Music 171 homework 5
1960s style sequencing revisited
This assignment combines practice with modulation (chapter 5 of the book) with
another sequencer-like trope that came into being in the days of
voltage-controlled synthesizers: randomness (in the 60s done using a noise
generator and a sample/hold unit but today more easily managed in the control
domain with a metronome and random number generator; here we'll opt for the
second possibility). The working patch should make a series of random notes
and "play" them using a waveshaping instrument (to use the term loosely) that
uses symmetry to vary from even to odd harmonics.
To make the patch (as usual, 2 points for each step below):
- Make random numbers ranging from 36 to 72, controlled by a metro object to
generate six to eight notes per second. The 'random' object will help you.
- Make a waveshaping patch as in patch example E07.evenodd.pd (the last
example described in chapter 5 of the book). The heart of the the patch is the
oscillator and cosine generator, with an envelope generator to control the gain
of the oscillator into the cos~ object, and an adder to make an offset to
control evenness/oddness.
- Rather than use an abstraction for the envelope generator,
make it simple and just supply a line~ with message boxes in the patch.
(Note that it's possible to be lazy
and not make a second envelope generator to control the amplitude of the output;
if the "index" goes to zero the output is a constant and hence silent.)
- To make the patch vary continuously from evenness to oddness, make a second
oscillator running at , say, 0.1 Hz., that generates an offset for the cos~
object (in the example, this is just supplied by message boxes). You will have
to use a multiplier and adder to adjust the oscillator's natural range (from
-1 to 1) to the range 0 to 0.25, so that it functions as an even/odd harmonic
control.
- Since this patch can make constant, non-zero output, use a hip~ object
(high-pass filter) to remove DC from the output; a 5-Hz. cutoff is fine. Then
make some reasonable way to control the output amplitude overall.
Your successful patch should sound something like
this.
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