/MSP/Jitter run by Sebastian Lexer. He knows Max/MSP inside out and has got a real knack for explaining things very well! The course was absolutely fantastic, I highly recommend it.

Tweet A Sound Concert
A while back, Scott Hewitt emailed me about a concert he and his team did using Tweet A Sound. People sent #tas tweets that got diffused through a 26-channel speaker array as an electroacoustic improvisation. You can download it here or listen to it below.

Here is a video of it:

Now back to work…

meet composer –> and sound designer –>

Two weeks ago I attended a talk by Darren Aronofsky (director of Pi, Requiem For A Dream, The Wrestler, etc.) during the Edinburgh Film Festival. I recorded the 90-minute talk, and thought I’d share a little 1m43s section where he speaks about how he met his composer Clint Mansel and his sound designer Brian Emrich. Quite entertaining trivia.

Sorry the quality is appalling. I just put the recorder in the drink holder on the seat. And the accoustics were very bad, the noisy pre-amps didn’t help nor did the people around me.

I’m busy setting up a little podcast, so when it is ready I will post the whole 90 minutes.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Sound Designer’s Telephone Game. It was great fun and in the spirit of Social Sound Design.

The Sound Designer’s Telephone Game started with a field recording of mine which was passed onto thirty people who had volunteered to participate. Each person was permitted to add only one effect. No one knew what the sound was like before they received it and what it would mold into later on. The point of the game was to see how the sound would evolve as it was processed.

what happens to a sound digitally whispered 30 times?

So what was the original sound? Any guesses? The sound is nothing special, just someone packing huge beer kegs into a truck. I thought it would work well as a starting point because it is percussive and has some good resonance, but right from the get-go the sound went in an unexpected direction.

The sound has traveled to all corners of the world (well I’m assuming) and even been taken out of the digital realm and through a Moogerfooger, and re-recorded under water with a homemade hydrophone.

Here is the original sound, recorded on a Zoom H4n and the on-board mics:

You can download all thirty-one sounds plus a track listing [mp3; 11.2MB]

The playlist below is all the sounds in chronological order with the name of the participant and the effect used:

Participants in order + effect used

01. Brian Green:
“I reversed the sample”

02. Edu Comelles:
“I used an effect from ableton live called “chorus”, took away some feedback and left what you can hear, almost like a convolved thing.”

03. Joel Corriveau:
“I used Logic’s Ringshifter. I automated parameters, but didn’t use it’s built in delay.”

04. Hadrien Bourely:
“Pan automation”

05. David McSherry:
“I subtly mashed it through a Moogerfooger MF-101 low pass filter (hardware)”

06. Flemming:
“Audacity’s reverse”

07. Tom:
“500ms cross-channel echo”

08. @Watterberg:
“This uses a custom panning and frequency shifting plugin I’ve concocted myself”"

09. Dan Mackinlay:
“Ableton live’s “Corpus” – which is some AAS physical modelling doohickey”

10. @Joshliebe:
“I used SSL X-Orcism on the sample -
turned down the howling and tombverb, and then adjusted the other
parameters.”

11. Glenn:
“I ran it through a vocoder of a synthesized tone.”

12. Robert Newman:
“I used the Sweeping Phaser in Adobe Audition.”

13. Josh:
“Plugin: Audio Damage: Ratshack Reverb v 2.0
Made a macro where one knob controls mic level, delay, repeats and depth. Then automated that macro to give the audio a groove. Then while playing back the automation I am manually adjusting the min/max values for the delay parameter in the macro so the range changes over time.”

14. Hugo:
“I used Reaktor with the GrainStatesFX ensemble. Officially it’s not just one effect, but it’s one plugin”

15. Mike:
“CrossFilter_Short (Kyma)”

16. Marcio:
“Basically, I put an Autofilter in an aux bus, and during the 1st half we only hear the effect. Then, the automation gradually closes the pre-fader send, the volume rises and we have the “original” sound again.”

17. Martin:
“I used the “Resampling” effect from DtBlkFx VST (http://rekkerd.org/dtblkfx/) to apply pitch shifting on a spectral level. I automated the shifting, so it goes up and down again.”

18. @ivsound:
“I went with a simple reverse quad delay (applied to the beginning of the sound in reverse.) then gliding pitch-bend”

19. Joe Still:
“Monstercrunch from the Pluggo pack”

20. tj milian:
“one effect: grain delay in ableton live.”

21. Rob:
“Ableton Live: added Corpus 17% wet”

22. Laurence:
“all I did was change the pitch on one of the tracks so that the difference ( when played through head phones and looped) you would get a binaural effect, a carrier wave would be produced in your head of about 10 hertz, I think this is in the lower theta or borderline delta wave. ”

23. @misterinterrupt:
“Steve Harris L/C/R Delay”

24. Erik:
“Its a reverb with variable size and width”

25. Toby:
“Re-recorded underwater”

26. Nathan:
“Audiomulch’s (http://www.audiomulch.com) “5Combs” filter to the right channel, leaving the left as I received it.”

27. Miguel:
“Just process the sound in Reaktor with a Delay ensemble. This one has a delay unit modulated by 2 LFOs . The main effect works in the frequency that is modulated by LFO 1 and the LFO 2 works in the stereo field, placing the sound from left to right and conversely.”

28. Stuart Smith:
“I used a custom Max/Msp patch using only 1 effect – FFT Fast Fourier Transform.”

29. Jason Job:
“I used Camel Audio’s Camel Space plugin.”

30. @themelissard:
“Soundhack’s Varispeed”

[photo by Marcia_Salviato; artist David Mach]

Across from my flat a bungee jumping crane set up shop, so I did too.

I brought my tripod for the mic and recording equipment, and recorded the screams of people when they jumped. Very entertaining indeed.

Here is a quick montage of a few of the screams. Because of the crane and the traffic, the recording is very noisy, but still worth a listen. The first scream is my favourite (it might have been a turkey now that I listen to it again)!

Recorded on Fostex FR-2 & Sennheiser MKH 418s