How To Do Spectral Morphing

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
pencilrocket
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Re: How To Do Spectral Morphing

Post by pencilrocket » Tue Sep 13, 2011 5:49 pm

Kruddler wrote:I can't believe this is not a standard featue of DAWs or at least samplers. Have I been missing something? Are there features to do this lurking in Simpler/Sampler?

Anyway, judging by the results so far, this could be the key to understanding all my problems.
Those softsynth that has additive resynthesis engine work as you discribed. Alchemy, Vertigo, Harmor and Poseidon do.

Daws have other appropriate CPU friendly feature called Elastique. It doesn't give better result than that of additive resynthesis but is more CPU friendly. That's why it is used for basic sequencing.
Last edited by pencilrocket on Wed Sep 14, 2011 4:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

Syncretia
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Re: How To Do Spectral Morphing

Post by Syncretia » Tue Sep 13, 2011 10:41 pm

I haven't tried Vertigo, Hamor and Poseidon but will look in to them. Always on the lookout for more VSTs in the area. I couldn't get Alchemy to make the kinds of sounds I wanted. It's no offense to the VST itself. It's probably great, but it just personally do what I wanted straight off the bat. I'm getting better results with this max patch so far. Probably because it only does one thing: shift pitch. I probably could have done that in Alchemy but all the knobs distracted me.

I'll be looking in to Camtasia over the next week or so so I can start posting videos of what I am working on.

Also, I'm now finding that I don't really need "morphing". NI Komplete 7 came with a library called Acoustic Refractions. The actual Absynth patches aren't the greatest. However, the samples themselves are great for what I am trying to do. It has things like Bowed Pianos etc. You can get great harmony out of a marble rolling in a glass bowl if you pitch the second voicing up a fifth. The Acoustice Refractions samples were probably made with EFT in Kontakt which I mentioned a few pages back. The point is, it is possible to do the morphing part outside of the actual performance.
Daws have other appropriate CPU friendly feature called Elastique. It doesn't give better result than that of additive resynthesis but is more CPU friendly. That's why it is used for basic sequencing.
I am a bit perplexed why Samplers don't have a simple toggle button for pitch shifting: Frequency/FFT. But anyway. It's not like FFT is really that hard on your CPU anyway.
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Syncretia
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Re: How To Do Spectral Morphing

Post by Syncretia » Wed Sep 14, 2011 7:05 am

Found these today:
http://www.somasa.qub.ac.uk/~elyon/Lyon ... P/FFTease/

Might be able to use them .Let's see.
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Syncretia
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Re: How To Do Spectral Morphing

Post by Syncretia » Wed Sep 14, 2011 10:06 pm

The more I read an investigate, the more leads I find.

Someone on the IDM Forums mentioned csounds:
http://www.csounds.com/downloads

on this thread (same topic):

http://www.idmforums.com/showthread.php?t=88032

Have you ever heard the words musique concrete being thrown around? I've heard it lots. But I never knew what it meant. Anyway, apparently this thing is the successor to Musique Concrete. Apparently Cecilia built on csounds can do spectral morphing. But, as mentioned, spectral morphing is only one part of the puzzle. Kontakt does a form of morphing (whether or not it is spectral is up for debate).
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Syncretia
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Re: How To Do Spectral Morphing

Post by Syncretia » Sat Sep 17, 2011 7:00 am

I know how this video works now.

http://www.podcomplex.com/blog/amon-tob ... continuum/

He sample 3 things. A light bulb, a spring, and an old chair. He first plays the light bulb with FFT transposition (as my patch does). He then plays the spring in the same way. Then between this and the next scene, he morphs the bulb with the spring (Probably using Kontakt or something similar). He, then plays the morphed as above. Then he plays the chair sample. Then, he sticks some granular delay on the chair sample. Sounds like the "Grains" preset in Ableton.

Holy @#$#. I think I've got it pegged. Now, to do my own shit. I almost have all the tools ready now.
Download and listen @ http://www.syncretia.com

agent314
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Re: How To Do Spectral Morphing

Post by agent314 » Sat Sep 17, 2011 6:23 pm

This thread is fun to watch. I only know about 30% of what's going on, but your progress is weirdly compelling nevertheless.

piZMo
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Re: How To Do Spectral Morphing

Post by piZMo » Sun Sep 18, 2011 12:30 pm


Syncretia
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Re: How To Do Spectral Morphing

Post by Syncretia » Sun Sep 18, 2011 12:57 pm

Holy @#$@! That looks @#$#ing awesome!

I'm glad I have a Mac. I'll download that tomorrow.

Anyway, I finally got my first polyphonic, pitch shifting sample player working. I'm still puzzled as to why Simpler/Sampler don't have FFT transposition by default but anyway...

I'll be soon posting this patch on MaxForLive.com.

Once I have figured how to do spectral morphing, I will add it to the patch I made. That will almost round this off and basically I will have done what I set out to do.

Yes. I understand that some people already understand a lot about this stuff. But, what is unfolding now is a toolset in MaxForLive that will actually eventually allow anyone with MaxForLive to recreate the sorts of sounds on the album ISAM. It's not that this can't be done already, but there's no single VST as it stands right now that brings it all together. I believe that the basics should be together in a month or two and then what is left is some of the more complex effects (but these might come in the vst mentioned above).
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Syncretia
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Re: How To Do Spectral Morphing

Post by Syncretia » Mon Sep 19, 2011 11:46 am

Update.

My max patch now is a polyphonic sampler which uses FFT to transpose the notes. It now takes two samples and I can morph between them. However, the result is not great. It sounds like two samples vocoded together with a crappy vocoder.

I've got to figure out to do more modern spectral morphing in Max/MSP. Anyway, if you can help, look here:

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php? ... 7#p1333447
Download and listen @ http://www.syncretia.com

littlepig
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Re: How To Do Spectral Morphing

Post by littlepig » Mon Sep 19, 2011 12:00 pm

In your first post you said
What I want to do is take a short audio sample (knitting needle) morph in some harmonic sound, and then be able to play those notes on my midi keyboard. Sounds complicated I know. Does anyone have any clues?
This might be rather crude but you could take your sample, stretch it hundreds of times (using PaulStretch http://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch/) then load that into a sampler... you could then play with multi samples and sample start and end points to change the harmonic content

Syncretia
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Re: How To Do Spectral Morphing

Post by Syncretia » Mon Sep 19, 2011 10:25 pm

Possibly, but the problem with this idea is that it does not isolate spectral content. You would end up just mixing the spectral content of both samples. What I think needs to happen is to remove some spectral content from one sample, and add spectral content from another. If you use the program SPEAR, you can actually see the spectral content.

But, I think pid has nailed it here:

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php? ... 1#p1333661

Well, when I say nailed it. He's given me about a dozen new things to explore.
Download and listen @ http://www.syncretia.com

Rxkimo
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Re: How To Do Spectral Morphing

Post by Rxkimo » Mon Sep 19, 2011 11:43 pm

agent314 wrote:This thread is fun to watch. I only know about 30% of what's going on, but your progress is weirdly compelling nevertheless.
+1

pencilrocket
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Re: How To Do Spectral Morphing

Post by pencilrocket » Tue Sep 20, 2011 7:32 am

Kruddler wrote:Update.

My max patch now is a polyphonic sampler which uses FFT to transpose the notes. It now takes two samples and I can morph between them. However, the result is not great. It sounds like two samples vocoded together with a crappy vocoder.

I've got to figure out to do more modern spectral morphing in Max/MSP. Anyway, if you can help, look here:

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php? ... 7#p1333447
People who tried to do morphing two sound said there are less chance to get good sound from it. There are software called kyma which the developer claims it can do morphing but it needs user to specify the situation of the audio by manually editing envelope of the gain, atack ,fequency and etc.

It is realated with the pid's post in the other thread you told.
they had been prepared beforehand using non-real-time processing. using non-real-time you can easily process your audio then use sample and stretching etc in real time.

Syncretia
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Re: How To Do Spectral Morphing

Post by Syncretia » Wed Sep 21, 2011 12:13 am

Yes. I have posted lengthy rants about Kyma. You'll have to go back a few pages.
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Syncretia
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Re: How To Do Spectral Morphing

Post by Syncretia » Wed Sep 21, 2011 1:04 am

http://www.michaelnorris.info/software/ ... ctral.html

Even if you have no interest in FFT, spectral morphing or any of the stuff I have been talking about, you have to download these effects. Top notch, crazy FX that are just mind-blowing.

+1 on this

+ a @##$ing million on this!!!!
Download and listen @ http://www.syncretia.com

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