Audio Art Week 4: Lovecraft, Mega Man, Vowels
The assignment for this week was to create an instrument in Max/MSP that can be controlled with the keyboard, applying the principles we learned so far in class. My first experiment was with a keyboard-controlled vowel synthesizer (see later in the entry for more information). The screenshot above is a spectrogram that came from audio generated by the second patch I did this week, which I call the BYTE ORGAN. (Okay, Mega Man wasn't in the original spectrogram.)
Click the image above for a larger screenshot of the patch, or here for the patch itself.
The Byte Organ is an additive synthesis instrument. It takes incoming binary data, breaks it up into bytes, and toggles on and off oscillators tuned to multiples of a fundamental frequency, based on the bits set in the byte.
For example, take the byte with the decimal value 97 (ASCII a). That byte has bits 0, 5, and 6 set (20 = 1; 25 = 32; 26 = 64; 1 + 32 + 64 = 97). Given this input, the byte organ would create three sine waves: one at the fundamental frequency, one at the fifth overtone, and one at the sixth overtone.
When fed a series of bytes in succession (either from the keyboard or from a file), this instrument has the potential to make audible the structure of the underlying data. I've put a few examples below, along with spectrograms of some of the sounds.
Study #1 - Alphabet: This is just me using the instrument's keyboard input to type out the alphabet (in a vague approximation of the regular alphabet song). The spectrogram above is made from this audio. (Download)
Study #2 - Madness: Yours truly at the keyboard again, this time typing the first few sentences from H. P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness. Added delay makes it kind of spooky. (Download)
More madness after the cut.
Study #3 - Syllabus (excerpt): This time the patch is fed a file, which it reads in byte-by-byte. In this particular instance, the file in question is the Audio Art syllabus. The excerpt here covers only the first two or three hundred bytes of the file, and the spectrogram above depicts an even smaller section of the audio. (Download)
Then I got the idea to put in some truly binary data, something not textual at all—like a NES ROM! The following three excerpts come from a sound file that I generated from the first ten kilobytes or so of the Mega Man 2 ROM (probably the finest video game ever made).
Study #4 - Mega Man Excerpt #1: The very beginning of the file. (Download)
Study #5 - Mega Man Excerpt #2: As you can see from the spectrogram above, in this segment of the file there's a discernable, repeatable sequence. The result is a kind of bumpy rhythm. (Download)
Study #6 - Mega Man Excerpt #3: I think at this point in the ROM we're beginning to see actual graphical data (probably used to draw sprites). The graphical data is kind of discernable in the spectrogram, and makes for interesting listening. (Download)
The Byte Organ results from experiments that I did earlier in the week with vowel synthesis. After trying to remember and apply my long-lost knowledge from Linguistics 110 (Phonetics and Phonology) for awhile, I realized that my vowels were pretty crummy and more than anything I just liked looking at the spectrogram, so I ditched that patch and started working on the Byte Organ instead. But I'm including some of my experiments below anyway, just for fun.
Here's a screenshot of the patch and a link to the patch itself.
My synthesis technique consists of using frequency modulation to modulate two sine waves around the vowel's F1 and F2 areas with a modulation frequency at the same rate as the fundamental frequency (thus ensuring evenly spaced harmonics). Above is a spectrogram of my synthesized vowels; compare with actual spoken vowels below. (Here's a good overview of the acoustic characteristics of vowels.)
Study #7 - Front to back: The five cardinal vowels are played in sequence from front to back (/i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, /u/). Read along: ee, ay, ah, oh, oooh. (Download)
Compare the above to a recording of me saying the same vowels: (Download)
Study #8 - Vowel sounds: Just some random vowel sounds in sequence. Read along: Eee, ee, ee, ee, ay, ay, ay, ay, ah, ah, ah, ah, oh. (Download)