8bit isn't usually my thing, but I was fascinated with how very simple mathematical formulas could create complex music as described in http://countercomplex.blogspot.com/2011/10/algorithmic-symphonies-from-one-line-of.html . 

I tried my hand at using their online tool at http://wurstcaptures.untergrund.net/music/ and this is what I came up with:
Left: t * (t>>(t>>13)%16)
Right: (t+4000) * ((t+4000)>>((t+4000)>>12)%16)


I couldn't capture from that site; I recreated the algorithm in C to write a WAV file usng the glorious libsndfile, and then added a fadeout with Audacity.

8bit algorithmic composition

I've got a new technique for producing drone-like sounds: I take the spectral signature of a simulated plucked string and travel sinusoidally back and forth through time in it. What I'm doing so far is very computationally intensive and doesn't give me much compositional control. 

This is just a sampling of the technique which has different string spectra weaving in and out independently -- I'm working on figuring out how to get more reasonable rendering times (at least for "drafts") and then I will have something more involved.

Drone Experiment

Our piano has some unfortunate problems; a few of the keys buzz and my regular tuner said he'd have to call a specialist to deal with those. So it's like a "prepared piano" except it was not done on purpose. I also sat down with no preconcieved notions of what I was going to play. The title, "Unprepared Piano", is a pun which refers to both of these.

I recorded this with my Zoom H4N, and the only post-processing I did was adding some compression and cutting silence from the ends, both done with SoX.

Forgive my indulgence in posting this entire extended piece, which would no doubt be better edited down to a few representative sections. If I were to judge which bits were worthy of inclusion, though, I'd probably end up throwing the whole thing out.

Unprepared Piano

Composed and performed by my 5-year-old son, Duane Cahoon.

Bluebird Socks

I used my Korg NanoKontrol2 -- a device usually used for mixing with a DAW -- to control sine waves for additive synthesis. Each slider controlled the volume of a sine wave pair, and the corresponding dial controlled the beat frequency created by that pair.  Frequencies were every third harmonic of a base 48Hz tone, from a low of 144Hz to a high of 1152Hz.

Every third harmonic drone

The first "every third harmonic drone" I uploaded was soon after I got my code to work, before I actually got to play with the instrument enough to get a feel for what I could do. It was also artificially short.

Now that I've played with it a bit more, here's a piece I'm happier with.


Every third harmonic drone revisited

Please see the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykBF56bl3Hs . A detailed description can be found there.


Pseudononszhizophonic (Please see the video in the description!)

My attempt at composing using the traditional music notation software Musescore. My son Henry suggested the title, since he said it sounded like a generic medieval combat game soundtrack.

Legend Of Genericland

This is my older son Henry's composition in Musescore -- a theme he wrote for his younger brother Duane. He started with a melody on piano, but once he transcribed it into Musescore he was fascinated that he could compose a piece too complex for him to actually play.

Duane's Theme (by Henry Cahoon)

Trying to do microtonal stuff in Ardour using the Yoshimi plugin. Unhappy with the level of control I seem to have, but I'm not sure if that's me or my tools at this point. In any case, here's a little phrase.

A thing

It's getting more and more like music ...

The Sevens

The Shumann Resonance (also called "the resonant frequency of the planet") is being measured at a Russian observatory at Tomsk, whose website publishes a new graph every day. Unable to get the data directly from them, I've been downloading these graphs (frequency: http://sosrff.tsu.ru/?page_id=9 and amplitude: http://sosrff.tsu.ru/?page_id=12) and I wrote some Python code to extract the data from the graphs (a task complicated by their use of anti-aliasing).

Having extracted the data for a time period from 2017-05-08 to 2017-06-28, I was able to render this as sound.

This sonification is a very direct process: I raised the frequencies by 4 octaves to place them in the audible range and I rendered the change in the frequencies and amplitudes at 30000x faster than they actually occurred, contracting nearly two months of data into this two and a half minute piece.

Shumann Resonance At Tomsk

This is just me playing around with Csound's foscil opcode. I love the bell-like tones, but it's going to be hard to integrate this type of sound into just harmonic pieces.

I am pondering this deeply.

UFO sounds

Acoustic improviasation using Loopy on the iPad. I made some loops with mandola and overlayed bass flute on top.

Mandola+bass flute 2013-05-05

This is my solo, with http://soundcloud.com/megheery playing the Tibetan Singing Bowl.

Flute solo with Tibetan Singing Bowl (Minneapolis Flute Circle 2013-06-03)

This has become a dumping ground for every little experiment I've ever done, and stuff from my kids, too.

One day I'll produce some decent music, so stay tuned.

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