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WeeklyBeats.com / Music / fc's music / Prime III

Prime III

By fc on February 6, 2016 12:54 am

I'm quite proud of this one, the third SuperCollider study. Massive thanks to Kevan Atkins for (re-)posting his Inharmonicity Study I, which proved to be instructive in task scheduling and in being able to modify arguments within a sequence.

This piece is based on Prime Numbers (almost) completely. The rhythms (and durations) of the percussion impulses are derived from some higher prime numbers (divided by 1000), while the rhythms of the low sounds are derived from the low numbers (2, 3, 5, ..., 11). The sequencing of sounds to create the form is also based on the lower prime numbers, at least as much as I could figure out without creating two separate sequences (which might be next on my list).

You can have a look at the source here: SuperCollider source file

To do in the future:
- Still not satisfied with panning system. Will have to look into that in more detail.
- Still have not figured out how to implement non-CPU intensive audio effects such as reverb. Not such a big issue though.

Thanks to everyone who has been commenting on the previous two SC studies. I think I might have one more Prime number pieces in me, then perhaps an EP of them all.

Post-composition done in Audacity - compression and reverb.

primeiii by Vincent Giles, on Flickr

Fantastic. This stuff keeps getting better. I would definitely love to hear an EP of this. Good stuff, Vince.

As for reverb/compression. I had reverb in Inharmonicity Study I. I used the FreeVerb class. You can alternatively hand code one with a set of all-pass filters with randomised delays. That also gives you a few options to create some pretty interesting effects since you've got your hands in the guts of it. Then for hooking it up, you place your effect into a SynthDef and add the In.ar() so you can bring audio into it. Out, you already know how to do.

The easiest way to handle the routing is just by assigning the input to an unused bus and then routing the outputs of your generator synthdef(s) to that bus and then send the outs of that to your main outputs. It's not best practice, but it's easy. You can also set it up to do dynamic assignment so your not hardcoding busses, which is better, especially if you want to be able to adapt to different I/O situations.

Strong atmosphere, lovely high frequency sound design.

kevanatkins wrote:

Fantastic. This stuff keeps getting better. I would definitely love to hear an EP of this. Good stuff, Vince.

As for reverb/compression. I had reverb in Inharmonicity Study I. I used the FreeVerb class. You can alternatively hand code one with a set of all-pass filters with randomised delays. That also gives you a few options to create some pretty interesting effects since you've got your hands in the guts of it. Then for hooking it up, you place your effect into a SynthDef and add the In.ar() so you can bring audio into it. Out, you already know how to do.

The easiest way to handle the routing is just by assigning the input to an unused bus and then routing the outputs of your generator synthdef(s) to that bus and then send the outs of that to your main outputs. It's not best practice, but it's easy. You can also set it up to do dynamic assignment so your not hardcoding busses, which is better, especially if you want to be able to adapt to different I/O situations.

Thanks, Kevan.

Yeah, I used Reverb and stuff (one of the Synths has a resonant filter on it in this piece), but I think you're right about assigning FX on a various buses. That makes most sense.

Harmaa wrote:

Strong atmosphere, lovely high frequency sound design.


Cheers. The HF stuff is pretty simplistic, but it works.

Sounds like I'm a UFO dragging a chain behind me.  I reakon this would do wild stuff though an oscilloscope too ;-)

cTrix wrote:

Sounds like I'm a UFO dragging a chain behind me.  I reakon this would do wild stuff though an oscilloscope too ;-)

I could render an oscilloscope in SuperCollider if you like?

Have you seen Robin Fox's (I think it was him) work messing with an oscilloscope?

As an experiment, I Iistened to this both with and without hearing aids; with aids in, there's an separate & unique spacial movement in the highest frequencies. Fascinating!

If you didn't plan this, you should definitely take credit anyway.

supercollider has been around a while now, they showed us that in one of my sound classes at the school of the art institute of chicago in '98 or so. was always intrigued with the possibilities. this one piqued my ear, interesting piece sonically and the number behind it is very cool idea, love me some primes.

Jim Wood wrote:

As an experiment, I Iistened to this both with and without hearing aids; with aids in, there's an separate & unique spacial movement in the highest frequencies. Fascinating!

If you didn't plan this, you should definitely take credit anyway.

The high frequencies do have automatic panning (as do the low), but there may be some kind of phase thing going on with the hearing aids if it's so present?

I will take all credit!

george bowles wrote:

supercollider has been around a while now, they showed us that in one of my sound classes at the school of the art institute of chicago in '98 or so. was always intrigued with the possibilities. this one piqued my ear, interesting piece sonically and the number behind it is very cool idea, love me some primes.

Since 1996! And the guy who made it now works on Apple's CoreAudio development team. So that's cool.

Yeah, the possibilities are, I think, greater (from a compositional standpoint) than MaxMSP.

some day i'll learn programming if i ever get done twiddling knobs and making noises on my instruments. keep up the groundbreaking work!

george bowles wrote:

some day i'll learn programming if i ever get done twiddling knobs and making noises on my instruments. keep up the groundbreaking work!

Always. I got done playing an instrument, ended up at programming.

Quite a tender piece! The sound events sit comfortably against each other with a lot of clear space.
Lounge Sound Art?

Lyons wrote:

Quite a tender piece! The sound events sit comfortably against each other with a lot of clear space.
Lounge Sound Art?


Tender? Damn, I better not do that again! tongue
Thanks man, lovely comments.

Excellent piece, theoretically interesting as well as highly listenable.
Thanks for sharing the source code.

I really like the Geiger-Counter like feel to this one (as odd as that might sound).  It's comforting (slow sustained tones) and menacing (dissonance, sharp FM random voices) at the same time.  Well done!

Liking this one. Intrigued by the sequencing of the high pitched "bells". Should be checking some Supercollider soon, I hope smile

Plantrain wrote:

Excellent piece, theoretically interesting as well as highly listenable.
Thanks for sharing the source code.


Thanks, and no worries. I hope it's interesting!

onezero wrote:

I really like the Geiger-Counter like feel to this one (as odd as that might sound).  It's comforting (slow sustained tones) and menacing (dissonance, sharp FM random voices) at the same time.  Well done!


Lots of awesome descriptive language, thanks. It's fascinating to me that Lyons said "tender" and you say "menacing" and "comforting" (in the same sentence!)

Thanks heaps for listening.

laguna wrote:

Liking this one. Intrigued by the sequencing of the high pitched "bells". Should be checking some Supercollider soon, I hope smile


Cheers, I'm not sure you can do anything in SC you couldn't do in ChucK?

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