Tag Archive for 'audio'

Tweet-a-Sound Ticks All The Boxes

Published on 25 April 2009 in music and software. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

If you love electronic music, Twitter and OS X, you need to download Tweet-a-Sound immediately. It’s a MAX/MSP-based synthesizer for OS X that’s tricked out to tweet! It’s a not sonic Twitpic, either. Rather than simply turn your creation into an audio file and linking to it, it sends it as text. If someone wants to hear the sound you’ve made, all they have to do is copy it from their web browser or Twitter client and paste it into Tweet-a-Sound. The application uses this long and rather cryptic string of numbers to set the appropriate parameters on the synth and play it.

You can produce sounds that last anywhere from 0.1 seconds all the way to a full minute. When you’re finished fiddling with frequencies and your waveform is ready for transmission, you can either send the tweet straight from Tweet-a-Sound or copy it and paste it into the Twitter client of your choice. Messages are prepended with #tas so that other synth geeks can find your work easily with a simple search.

I made a few sounds with it, the source of which you can also find with a Twitter search. I’ve also made mp3s of two of them if you’d just rather listen here.

The first sound is exactly how Tweet-a-Sound plays it, I only boosted the volume slightly in post-production.

Forecast For You From 127a

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For this next one, instead of making the sound and then playing it back once to record the direct output, I used Tweet-a-Sound to restart its playback periodically. I also changed parameters on the synth whilst it was playing. This audio file cannot be expressed in a tweet, of course, as only its initial settings can, but it shows that you can use the application for more than its main intended purpose.

The Dragon Kills St. George

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Mix-Up

Published on 9 February 2009 in music. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Ever since I first encountered scratch and sniff stickers as a kid, I was obsessed with sensory crossovers. If you could scratch a sticker to produce a scent, certainly you should be able to turn a photograph into a song or taste colours. Whilst I’ve only been able to accomplish the latter under the influence of at least a ten strip, there are loads of software options for mixing up sight and sound.

The latest entry in the synesthetic toolbox is Voice Draw, a fun little Flash application from Ze Frank. After accessing your computer’s microphone, it acts as an audio-controlled Etch-a-Sketch, using volume to determine whether it will change direction or continue drawing on its present course. With volume as the decisive factor, it’s less important what you say than it is how you say it. In order to draw anything specific, you’re probably going to have to go with gutteral proto-lingual tones.

When I discovered it yesterday morning, I immediately wanted to try it out. Since Rin was sleeping and I didn’t want to wake her with my best attempts at throat singing, I decided to feed it some pre-recorded sound from my speakers. The first mp3 I stumbled upon was The Kinks’ classic, “Lola”, which produced a rather pleasing horizontal squiggle when played at a medium volume:

Voice Drawing with LolaThis was nice and all, but I wanted to give it something slightly more sinister. Waking Rin up to the sounds of Throbbing Gristle didn’t seem wise either, so in the dulcet tones of William S. Burroughs I found a reasonable compromise. I recently picked up a 3 CD collection of his audio cut-up work entitled Real English Tea Made Here, and two pieces from the first disc, “Cut-ins with Dutch Schultz” and “23 Skidoo”, gave me this:

Voice Drawing with William S. Burroughs

“Cut-ins with Dutch Schultz” created the dark explosion in the upper-right, whilst “23 Skidoo” produced the spiral crash which makes up the majority of the image. I couldn’t believe how well the picture suited the sound and I’m eager to see what else I can make with it.

One of the commenters on Ze’s post left the program running for 24 hours in his flat just to see what the ambient noise of one day looked like. It was small but dense, which kinda made sense to me.

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William S. Burroughs – “23 Skidoo”:

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