MSP

This patch shows the use of sfplay~ to play pre-recorded sound files, the use of gain~ to control their loudness, and a few other features of controlling soundfile playback in MSP.

This patch demonstrates several capabilities, features, and techniques of the transport object for managing tempo-relative time, the translate object for converting between tempo-relative time and absolute time values, and the timing objects that can use tempo-relative timing such as metro, delay, timepoint, phasor~, and line~.

As expressed in Fechner's law, our subjective sensation of a phenomenon is often proportional to the logarithm of the empirical measurements of the intensity of the physical event that evokes that sensation. One example of that in musical contexts is that our sensation of changes in musical pitch are proportional to the logarithm of the change in the measured fundamental frequency of a tone.

I believe that we respond to and recognize something about the shape of the change in a sound, and that shape forms a metaphorical sonic "gesture" in our minds. The "shape of the change" means the way in which some aspect of the sound (it could be any measurable parameter) or the music (it could be any characteristic we care about) changes over time: how radically it changes, and with what acceleration of change. That can be simply stated as the value of the parameter in question, depicted as a function of time. That is, the "gesture" can be depicted as a curve of change over time.

Two oscillators, one in the left channel and one in the right channel, play notes that have a continuously changing frequency, at a continuously changing note rate. Every few seconds (some randomly-chosen number of seconds from 2 to 8) each of the two oscillators gets a new destination frequency and destination note rate, and heads toward those destination values over the next few (randomly-chosen number of) seconds.

The cycle~ object uses a lookup table of 512 values that make the shape of a single cycle of a cosine wave, and it reads through those repeatedly at whatever rate is specified in its left (frequency) inlet. You can also set the cycle~ to 0 Hz (its default frequency) and select a point in the cosine waveform with a value (either a signal or a float) from 0 to 1 in the right (phase offset) inlet.

This patch demonstrates the sound of linear and exponential changes in pitch and amplitude.

To avoid an initial spike on the sync output of a groove~ object, make sure that its associated buffer~ is given a nonzero size.

This patch doesn't do anything musical, but it shows the math formulae that underlie the mtof, ftom, atodb, and dbtoa objects.

This patch allows you to see and hear the sum of up to 16 harmonically-related sinusoidal tones, mixed with equal amplitudes. The sinusoids are all in cosine phase. (If the phases were different, the sum would look different, but it would sound pretty much the same.) As you add a number of tones together, you'll need to adjust the volume to avoid clipping.