News – Page 11 – Simon Hutchinson

Making a “Subharmonicon” in Reaktor

by Simon 25 October 2021No Comments

Building a subharmonic synthesizer in Native Instruments’ Reaktor 6 Primary inspired by instruments like the Mixtur-Trautonium and Moog Subharmonicon.

Subharmonics are frequencies that are whole-number divisions of a given frequency (in contrast to harmonics, which are whole number multiples of a frequency). While harmonics naturally occur as part of the timbre of a sound, subharmonics, when introduced, sound like distinct pitches, allowing you to create chords of harmonically-related notes.

This tutorial walks you through making a set of subharmonic oscillators and envelope filter like the ones on the Moog Subharmonicon.

More on harmonics and additive synthesis here.

Pd Patch from Scratch: Ring Modulation and Filterbank

by Simon 11 October 2021No Comments

A quick and easy Pure Data patch-from-scratch tutorial building another feedback loop with a delay and a ring modulator, this time with a fixed filter bank.

Inspired by the music of Jaap Vink, with three sine waves, a filterbank, a delay, and some feedback, we can make some slow evolving-complex and dynamic sounds.

In this patch we take a sine wave, ring modulate it, then ring modulate that result before running into a filterbank, delay, and then feeding it back on itself.

There’s no talking on this one, just building the patch, and listening to it go.

More feedback loops (in analog):

Understanding Granular Synthesis

by Simon 20 September 2021No Comments

Explaining granular synthesis and giving demonstrations with the Kyma GrainCloud and SampleCloud sound objects.

Granular synthesis is a synthesis technique where we can assemble new sounds from very short “grains” of sound. We can do this with wavetables or longer samples, breaking them down into these short grains before reconstituting them back together in unique ways. Because we can change all of these tiny parts that make up our new sounds, there are exciting opportunities for real time control and performance.

What’s Happening When Audio “Clips”? (Hard Clipping, Soft Clipping, & Harmonics)

by Simon 13 September 2021No Comments

Diving into “clipping” in audio, and thinking about the aesthetic possibilities of going beyond the limits of a system.

In this video, I use Audacity and Max/MSP to look at examples of both hard clipping and soft clipping, checking out the harmonic spectra of these distortions and thinking about how we can use clipping as an expressive tool in our compositions or sound design.

Subharmonics in Pure Data

by Simon 6 September 2021No Comments

Quick and easy Pure Data tutorial, making chords from subharmonics (like the Moog subharmonicon). The result is a kind of Coltrane-y generative music system.

Subharmonics are whole-number divisions of a frequency (as opposed to regular harmonics, which are whole-number multiples of a frequency). The resulting “subharmonic series” (or “undertone series”) is an inversion of the overtone series, with subharmonics getting closer the lower (i.e. higher division) that they are. Played together, these harmonics create harmonies quite distinct from those created with overtones.

I go up to the 9th subharmonic here, but of course you can just keep going.

There’s no talking on this one, just building the patch, and listening to it go.

“Clean” Sample Editing (Again)

by Simon 30 August 2021No Comments

I made a follow up/update to my video a couple years back about “clean” sample editing.

Taking the time to refine and polish the ingredients for our sampler instruments (or other sample-based synthesis) can lead to huge improvements in the final piece or project. I once again go through my framework for evaluating samples, and check out a bunch of examples and how they can be improved.

Commodore 64 Generative Sound Art

by Simon 27 August 2021No Comments

This program, by Noah Vawter, generates music by randomly writing values to the Commodore 64’s memory, specifically the parts dedicated for the C64’s SID (Sound Interface Device) chip. Keith Fullerton Whitman performed this piece on an emulator as a B-side on “hallicrafters, inc.” (2009).

My version seems to have a lot of clicks and pops, which I’m not sure is normal or not. My C64 is almost 40 years old after all.

Anyone try this with different results?

Sound Synthesis and MIDI Fundamentals Playlist

by Simon 9 August 2021No Comments

I’ve been adding a few videos to freshen up my synthesis and MIDI microlecture series, tuning it up for the coming academic year.

Check it out here for a complete(?) introduction to sound synthesis, from defining sound to modulation synthesis.

These lectures are an adaptation of lectures from a course I’ve been teaching for 13 years. I first taught it as a graduate student at the University of Oregon, then as faculty at the University of Montana, and I currently teach at the University of New Haven.

Of course these lectures have been continuously revised and refined over the years, but the fundamentals of synthesizing sound remain the same.

Asymmetrical Clipping in Pure Data

by Simon 2 August 2021No Comments

Asymmetrical clipping is clipping (truncation of a waveform), where the positive and negative amplitude peaks of a waveform are clipped to different values. This means we could clip the negative at -1, and the positive at -0.8 for example, and create some interesting harmonics.

This asymmetrical clipping is common in guitar effect pedals, since it’s relatively cheap to accomplish in electronics (with a few diodes). Unsurprisingly, it’s pretty easy to accomplish in Pd too, just using the [clip~] object. The fun part comes in deciding how we can use it musically.