Music, Sound, and New Media
Running audio out from the DAW and feeding back through outboard gear.
The main idea here is a feedback loop starting with output from my computer, running into a compressor, then to a reverb, then back to the compressor, then back to the reverb, etc.
0:00 Intro: The Plan
0:39 Digital Setup
1:18 Analog (Outboard) Setup
1:44 Demonstration
3:55 Next Steps and Considerations
4:31 Take 2
Check out more videos on audio cybernetics and feedback:
Video presentation I made for the 2024 “Explainable AI for the Arts” (XAIxArts) Workshop, part of the ACM Creativity and Cognition Conference 2024.
A lot of these points I’ve discussed elsewhere (see playlist below), but this quickie presentation brings together these ideas, focusing on the aesthetic potential of this approach.
Check out the complete playlist for more hands-on creation of neurons and neural networks:
Building a matrix mixer in Reaktor 6 primary, and then exploring its possibilities for sound design.
I’ve been a little obsessed with matrix mixers lately, because they feed my desire for unique sound design applications (and feedback). A matrix mixer is a combiner module that can route multiple inputs to multiple outputs, often allowing you to adjust how much of each input signal goes to each output. While sophisticated, they’re pretty easy to build in Reaktor or other software, and can maybe be useful for some next-level synthesis applications.
0:00 Intro / Why Matrix Mixers?
1:18 Starting the Build, Simple Sine Oscillator
2:50 Matrix Mixer Macro
3:55 Visible Ports for Panel Patching
5:37 First Mixer of the Matrix
9:46 Duplicating It for the Matrix
10:48 Matrix Mixer Basics
12:05 Delay and Feedback
15:29 Adding a Second Delay
18:44 END OF LESSON. Unless…
19:59 Adding Ring Modulation
21:43 Building a Complex Patch
24:45 Other Examples of Implementation
25:58 Final Thoughts, Next Steps
Beginning Reaktor 6 Tutorials:
Creating DAW-based feedback loops, then using side-chain compression to regulate them.
Here, working on a project with @SpectralEvolver , I show in Logic Pro X how we can use a compressor side-chained to a beat to control a feedback loop for some noisy, industrial sounding music that sounds evocative of the artist Emptyset. I found this was a great way to create a chaotic sound, but keep it under control (and out of the way of the drums).
0:00 Intro
0:29 The audio tracks
1:15 Side-chain compression
2:03 The feedback loop
3:13 Controlling the loop with compression
5:00 Emptset
5:13 Two aux tracks sending to each other
6:23 A note about time-based effects
6:50 Will it blow up?!
8:06 Closing, next steps
Check out Emptyset’s bandcamp here. Here’s Emptyset talking about their ionospheric propagation work, “Signal”:
More Logic Pro Tutorials from me here:
I’ve collected and edited some recordings I made with my “DAWless” mobile rig in Japan this summer.
It’s been interesting try to set something up that has the flexibility that I want, while still being portable enough not to take up too much space (and weight) in my luggage. Of course, as it’s often said, limitations can often lead to greater creativity.
In this setup I have my 54HP Eurorack (which can be battery powered if I want to play on top of a lookout tower somewhere), and my Arturia DrumBrute Impact. I do mixing with a little Mackie mixer, and recording with a Zoom H4N (which lets me record sound from the microphones at the same time as the line inputs).
Last year, some might remember, I went around with just the Eurorack synth (with some different modules in it–a benjolin in particular) and recorded my three-track “Ihatov MU” album. This year’s sessions were a fun extension of those ideas.
Perhaps I should do some performing out in New England in the next few months.
Building a comb filter in Pure Data Vanilla from scratch.
A comb filter is a filter created by adding a delayed signal to itself, creating constructive and destructive interference of frequencies based on the length of the delay. All we have to do is delay the signal a little bit, feed it back into itself (pre-delay), and we get that pleasing, high-tech robotic resonance effect.
There’s no talking on this one, just building the patch, and listening to it go.
0:00 Playing back a recorded file
0:35 Looping the file
1:00 Setting up the delay
2:08 Frequency controls for the filter
2:52 Setting the range
3:48 Automatic random frequency
4:25 Commenting the code
5:39 Playing with settings
More no-talking Pd patch from scratch:
For the last few years, I’ve been messing around with internet-based, no-input feedback loops in collaboration with Will Klingenmeier.
What does that mean? Why would I do that? What does it sound like? All those questions are answered in the brief PechaKucha below:
While I’m sure we’ll continue to mess with these ideas in the future, we’ve come to at least a short-term culmination of this project in a tape release of these experiments on bandcamp.
You can also retroactively join our “Tape Release Party” here:
To catch up on all of the previous experiments, check out this playlist:
Using the latency from videoconferencing software as a delay for feedback loops, this time with Kyma 7 processing the signal at both ends, creating (noisy) evolving sonic textures.
During the pandemic, conferencing software quickly became a required part of work and education culture.
Of course, this technology’s ability to keep us connected has been and important part of keeping people safe, but we’ve also discovered the quirks of this mode of communication. Being bound to this remote interaction inspires curiosity about its potential for collaborative creativity. Musicians have know for a while about the issues of internet latency in coordinating remote ensembles, but what if, instead of attempting to recreate the conditions of a traditional performance in this new medium, we embraced the “space” created by this conferencing software?
In this performance, the audio signal is sent between the two Kyma systems, creating a feedback loop.
Feedback loops, such as when we put a microphone close to a speaker, emphasize the resonant frequencies—the imperfections—of a system. As we know, the audio of conferencing software is an imperfect connection, with latency, filtering, and audio compression artifacts.
This conferencing-software feedback loop, then, emphasizes these imperfections, bringing out the character of this communication medium as an emergent soundscape.
More explanation of these pieces here:
Coding (well, “patching”) an artificial neural network in Pure Data Vanilla to create some generative ambient filter pings.
From zero to neural network in about ten minutes!
In audio terms, an artificial neuron is just a nonlinear mixer, and, to create a network of these neurons, all we need to do is run them into each other. So, in this video, I do just that: we make our neuron, duplicate it out until we have 20 of them, and then send some LFOs through that neural network. In the end, we use the output to trigger filter “pings” of five different notes.
There’s not really any kind of true artificial intelligence (or “deep learning”) in this neural network, because the output of the network, while it is fed back, doesn’t go back an affect the weights of the inputs in the individual neurons. That said, if we wanted machine learning, we would have to have some kind of desired goal (e.g. playing a Beethoven symphony or a major scale). Here, we just let the neural network provide us with some outputs for some Pure Data generative ambient pings. Add some delay, and you’re all set.
There’s no talking on this one, just building the patch, and listening to it go.
0:00 Demo
0:12 Building and artificial neuron
2:00 Networking our neurons
3:47 Feeding LFOs into the network
4:20 Checking the output of the network
5:00 Pinging filters with [threshold~]
8:55 Adding some feedback
10:18 Commenting our code
12:47 Playing with the network
Creating an artificial neuron in Pd:
Pinging Filters in Pd:
More no-talking Pure Data jams and patch-from-scratch videos: