Monday 30 March 2009

FBS Concept

How "new" Frame Based Synthesis is, I couldn't say for sure, as elements are clearly present in FFT and possibly some forms of speech synthesis, not that I've done enough research to say so with any authority. Anyway, here's what's going on with the sound clips below.

With many synthesis systems, most of the parameters will determine the basic timbre, and then you might have a few elements to play with in order to change that over time, such as an envelope mapped to a Low Pass Filter in a classic Analogue design. My method takes an entire synth patch - which could involve an FM matrix, additive harmonic synthesis, granular sample playback or anything else - and saves it to a slot, or a "frame." Further timbres are created and saved, and then these patch changes are played back over time, creating movement in the sound. So essentially it's quite simple: instead of having to contend with 30 envelopes or something like that, you just design the timbre as it will be at a particular moment in time. For each step, varying degrees of lag can be applied to the parameters, creating smoother transitions if required.

The fun comes when having created a sequence with many steps. Pitch, rhythm and timbre have been rendered together in a kind of playlist, which I call a page. Pages can be recalled at will. They may be instantly loaded, or a smoother interpolation between the current page and a new page may be enacted. This "morphing" between pages can be specified as any number of steps, and given a curve argument, so that changes at the start and end of the transition period are more (or less) subtle that those in the middle.

There is clearly a lot more scope to this technique, not least that now an entire musical sequence along with its timbre is specified in full as simply a series of numbers, many different transformations can be applied for interesting results. Using this method to create melodies would be made easier with the use of a more intuitive interface, rather than the current grid of numbers. Also I'd like to work on making the code itself more efficient, as at the moment, faster transitions suffer from timing problems. As usual, I've made this stuff with SuperCollider.

Frame Based Synthesis

Here are a couple of new demonstration tracks for the concept I've been fiddling with lately. A more in-depth explanation will follow.

<a href="http://cylobindustries.bandcamp.com/track/frame-based-synthesis-demo-1">Frame Based Synthesis Demo 1 by Cylob</a>

<a href="http://cylobindustries.bandcamp.com/track/frame-based-synthesis-demo-2">Frame Based Synthesis Demo 2 by Cylob</a>

Thursday 26 March 2009

England In Late May

Hi, I'm in the process of arranging a gig in Devon on Friday the 22nd of May. If you are a promoter in England who might like to sort something out on the day before or after, please contact me a.s.a.p. Cheers!

Thursday 12 March 2009

Couple O Gigs and maybe more.

Hi, happy new year!
I'll be DJ-ing in Dr. Pong again this coming saturday 14th March, going head to head or back to back or whatever with usual Pong resident Skkatter, and I recently said "yes" to Re:Fest in Ghent, Belgium, where I'll be playing a set on the 15th May. DMX Krew is playing the same festival but I'm not sure if we'll be playing on the same day.
It's also looking on the cards that I'll be making it out to Seattle in the middle of June, with the shadowy possibilities of appearances in Portland and Chicago.