I’ve been through a few linux distros over the years, neatly getting progressively easier to install and configure as I get less willing to spend time recompiling kernels, culminating in ubuntu, enjoying the attention to detail and simplicity of use. Recently though, I’ve had to give ubuntu up and go back upstream to the rather [...]
Dedication to RSI is what I have
by Alex on November 13, 2008
I’ve kept a bit quiet about a great achievement in my life, but now I’ve come to terms with it I think the time has now come to go public – last September I was knitter of the month for knitting the zig zag scarf from Aneeta’s excellent knitting-for-beginners book knitty gritty. I made it [...]
The physical modelling of drums using digital waveguides
by Alex on May 7, 2008
Joel Laird completed a fine PhD thesis on physical modelling drums in 2001, which included C++ sourcecode for an accurate model of a drum and a felt mallet for hitting it with. I’ve been in contact with Joel and am very happy to have prompted him to license the source under the GPL. A .tar.gz [...]
Waveguide mesh unit generator
by Alex on March 13, 2008
After quite a bit of fiddling, I got a waveguide mesh working. It’s a physical model of a drum head, basically lots of bidirectional, single sample delays connected in a triangular mesh to form a hexagon. [update: now a second extern is in there that tessellates a circle instead]. It sounds pretty good already, next [...]
More vocable synthesis
by Alex on November 28, 2007
Another screencast, a short one this time, which I’ve been using as a demo in talks.
Vocable source released
by Alex on November 15, 2007
The haskell source for my vocable synthesis system used in my previous screencasts is now available. I’ve been having fun rewriting this over the last couple of days, and would appreciate any criticism of my code.
ASCII Rave in Haskell
by Alex on August 8, 2007
I’ve been playing with using words to control the articulation of a physical modelling synthesiser based on the elegant Karplus-Strong algorithm. The idea is to be able to make instrumental sounds by typing onomatopoeic words. (extra explanation added in the comments) Here’s my first ever go at playing with it: ASCII Rave in Haskell For [...]
Canntaireachd synthesis part two
by Alex on May 5, 2007
Sounds a bit nicer now… This time with a smaller font and an exciting slither of my desktop visible. Sorry about that, see it a bit bigger over here
Canntaireachd for sinewaves
by Alex on April 10, 2007
An early sketch of a system of vocables for describing manipulations of a sine wave. The text is a bit small there, it’s better in the original avi version. Vowels give pitch, and consonants give movements between pitches. Inspired by the notation of canntaireachd. Made with hsc (Haskell client for scsynth). As ever, code available [...]
Haskell supercollider tutorial
by Alex on February 4, 2007
Rohan Drape has made a nice tutorial to getting his “Hsc” Haskell bindings to SuperCollider installed and integrated with emacs. It’s available here (link updated). This is exactly what I needed, I’m hoping to get started with some simple physical model synthesis this coming week.