two-part counterpoint with normal amplitude envelopes

Square wave + LFSR noise, randomly varying noise period

Yamaha SY77 + PitchLoop89 &  ProphetVS + H3000.  Prophet 12. Long held notes and lot of envelopes and LFOs.

21apr15

I'm working on designing an Arduino shield to work with old AY-3-8912 PSG chips. Here's the results of my fist tests interfacing the chip with the Arduino. The was based of Octobit's work on the AY-3-8910 (available at <a href="http://playground.arduino.cc/Main/AY38910#.UwWYkZE2zwK">http://playground.arduino.cc/Main/AY38910#.UwWYkZE2zwK</a>), which was based off of kalshagar's work on the related Yamaha YMZ294 (available at <a href="http://kalshagar.wikispaces.com/Arduino+and+a+YMZ294">http://kalshagar.wikispaces.com/Arduino+and+a+YMZ294</a>). I had to modify Octobit's work to accommodate the different pin arrangement of the AY-3-8912 and correct the wiring of the 2MHz clock (his diagram shows a Vcc line going to ground). I modified his starter code to write a few little tunes and play around with various aspects of the AY-3-8912's synthesis.

0:00-0:08 : channel A playing a dinky square wave melody with no amplitude envelope
0:08-0:24 : a classic PSG timbre trick. This series of chips can produce three channels that contain square waves, linear feedback shift register (LFSR) noise, or both. One global amplitude envelope system could be applied to all of the channels. To get around the timbre limitations of just square waves + noise, composers would apply the global amplitude envelope very fast to get crude but varied AM timbres. Here, I've applied this technique very inelegantly by applying a very fast triangle wave amplitude modulator at random frequencies which change every few notes. It can actually be used to great effect by controlling the modulation:carrier ratio to place sidebands carefully (just like in FM synthesis).
0:24-0:40 : The same trick, with the melody at a lower octave.
0:40-1:02 : Using channels A & B to play a Bach-ish one-to-one counterpoint, with a more normal global amplitude envelope.
1:02-1:12 : Same thing, sped up really fast to give a Galaga-style sound effect.
1:12-1:22 : Same thing, but with the original melody. This one actually sounds a lot like Galaga...
1:22-1:54 : The original Melody, but with noise enabled on channel A. Each note, the period of the LFSR changes, giving different noise timbres each time.

The AY-3-8912 was a popular 3-voice PSG chip from the 1980s, which was used in the Intellivision and Vectrex video game consoles, as well as various arcade games and home computers. Even early on in the chip’s history, it was popular for hobbyists and hackers (as shown by at least one magazine article on its use in the context of the Atari). Today, several people have built off of early projects and maintain ongoing discussions focused on using the AY-3-8912 with microcontrollers. The sound of the chip remains popular enough that is has even been digitally modelled as part of Chipsounds, a commercial digital audio workstation (DAW) plugin by Plogue Art et Technologie and MAME (the multiple arcade machine emulator).

AY-3-8912 + Arduino, First Tests

This track is from the album Electronic Masters, Vol. 3 and is available for purchase on CD Baby here: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/electronicmastersvol3

GATES by John Nichols III

"funny kind of animated being..." for viola (and electronic)

Premiered at Szene 10, February 10, 2024 IG @filumkonzerte
Ruben Philipp, composer and live electronics
Jing Chen, viola

A courteous occasion makes a paper show no such occasion and this makes readiness and eyesight and likeness and a stool. 
- Gertrude Stein. "A Paper" from Tender Buttons (1914)

The art of memory is like an inner writing. Those who know the letters of the alphabet can write down what is dictated to them and read out what they have written. Likewise those who have learned mnemonics can set in places what they have heard and deliver it from memory. 'For the places are very much like wax tables or papyus, the images like the letters, the arrangement and disposition of the images like the script, and the delivery is like the reading.' - Francis A. Yates. The Art of Memory (1966)

dynamics and intonation are explicitly left to the performer.[...]

this piece can be performed with or without the involvement of electronic facilities (analog or digital) interacting with or accompanying the rendition. [..]

there are two versions of the score [...] version a) should be consulted for practising and rehearsing, while b) [being devoid of most symbolic information included in version a)] should be considered as being the score to be use in (public) performances. 
- excerpt from the performance notes of "funny kind of animated being..."

Ruben Philipp: funny kind of animated being… (2024) Premiere

Ring, Resonate, Resound is an acousmatic composition written in homage to John Chowning. The piece tips its hat to Chowning’s Stria, Turenas, and the beautiful sonic landscape Chowning explored through his research and discovery of FM synthesis. Ring, Resonate, Resound is dedicated to him.

The composition explores timbre through dozens of bell sounds, which provide the harmonic and timbral material, structure, foreground, and background for the piece. The composition is comprised of five sections, each examining a different set of bells and materials that interact with them. The piece begins thin and bright, then gradually increases in spectral and textural density until the listener is enveloped by a thick sound mass of ringing bells. The bells gently fade into waves of rich harmonic resonances. 

The piece was composed using a multidimensional timbre model Reid developed while at Stanford University. The model is based on perceptual timbre studies and has been used by the composer to explore the compositional applications of “timbre spaces” and the relationship between reverberant space and timbre, or rather the concept of “timbre in space.” 

Ring, Resonate, Resound was premiered at Stanford University’s Triple CCRMAlite: 40, 50, 80 celebration in October of 2014.


Ring, Resonate, Resound

Joan of Arc

Casimir Effect

tl;dr—"Return of the Obra Dinn" is excellent, and I reworked part of its soundtrack as a strict 1-bit composition, mirroring its crisp, retro 1-bit graphics. Scientific description of some aspects in this paper: 
Working link: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336915189_Generalizations_of_velvet_noise_and_their_use_in_1-bit_music
Original link (broken?): (http://dafx2019.bcu.ac.uk/papers/DAFx2019_paper_53.pdf)

"Return of the Obra Dinn" (2018) is a fantastic game released in 2018. Its creator, Lucas Pope, describes Obra Dinn as "An Insurance Adventure with Minimal Colour." The graphics are entirely 1-bit, meaning that each pixel of the screen takes on only one of two possible colors: light or dark (nominally white or black). This hearkens back to the visual display style of old computers with  monochrome monitors, like the Commodore 64 or Apple IIe, and gives the game a unique and beautiful aesthetic. To represent grayscale values, Pope uses a technique called spatial dithering. Cleverly, he actually deploys a variety of dithering algorithms (including sometimes suppressing the dithering entirely) to differentiate textures in the game.

As a cover and tribute, I've rearranged part of the game's original (rollicking, acoustic) soundtrack—part of the music from the "Unholy Captives" chapter—in a 1-bit *musical* style. This not only mirrors the 1-bit graphics of the game, but mimics the 1-bit "beeper" audio capabilities of many early computers like the Apple IIe and ZX Spectrum.

1-bit music poses a unique compositional challenge. First of all, there is no signal amplitude control, making volume control difficult. Furthermore, in the 1-bit domain, addition of 1-bit signals does not properly exist. This is because certain values can be added (0+0=0, 0+1=1, 1+0=1), but the operation 1+1=2 cannot, since "2" is forbidden! Strictly speaking, this limits polyphony to one sound. Working around these limitations to produce music that is not monotonous and can express chords, layering of multiple instruments, and convincing audio effects becomes quite the task.

In this track, I manage to coax up to 6 layers out of the sound at once: bass, a three-note chord, a melody, and percussion. Part of the trick is just interlocking parts in the arrangements—here, for instance, the bass and chords rarely play at the same time. But in general, there are moments where up to 6 sounds have to be expressed with only 1 bit. The layers are mixed using a custom XOR-plus-error-feedback 1-bit mixing engine, combined with judicious use of thin pulse widths, custom 1-bit wavetable synths, and a special kind of sparse noise that can be XOR'd with signals without overwhelming them. Furthermore, the melody employs what I think may be a novel feedback delay effect that operates entirely in the 1-bit domain to give a sense of space to the track. This is mostly a note-for-note cover of Lucas Pope's original—involving elaborate 1-bit trickery in the sound synthesis, arrangement, and audio effects—but I did take one small liberty: an extra half measure of percussion added just before the start of the final phrase at 0:39.

The special sparse noise sequence is called "crushed velvet noise" and is described in my 2019 DAFx paper "Generalizations of velvet noise and their use in 1-bit music," available here: http://dafx2019.bcu.ac.uk/papers/DAFx2019_paper_53.pdf.

I've deviated from a strict 1-bit construction in just one way—The entire track was processed through Plogue's Apple IIe impulse response to make it sound like it is coming out of a real Apple IIe speaker, rather than being a "raw" stream of zeros and ones.

"Unholy Captives" from "Return of the Obra Dinn" (Lucas Pope, 2018): a 1-bit cover/tribute

This is my very first electroacoustic composition. Surprisingly, of all of my early EA pieces, this is the one I am most proud of. It was, as the title suggests, inspired by the millions of soy bean aphids that migrated through campus during the Fall 2009 semester. Walking outside meant being covered in the tiny gnat-like insects; although they are harmless, they caused quite a bit of trouble by getting into people's hair, clothes, bags, etc. At the same time, a cloud of them buzzing in the light of a setting sun was one of the most beautiful images I saw that year. This piece reflects that dual nature: irritation and horror vs. beauty and stillness.



On the Migration of Aphids Through Urbana, IL

While My Classical Guitar Gently Weeps

Dr. Kurt James Werner is a Lecturer in Audio at the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC) of Queen's University Belfast, where he joined the faculty of Arts, English, and Languages in early 2017. As a researcher, he studies theoretical aspects of Wave Digital Filters and other virtual analog topics, computer modeling of circuit-bent instruments, and the history of music technology. As part of his Ph.D. in Computer-Based Music Theory and Acoustics from Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), he wrote a doctoral dissertation entitled “Virtual Analog Modeling of Audio Circuitry Using Wave Digital Filters.” This proposed a number of new techniques for modeling audio circuitry, greatly expanding the class of circuits that can be modeled using the Wave Digital Filter approach to include circuits with complicated topologies and multiple nonlinear electrical elements. He composes electro-acoustic/acousmatic music including elements of 1-bit, chiptunes, musique concrète, circuit bending, algorithmic/generative composition, modular synthesis, and breakbeat.

AY-3-8912 + Arduino, First Tests

Kurt James Werner

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