Ableton Forum

Thought some of you might find these sounds useful

For the past 4 months I've been working on a project called Tectonic. It's a real time seismic analysis "synthesizer". Basically, it eats real time earthquake data and then creates sounds based on those data. See the prototype here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2s9viZ-0KM

It's been creating some great sounds lately. I've been posting them daily in high quality 24 bit 48k on a dedicated SoundCloud account with free downloads. It's not for everyone, but if you are into strange textures and soundscapes I'm sure you'll dig it: http://soundcloud.com/dailyearthquake

Enjoy!

micah

Hello Micah,

Very interesting experiment you have constructed. Would you be willing to elaborate more on which "sound synthesis" parameters we are hearing manipulated in these intriguing examples you've posted? Which instruments are employed and what sort of parameters are being manipulated? Lastly, how does the data you mention in your explanation play a roll in manipulating those parameters? Is everything coming out of the feed as integer only, and if so how is this affecting the sound we hear. I became curious because of the seemingly complex patch you designed there. I am very curious to know more about what is happening in the patch (not necessarily how the patch is programmed rather more from a sound synthesis perspective). Thanks for any information. Also, I look forward to MAXFuel! Cheers

PS. the recent Bodhisphere pack is truly wonderful and inspiring

Very nice. I like the sounds.

I can imagine a public installation with enough speakers to encircle the listening environment, like a true equator.

Thanks for making the download un-compressed audio. Wish they were much longer, I could listen to them for quiet a while!

Reminds me a bit of the NASA Voyager space craft recordings series. Hunt them down if you haven't heard them, truly wonderful.

that's a total abundance of awesome.

jsn wrote:Hello Micah,
Would you be willing to elaborate more on which "sound synthesis" parameters we are hearing manipulated in these intriguing examples you've posted?

The video documents the original prototype that used Live. In that example, I was using Max and Jitter to parse the data and redistribute it as MIDI. There is also a branch that writes the file for Google Earth to read. In Live, Sampler was set up in a 'granular' sort of way with frames (loop lengths) jitter rates (LFO rate) density (polyphony), filtering, FM modulation etc... The waveform used was actually a recording of the 2004 tsunami as picked up by underwater nuclear monitoring microphones.

Now it is set up with a full blown Kyma system (that's what is actually posted on SoundCloud), so we really are dealing with more 'organic' synthesis. Max is only doing the numbers - no sound. The XML feed enters a Jitter object and is parsed into various components such as earthquake magnitude, elevation, latitude, longitude, elapsed time since the last quake, time of day, and a bunch of conditionals that modulate (or don't) various things. These data establish a few fundamental things in Kyma so it can do what it does best. Some of the data set the partials for a spectrum to be resynthesized, others set parameters a modal filter for physical modeling (although I'm having some trouble getting that one to work and others set modulation rates. There's also a lot of granular resynthesis happening. It's a work in progress, but "works" nonetheless...

wow what a fascinating concept. I really dig the idea behind this, it is in effect the earth's movements interpreted as noise, which is really neat.

Best

This is insanely cool. It has rhythm and is somewhat steady in form for extended periods of time, yet it's never quite the same and has plenty of randomness. It's like a complex version of a heartbeat. THe earth's heartbeat. Amazing.

oblique strategies wrote:Very nice. I like the sounds.

Thanks for making the download un-compressed audio. Wish they were much longer, I could listen to them for quiet a while!.

Stay tuned for the Tectonic LP and some programmed sound content later this year!

amazing!

good work

oblique strategies wrote:Reminds me a bit of the NASA Voyager space craft recordings series. Hunt them down if you haven't heard them, truly wonderful.

I was thinking the same.

This is awesome Micah! Thanks so much! I will be using this stuff for sure!

Very neat idea and work. Perhaps the data flux cound be slowed down on some controls to create some slower 'subterranean' movement ?

micah frank wrote:

oblique strategies wrote:Very nice. I like the sounds.

Thanks for making the download un-compressed audio. Wish they were much longer, I could listen to them for quiet a while!.

Stay tuned for the Tectonic LP and some programmed sound content later this year!

Will do. Great news!

This is really great - not only does it sound good (I like abstract ambient music), and produce sounds which are useful musically, but the sense that the sounds begin their life in the planet itself gives it added power.

thanks all. glad so many are downloading it and i hope you find it useful. working on fixing some of the resonant modes so that there's more variation in the output. also will be trying out some different synthesis methods. this is a constant work in progress without any apparent end so please keep checking back as it evolves.

micah

Cool idea man.

Thanks for sharing