Monthly Archives: April 2014

Designing Sound: Nature – Max Patches

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This is the third set of example Pd patches ported to Max from Andy Farnell’s Designing Sound book. It includes some excellent fire, water and electricity sounds, among others.

Download Sound Design Practical Series – Nature

If you haven’t already, be sure to download the Sound Design Practical Series helper files

Hive Score

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HavingToldtheHivetheNews-cropped

Here’s the score for Having Told the Hive the News. The piece will be premiered next week by the Huntsville Master Chorale directed by Patricia Ramirez-Hacker. I was invited to introduce the piece to the group in February and had such fun working with the singers. I can’t wait to hear how the work has developed. I will attend the concerts and participate in pre-concert discussions.

Huntsville Master Chorale presents
Spring is Bach
Friday May 2, 7:00pm
Faith Presbyterian Church
5003 Whitesburg Dr Huntsville AL
& Sunday May 4, 3:00pm
Monte Sano United Methodist Church
601 Monte Sano Blvd Huntsville AL

Designing Sound: Idiophonics – Max Patches

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This is the second set of example Pd patches ported to Max from Andy Farnell’s Designing Sound book. It includes a nice bouncing sound algorithm and some good bell tones.

Download Sound Design Practical Series – Idiophonics

If you haven’t already, be sure to download the Sound Design Practical Series helper files

The Audiovore Presents: John Wiese/Steve Jansen/Holland Hopson/Brad Davis

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john-wiese-balloon-72

I’m excited about sharing the bill tomorrow night with John Wiese, Steve Jansen and Brad Davis.

Wednesday April 9, 8pm
Parkside Cafe
4036 5th Ave S
Birmingham AL 3522

I’ll be presenting my Radicans project which uses small motors and soundbug transducers to transform ordinary objects in the performance space into speakers. Tables, chairs, trashcans and windows come to life in a chorus of electronic chirping, buzzing and spinning drones.

Kandal Music

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Indian Folk Music From Uttar Pradesh has one track called “Kandal Music”. The liner notes describe a Kandal as “a huge, bugle-like instrument, about 6-feet long.” Anyone know where I can find more Kandal music?

Designing Sound: Artificial Sounds – Max patches

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I enjoyed reading Andy Farnell’s excellent Designing Sound book a few years ago. While working through the Practical Series examples he provides, I decided they would be more useful for me as Max patches. When it comes to coding and algorithms, I also know that I learn better by going slowly and working step-by-step, so I decided to port the patches from Pd to Max.

A few disclaimers and caveats:

  • Many of these patches rely on abstractions that Farnell or I created. Download the Sound Design Practical Series helper files
  • Some of these patches require gen~, particularly to realize the rzero and rpole filters.
  • Filter topologies differ between the programs. My goal was to get something working in Max, not necessarily to exactly match Parnell’s Pd patch. Therefore, some patches could benefit from a close comparison with the Pd version and from tuning by ear.
  • Not everything initializes properly. Consult the text for reasonable starting values, or experiment to find your own.

Download the Sound Design Practical Series – Artificial Sounds