Rude Octaves

Just hit play while you're reading this. It's good mood music.

I created this patch that isn't very performance-friendly, and needs some debugging (the random number generator provides the same number to all 16 patches) but still got a solid 8 1/2 minutes of waves from it. At its peak, there are 16 oscillators going at once, all at different frequencies. It works like this:

16 instances of this patch, 8 on the left and 8 on the right channel, all with independent volume controls. Each patch has a cosine wave at its own frequency: 12 Hz, in the picture. Then, there's a random-number function that picks a number from 0-15 (default) every 25 (default) milliseconds. You can hear, at the beginning, it's only a new number every 1000 milliseconds (one second), but that must be changed manually. Then, that number is x in the function 2^x.

So, you have a number (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, etc.) randomly generated to multiply your base frequency by. Your frequency (12, in this case) is then 12, 24, 48, 96, etc. Now--who knew?--those are all octaves. So, what you get is a randomly generated octave jump every 25 milliseconds, and instead of a particular melody you just get weird waves of harmony.

It begins with 1 Hz (frequencies are inaudible under about 20 Hz, so you get sort of this weird clicking instead for some of the parts), then you hear the 3 Hz (perfect fifth up) enter. Later, the 5 Hz (major third up) enters, and you've got this pretty triad. Eventually, the 7 Hz (lowered 7th), 9 Hz (perfect fifth of perfect fifth, a.k.a. roughly a major second), and 13 Hz (sort of a major sixth, but way cooler than your mother's major sixth) all enter.

I save the 11 Hz for towards the end--know why? Because it's amazing. It's probably one of the wildest notes of creation. I think of it as the bastard child of the harmonic series. At least we tried to accommodate roughly the major third (5/1), sixth (1/5), the perfect fifth (3/1), the dominant seventh (7/1)--but we didn't even bother with 11/1. It's almost exactly halfway between two equal-tempered (piano-scale) notes. And one of those notes we called "diablo en musica," the tritone. Needless to say, I love the eleventh harmonic.

I'm going to London tomorrow.

bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!

So I'm plunging headlong into sine waves, stacking them on top of each other and finding octaves and harmonics and exponential amplitudes with formulas like:

x^[10 * (y/20)], given that y is amplitude in decibels and x is amplitude in a decimal from 0-1.

I don't really understand it either, except that it is interesting how we hear volume on a logarithmic scale at log10, while we hear pitch at log2. Though pitches in the lower register can change pitch with a change of 10 Hz (55 Hz = A, 65 Hz = C, almost), pitches in the higher ranges take longer to shift (the same A-to-C interval would be 80 Hz at a higher range). It makes you (me) wonder if we see on this same scale: imagine a car hurtling towards you on a back road, a half-mile off. Now imagine a car hurtling towards you about 10 feet away. Aside from the clear terror you're feeling, the car seems to be going much faster when it's about to hit you.

(Aside: remember that scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail when the knight, I forget which one, is charging the camera in a continuous loop, then all of a sudden he is there and stabs the poor man? Clearly, they share my theory.)

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I just got my visa extended for the summer, so I'm a legitimate entity again. I'm starting my first interview Monday, going to London on Tuesday, interviewing again Wednesday, coming back Thursday, and interviewing again Friday, and probably Saturday as well. It seems like I'd be busy, but between sending out a few e-mails a day and going to at least one concert a week I still manage to spend most of my time learning to make noises on the keyboard.

The main purpose of the noises is for the Autopsy section of the opera, using the text of Jorie Graham's poem "San Sepolcro." The entire section will be voice and drones of spectral-tuned waves, very ambient. No need for an orchestra, just a laptop (maybe more than one, a laptop orchestra) and about a thousand speakers.

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I didn't know where to put this, but I thought it was funny. Finnegan's Wake in Wiki-format, so that you can add your own references for every single word or phrase. I read about five or six pages of it last night (on actual paper, from the library) but then when I pulled up the site it just made it less fun. If you read it aloud and don't click on the links it makes much more sense, or at least it's pretty. There's something to be said for picking apart every note/word of a great work, but it certainly helps to play/read it through once or twice to hear it.

The Harmonic of the Fundamental

If you take a particular signal (13 Hz, for example) and you multiply it by 2, you get an octave. If you multiply that by 3, you get a perfect fifth. If you multiply that by 5, you get a major third. If you multiply that by 72, you get the six octaves and a perfect fifth up from your original 13 Hz. If you plot a bunch of these on graph paper in colored pencils (to designate different wave forms), you get my day. Each horizontal square is one second; each vertical square is one harmonic (the first square is 13 Hz, second is 26 Hz, third is 39 Hz, etc.) Blue is a sine wave (obviously), orange is sawtooth, red is triangle, green is parabola, yellow is pulse, and brown is noise with an added sine wave for color. Brown only comes in the 64th harmonic, by the way.

And if you keep wondering to yourself, Why do I keep reading this blog, when it's usually unintelligible rambling about waves and ultimately irritating noises?, then I'll tell you why: Cousin photos.



It's only a minute long; it's not like you haven't listened to more irritating things for 60 seconds.



http://www.willamette.edu/~acsmith/struktur.mp3

Omelets and music--what else is there?

1. Omelets:

I cannot seem to get the omelet to fold over properly and seal, without breaking. I left out the spinach today (added basil) to try to reduce the mass, but left in the tomatoes. Really, tomatoes are necessary. The eggs broke over them, however. Left over roasted garlic (from the hummus), tomatoes, basil, pretty good omelet all things told. However, the lack of spinach really creates a void. The basil does not account for the mass, the crunchy nature of the spinach leaf. It struck me: in attempting to contain perfection, must we inevitably leave something out? Conversely, in attempting to contain all that we wish to account for, must we be satisfied with the always-broken nature of the container?

Yes, I just implicitly compared breakfast to philosophy.

2. Music:

I have two choices for music: my computer speakers, which are a bit tinny and low-volume, do not give the total-immersion effect that I'm used to; my headphones, which have something wrong with the wire and only work in one channel, or go out of phase when the wires cross. Seeing as how the headphones are more expensive than I'd like to admit, I'll have to repair the wire once I get home. I might save the broken wire to get crazy noises some time. I'm used to listening to music constantly, from large studio monitors designed to give the most accurate response for mixing and balance. But, since I couldn't bring my mixer and giant speakers trans-Atlantic, I'll have to make do with what I have. Before, either Luke or I would always have music playing through them, and I would cannibalize the library's classical and jazz collections for a new sound.

The Trinity music library is all digitized and huge, but I can't seem to properly listen to it, not to mention that my hard drive is full. This is a bit painful, and each time I get something new I must delete something else, or else my computer slows to a halt due to lack of memory and breaks, spilling eggs all over the kitchen table.