Here’s a screencast of my current vocable synthesis prototype, it’s starting to sound interesting… Apologies for the rubbish resolution and the clipping/distortion of sound in some places of the recording. Vowels control properties of the simulated drumskin (using waveguide synthesis), consonants control properties of the mallet and how it strikes the drumskin.

In the video the visualisation shows the structure of the drum, and where it is being struck. Where you see a line across the drum, it means the mallet is being hit across the drum rather than just in one place. The nonsense underneath is me typing words to try to make some nice rhythm out of them. Underscores are rests (pauses) in the rhythm.

You can get a better quality avi here (33M), there is still some annoying clipping on the sound though.

More info and a better quality screencast soon…

Here’s a visualisation of my drumskin simulation, slowed down a lot. I hit the (square) drumskin in various places then hit it all over until it goes crazy.

I have a prototype of control over it with phonetics which I’ll be demoing tomorrow (Friday 4th July) at the sonic arts festival unconference in Brighton, probably around 11am although being an unconference, the schedule might change. I’ll also be on a panel with my favourite heroes Nick Collins, Dan Stowell and Sarah Angliss later in the day.