The last two days has been spent mainly relaxing but also reading Microsound by Curtis Roads (BTW: the book is about to be released as a paperback) and making an OSX port of CloudGenerator. the implementation is done using Max and Jitter. I’m using Jitter float32 matrixes for audio buffers in order to be able to access and write asynchronously to the buffers. Most of the features of the original CloudGenerator are implemented and working but some ar still missing:
- Saving as text file.
- Using other wavetables than sine waves. The problem about this part is that I so far haven’t found a way to use lookup tables in Jitter for anything but char matrixes. I’m sure I’ll find a way around it though.
- Granulation of sound files. So far I’m only able to do synthetic granulation
- Some interface issues still have to be dealt with.
Once all of this is done it will be (easily) possible to extend it. Some of the extensions I’d like to do are:
- Working on pitch as Hz or MIDI pitches.
- Working on amplitude as percentages (linear) or decibel values.
- Implement additional time functions. Curtis Roads’ program offered linear development only.
- Implementing different statistical distributions. I’ll use Litter extensively for this.
- Possibilities for working on multi-channel systems.
- Grainlet implementation (frequency and amplitude can change dynamicly within one grain).
Some additional features are implemented already:
- No more 16 bit signed integer limit on the number of grains that can be generated.
- Different sampling rates.
- It’s possible to generate files lasting more than 47 sec.
- More flexible panning control.
- Files can be saved in different audio formats not only 16 bit AIFF.
The final result will be released as a collective or standalone and also as Max patches. This way it’s possible to do further extensions and alterings of it depending on one’s needs. I hope to have finished implementing all features of the original CloudGenerator application in the next two weeks or so.
I’m going to use this for generating material for an installation in collaboration with Asbjørn Flø for Ultima in October. I’m also planning to use it for a number of other projects.
