Re: A little original music, and a humble thanks for the language and the inspiration on this list from a grateful SC user.

Thanks for the support all.

Bobby, i'll put the code on github for you.
Song here: https://github.com/ArthurStart/supercollider-projects/blob/master/TheyWereOfTheSun11_FullCircle.scd
HOA encoder class here: https://github.com/ArthurStart/HomebrewHOA/blob/master/Classes/HBHOAEncoder.sc

(N.B. the code is a little hacky. To get it to work, you'll need to send it MIDI CC data, and mix down the seven independent stereo outputs, or edit "Out.ar(2*planet_spec[\bus_index], binauralSig);" to send them all to 0.)

The basic signal flow is:

  *   Seven mono sources.
  *   A simple model of the K90 system, assuming perfect circular orbits, determines an angle, distance, and relative velocity to seven of the planets, from the eighth.
  *   Relative velocity is used to calculate doppler shift (with an arbitrary 'artistic' constant), which is fed back to the synth as a factor modulating frequency. Distance just modulates amplitude, because I guess there are no other proximity effects in space. (Although actually, now that I think of it, some funky dispersion relations could sound interesting). Angle is fed to the HOA encoder.
  *   HOA encoder spits out 36 channels (per planet), (although only 11 are nonzero for sources in the horizontal plane). These are sent to a HOA-to-binaural decoder, which convolves each one with an impulse response recorded on a fake-head-and-lots-of-speakers rig, to get two channels from each planet, which are mixed as a normal stereo mix.

There's nothing fancy going on. The next level would be ambisonic reverb, but that's beyond me for now!

I had lots of trouble with audio glitches in the HOA encoding, which is why I wrote my own encoder. However, in the end I think my problems were due to numerical issues in how I calculated the angle, which was all solved by scaling my distance units to something more sensible. If you're wanting to play with HOA, I hear there's been lots of work recently on the SC-HOA library, and you're probably best off using it.

However, if you're interested in how the encoder works, have a look at my code, it's really quite simple! The Wikipedia page here [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambisonic_data_exchange_formats] has everything you need to implement one. It's just a lot of trig and constants, and making sure you're using the right convention for the order of the components, and the type of spherical harmonic, etc. Rather than do all the maths myself, I wrote a little python script to calculate all the constant and do all the trig calculus. I wouldn't recommend doing that by hand! I seem to have lost the script, but in case you want to make an encoder that goes up to arbitrarily high order, let me know and i'll see if I can find it.

________________________________
From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of [email protected] <[email protected]>
Sent: 04 March 2021 01:32
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [sc-users] A little original music, and a humble thanks for the language and the inspiration on this list from a grateful SC user.

Hi Arthur -
 How did you do those fifth-order ambisonics? They sound great!

On Tue, Mar 2, 2021 at 1:35 PM <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hi Arthur

Congratulations!!!

Amazing sounds!!!! I really enjoy it!!!!
Thanks for sharing!!!

Cheers from Brasil!!!

Rael


Em seg., 1 de mar. de 2021 às 19:20, <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> escreveu:
Thanks for sharing: I enjoyed these tracks.

On Mon, 1 Mar 2021 at 12:34, <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hi all,

Though i've mostly been a lurker on this list, I wanted to say thanks to all the active members here for the inspiration on what can be done with SC.

I'm not sure if self-promotion is generally appreciated, but i've enjoyed hearing the creations that are occasionally posted. So if you'll excuse my self-indulgence, here's my first (but not last) release of experimental/drone/ambient music using SC, based on the Kepler 90 exoplanetary system:

Bandcamp: https://duskazwandilaz.bandcamp.com/album/kepler-90
Video (not SC!) on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uthpg0Rk8mo&t=17s
Or Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/0EJNK16ImOagPGHUz7nLEl?si=AVcUgwDUQHOf4dHBv3oYsA


Track one is an SC performance, plus heavily manipulated field recording. It uses twenty instances of a synth UGen with random parameters, pitches controlled semi-stochastically. The effect is quite harsh and unsettling.

Track two is much mellower. It uses a simple 3D model of the K90 system (all in sclang), each planet represented by a synth voice, spatialised using 5th order ambisonics. I coded my own encoder, as I had some problems with SC-HOA, however this was before the recent update. It's rendered to binaural using HOABinaural. I use Reaper as a MIDI sequencer, sending two CC channels of expression control to each 'planet', and the two channels of binaural audio per planet are sent from SC back to Reaper for multitrack recording and mixing. Took me a while to get Reaper and SC playing nicely, but once I was comfortable with JACK (on macOS), this worked surprisingly well.


I've been amazed at what SC can do. For years, i've been bored of the limitations of acoustic instruments, and i've had ideas for complex musical systems but no way to realise them. SC feels like a natural and intuitive way to realise music now, and I only wish i'd discovered it earlier. So, thank you for the work that's gone into developing this incredible language, and for all the users who are sharing their work, their problems, and their solutions on this list.

Cheers!
Arthur

[X]<https://open.spotify.com/album/0EJNK16ImOagPGHUz7nLEl?si=AVcUgwDUQHOf4dHBv3oYsA>
Kepler 90<https://open.spotify.com/album/0EJNK16ImOagPGHUz7nLEl?si=AVcUgwDUQHOf4dHBv3oYsA>
Duskaz Wandilaz · Album · 2021 · 2 songs.
open.spotify.com<http://open.spotify.com>



--
--Bobby D.--