Month: August 2007
Looking forward to the final printout
My MSc project is gradually coming to a close… I think I finally have some software that I could improvise with, which I’m going to give it a trial run at the dork camp next weekend. Still a lot of writing to do around it, and only a couple of full days left to do it in, but I think it’s doable.
The user interface for my system is basically GNU readline, a really nice, featureful way of working with lines of text so perfect for improvising line-based textual rhythms. I foresee many people suggesting pretty GUIs but hey… This project is all about the expressive power of letter combos, that goes for keypresses as well as vocables.
Alternative title
So I explained my msc project to Amy who explained it back far better than I could have; “… it’s controlled by a human who types the sounds the computer tries to make that sound like a human trying to sound like some electronic music”. So now I want to rename my soon-to-be-finished thesis “A system for humans typing sounds that a computer tries to make sound like a human trying to sound like a computer making music, with software that acts like a human doing so”.
ASCII Rave in Haskell
I’ve been playing with using words to control the articulation of a physical modelling synthesiser based on the elegant Karplus-Strong algorithm.
The idea is to be able to make instrumental sounds by typing onomatopoeic words. (extra explanation added in the comments)
Here’s my first ever go at playing with it:
For a fuller, more readable experience you’re better off looking at the higher quality avi than the above flash transcoding.
As before, I’m using HSC3 to do the synthesis. If anyone’s interested, I plan to release the full source in September, but the synthesis part is available here