BlowFly - Bezier Dynamic Stochastic Synth released
Posted: Mon Oct 14, 2013 1:14 pm
Have recently been looking into some of the work of Iannis Xenakis, in particular his dynamic stochastic synth 'GENDYN' and pieces he produced with it, such as s.709.
Got inspired to implement my own interpretation of the technique, and have just released BlowFly v1.01. Proudly made with PB v 4.60.
Could equally have called it 'merlin engine', 'circular saw', 'lawnmower', 'shredder'....and although it can be 'tamed' into a spluttering, whimpering or whimsically meandering sound maker, 'unpredictable' is definitely the buzzword here (no pun intended
), and ultimately it still winds up making the short-list for an anger-management boot-camp 
Unlike the 'movement of breakpoints' based dynamic stochastic synthesis that Xenakis implemented with 'GENDYN' (see the video referred to below for the theory of this), BlowFly uses a Bezier curve to represent a single cycle of the waveform, and various user settings control things like probability distributions (which act on the curve control points) and the behaviour of barriers, which in turn determine the range of shapes and length each cycle can take from one cycle to the next, thereby changing the amplitude, pitch and harmonic content of the sound as it plays along. It is midi-controllable (to the extent that it can be controlled, anyway).
Download, explanation video, sound samples, here:
http://flexibeatz.weebly.com/blowfly.html
The PB source of it is here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?95epbh6hh3dp4bz
Just unzip all the files into a directory, and run BlowFlyv101.pb.
Got inspired to implement my own interpretation of the technique, and have just released BlowFly v1.01. Proudly made with PB v 4.60.
Could equally have called it 'merlin engine', 'circular saw', 'lawnmower', 'shredder'....and although it can be 'tamed' into a spluttering, whimpering or whimsically meandering sound maker, 'unpredictable' is definitely the buzzword here (no pun intended
), and ultimately it still winds up making the short-list for an anger-management boot-camp Unlike the 'movement of breakpoints' based dynamic stochastic synthesis that Xenakis implemented with 'GENDYN' (see the video referred to below for the theory of this), BlowFly uses a Bezier curve to represent a single cycle of the waveform, and various user settings control things like probability distributions (which act on the curve control points) and the behaviour of barriers, which in turn determine the range of shapes and length each cycle can take from one cycle to the next, thereby changing the amplitude, pitch and harmonic content of the sound as it plays along. It is midi-controllable (to the extent that it can be controlled, anyway).
Download, explanation video, sound samples, here:
http://flexibeatz.weebly.com/blowfly.html
The PB source of it is here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?95epbh6hh3dp4bz
Just unzip all the files into a directory, and run BlowFlyv101.pb.