Weeklybeats is a 52 week long music project in which artists compose and publicly release 1 song a week for the entire year.
Starting January 1st 2024 GMT each participant will have one week to upload one finished composition. Any style of music or selection of instruments are welcomed and encouraged.
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This track is a special one. It features some of my colleagues from Manyone on vocals (birds, insects, creepy laugh), and it is actually a more epic version of a 20 channel soundscape that you can check out over here:
https://horatiuromantic.com/soundscaper
We had a party at the office and we set up a little botanical garden in our space with plants from around the office, and I had the idea to create a sound installation that we can play on synchronized bluetooth speakers spread all around the plants. Here's what it looked like, and read below about how I did it.
Note: the sound in the video comes directly from the phone.
› How I did it
‹ How I did it
I created a little website which handles the synchronization with the server time, and I recorded some synths (mostly built-in logic presets, plus my old modular recordings), piano and used some free sounds from freesound.org to achieve the soundscape, apart from the sounds we recorded with the colleagues (~10 minute recording session, on iphone 13 in a conference room).
The sounds are always played in a loop starting from 1 january 1970 until enough milliseconds pass that computers cannot count them anymore (should be a few thousand years until then). So in theory any device that connects will get the time from the server, accounting for the roundtrip time (=the time it takes to talk to the server, which can also affect the synchronization), and will play the sounds at the same time, without knowing about each other. It kinda worked at home, but then I ran into issues which I designed around.
The main issue is the fact that the html component for audio adds a delay when requesting a sound to be played... and that delay is pretty random, depending on how fast the device can load the sound, so a phone will be slower than a PC, etc.. I didn't have time to look into an alternative tech, plus there are potential delays with bluetooth as well, so I just designed the sounds to work with slightly imperfect synchronization. But there is a point why I wanted them synchronized.
There are sounds (birds, mosquitos) that travel between speakers, and I achieve that by simply fading them in and out on each track. If the tracks are arranged in a stereo space, you get what you hear in the WB entry - something flying left/right and back. But if the tracks are played thru the website, on many different speakers in a room, you will get a more psychedelic spatial effect. This is a good proof of concept that the syncing must be done even more accurately, for sound to really feel like it's traveling in the room. But when mixed with a physical installation, the effect is impressive.
For the WB version, I arranged the parts a bit differently and added a spooky piano section and thunderous rain. For the online soundscape version I had to keep it tame enough to not be annoying when played over multiple hours in a loop. It worked, even tho the website loop is only two minutes!
For some reason I didn't make some tracks longer and some shorter, but in hindsight I totally should have! Oh well.
Let me know if you set up the Soundscaper on multiple devices like it is meant to be heard. Otherwise, hope you enjoy the WB version!
Someday it could be cool to adapt this for a museum installation. If you have any contacts towards that, let me know!
[img]https://media.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExMjRvMzRtNm4xejZrem82enQ4ZjRyZXB0d3Q5ZGs2MWdhcGZhcnV2aCZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/4H1GJCOAeAA9oIqRxw/giphy.gif[/img]
wow some neat projects you've been working on!
Love when people use their coding skills to design musical things. The composition sounds neat, too.
Yeah, synchronizing time is tricky business. Ableton Link does it pretty well, which is what Monome Norns uses to sync with Ableton Live (and other Monome Nornses if you have multiple). I use that to great effect. But that's not for the browser AFAICT.
Love when people use their coding skills to design musical things. The composition sounds neat, too.
Yeah, synchronizing time is tricky business. Ableton Link does it pretty well, which is what Monome Norns uses to sync with Ableton Live (and other Monome Nornses if you have multiple). I use that to great effect. But that's not for the browser AFAICT.
Love when people use their coding skills to design musical things. The composition sounds neat, too.
Yeah, synchronizing time is tricky business. Ableton Link does it pretty well, which is what Monome Norns uses to sync with Ableton Live (and other Monome Nornses if you have multiple). I use that to great effect. But that's not for the browser AFAICT.
Yo! thanks! super good tip with ableton link! that one really works like magic! I didn't even think of it! I have used ableton link with DAWs and hardware modular, but not with web, so gotta investigate if that works, but there is hope: for example you can use it in PureData, and there are libraries that export PureData to web, so potentially it could be done through that or a similar solution.
If anyone has ideas how to do this easily for the browser (so the general public can use it) I'm all ears!
Thanks all for checking it out!
[quote=rplktr]Love when people use their coding skills to design musical things. The composition sounds neat, too.
Yeah, synchronizing time is tricky business. Ableton Link does it pretty well, which is what Monome Norns uses to sync with Ableton Live (and other Monome Nornses if you have multiple). I use that to great effect. But that's not for the browser AFAICT.[/quote]
Yo! thanks! super good tip with ableton link! that one really works like magic! I didn't even think of it! I have used ableton link with DAWs and hardware modular, but not with web, so gotta investigate if that works, but there is hope: for example you can use it in PureData, and there are libraries that export PureData to web, so potentially it could be done through that or a similar solution.
If anyone has ideas how to do this easily for the browser (so the general public can use it) I'm all ears!
Love the moving elements, the laid back pianos adds to the ambiance.
The weird "water (ish)" sounds that morphs to "Broken Glass" sounds are very interesting.
Very interesting!
Love the moving elements, the laid back pianos adds to the ambiance.
The weird "water (ish)" sounds that morphs to "Broken Glass" sounds are very interesting.
Oh yeah what a beautiful track. I love foley sounds, so i'm really enjoying this track! Steps! Bees! The small musical elements here and there, like the piano flying away - very well done. I like the sound of rain and how you placed the piano in this, into the back of the room, with a darker sound as the sky is growling. Nice! That's my jam!
Oh yeah what a beautiful track. I love foley sounds, so i'm really enjoying this track! Steps! Bees! The small musical elements here and there, like the piano flying away - very well done. I like the sound of rain and how you placed the piano in this, into the back of the room, with a darker sound as the sky is growling. Nice! That's my jam!
Ahh cool! Makes a lot of sense when you get to see it as an install. Just watched the noise documentary too. Some amazing characters in that piece! I love that DIY no-input mixer with the contact mic performance. Offft. Cheers!
Ahh cool! Makes a lot of sense when you get to see it as an install. Just watched the noise documentary too. Some amazing characters in that piece! I love that DIY no-input mixer with the contact mic performance. Offft. Cheers!
