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StoreTags: fft, ambient, noise, space
Author: flies on January 24 2007
--> I've been wanting to make a song based on fft artifacts and this is it. Everything in the song is based on gunk spewed out by adobe audition's noise reduction algorithm (which is actually rather good, these were like -40/60 db before renormalizing and then using the noise reductino to remove the dithering noise)

the song is 6 minutes long and rather quiet, mostly ;)

harsh criticism is welcome, adulatory poetry is also welcome.
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01/24/07 +  mlbot
OMG

Jazz has its "no, man, its the notes that he's NOT playing that make this sooo goood"

now experimental/glitch/lowercase/ambient has "No, man, its the partials that AREN'T playing that make this soooo goood"

And here are those partials.


Cool idea.
Did you write the original noise-reduced song (that these were stripped from) with this concept in mind?
What did, or would you do next time, when writing song A that would make song B (the noise-reduction leftover song) more interesting??

For instance, if you added a distortion plugin and slowly turned it up, would that add more sound to song B?
Ring Mod? Lo-fi? Stereo-enhancement plugins?
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01/24/07 +  astroid
rad

this sounds like soundhack detritus, too:

lovely
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01/24/07 +  AtlusZero
Sounds like the pic u posted with it. At a distance; dreamy, beautiful. But it is a stellar nursury after all.
THe quiet part is sweet. The louder part throws a sence of disorientation and confusion.
Well done.
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01/24/07 +  Roshi
I love playing with the noise reduction algo...you can almost use it as a time modulated selective filter.

This reminds me a lot of forbidden planet...neat.
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01/24/07 +  flies
i should perhaps clarify that this isn't just one big fft artifact. i started with some oddness and then went to town doing dsp and stuff, then layered the results. the raw material was mainly between 12 and 20 khz, so the bass stuff is just that pitched way down and filtered.

some interesting questions you raise, mlbot. i honestly don't even remember what the original source material was, so it's a little hard to answer your questions very specifically. in general, when your 'noise' reference is a normal sound, what comes out of the noise reduction is pretty fucked and sounds like fft noise.

one fun thing to do is to use something like mda tracker or subsynth or some kind of pitch tracking plugin on fft noise, which tends to accentuate the louder partials. then you put the result through 100% wet reverb and you get a buzzing field of crickets with occasional notes popping in and out of the static.
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01/24/07 +  astroid
really

this is soooo beautiful
Recent blogs: ten year goal reached, generative music speculations pt. #fu, thank you  

01/24/07 +  utofbu
very fantastic. I love your method here. Taking advantage of what exists at the thresholds of hearing and working magic on it. I really love the tones that come off as harmonically distorted. The tones that detune in random ways are also super sweet to hear.

the prickly static. wtf is that? It sounds like hail hitting an aluminum roof
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01/24/07 +  Artsigreg
the sounds are very movie background and terrific.
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01/24/07 +  jdg
i admire your ablility to avoid reverbing it out.
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01/24/07 +  zfigz
Well done indeed . . . feels so organic yet so synthetic in a way. I really like what you've done...

auditory poetry...
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01/25/07 +  flies
re reverb: i did use reverb to some extent (i think the first sample is quite wet with the verb), but overall i wanted to maintain the immediacy, the odd stereo spacing and specificity of the sounds, so i didn't want it to be too washed out.

the prickly static is some of that breathy sound put through cyanide2, which as you may know is a waveshaping distortion that allows you to control the waveshaping directly. i just found the critical volume and sent everything below that to zero. (does that make sense?)

thanks for all the positive comments! i'm slowly putting a demo together...
Recent blogs: no thanks, grade school, bohdan pacynsky  

01/25/07 +  nicknotis
This is fan-fucking-tastic Flies. There's so much detail in the partial frequencies of these sounds.

You're techniques are very interesting. I'm going to have to play more with noise reduction.

Can someone tell me what "fft" stands for?
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01/25/07 +  flies
tnx dood

fft = fast fourier transform. a mathematical technique which analyzes a sound in terms of frequencies. The basic theory is that a sound can be represented numerically as a sum of sine waves of various frequencies, and the 'fast fourier transform' is an algorithm that does the conversion. actually fft produces analysis data which tell a bank of sinewaves what to do, what the amplitude and phase for each sine should be, the process of converting the analysis data into sound is called 'resynthesis'.

the simplest use for a fft is just to analyze the sound then resynthesize it. but you can manipluate the anlysis data before resynthesis and that's where things start getting wacky. noise reduction algorithms basically do an analysis of a 'noise reference' and then do something like subtract that analysis data from your input. does that make sense?
Recent blogs: no thanks, grade school, bohdan pacynsky  

01/25/07 +  nagrom
Cometh and goeth.

Sounded a bit academic. A bit like, processing stuff. But there were some nice moments, and overall the sound was interesting.

There's a part a bit more than halfway where static is introduced and then it fades away. I liked this. I expected it to stay, but it retreated.
And the bouncing plinky sounds were just wonderful. I think you should take them and make a rhythmic piece.
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01/25/07 +  nicknotis
Thanks for the explanation Flies.

Nagrom was right. This does remind me of some academic stuff I've heard. But I happen to be someone who's totally interested in what the academics are doing. I suppose until recently they were the only ones doing serious work with fft.

Do we have any synthesis grad students (present or past) among us on this site?

Also, has anybody found decent plugins that do fft analysis?
Recent blogs: pitch wheel adjustments in Logic 8, cSound help!, Nick Notis album - Free  

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