I'm working on a composition with Csound, and I'm primarily focusing on 
generating pitches and rhythms with the help of Haskell code, and using 
simple timbres. My composition teacher wants me to enliven the timbres to 
something not so dated.

I'm pouring over the csound catalog for ideas.

In the meantime, maybe someone has an idea for a general direction I can go 
with this. Here is the composition as it stands:



Mike

Hi Michael,
Nice development (is there perhaps an Lsystem in there too?)
For timbral ideas, Victor has a new heterodyning technique for
creating formants, it sounds very nice as a choir/vocal/synth timbre,
also the modal/mode examples by Ian McCurdy could possibly be used to
create a more updated realism in the sonic image of your composition.
Another thing that I've been experimenting with lately is using
bandpass filtered field recordings for long (drone) notes. The field
recordings can create animation in timbre and amplitude and the
bandpass filter(s) focus the timbre on a selected pitch.

best
Oeyvind

2012/10/17 Michael Mossey :
> I'm working on a composition with Csound, and I'm primarily focusing on
> generating pitches and rhythms with the help of Haskell code, and using
> simple timbres. My composition teacher wants me to enliven the timbres to
> something not so dated.
>
> I'm pouring over the csound catalog for ideas.
>
> In the meantime, maybe someone has an idea for a general direction I can go
> with this. Here is the composition as it stands:
>
> 
>
> Mike
>
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
> csound"
>



-- 

Oeyvind Brandtsegg
Professor of Music Technology
NTNU
7491 Trondheim
Norway
Cell: +47 92 203 205

http://flyndresang.no/
http://www.partikkelaudio.com/
http://soundcloud.com/brandtsegg
http://soundcloud.com/t-emp

Hello Mr. Oeyvind,
could/would You please elaborate what do You mean with:
"The field recordings can create animation in timbre and amplitude"
I mean i understand filed recording and also (maybe!) filtering,
but i would like to understand how this interact with other sounds
in a composition.
I think that the question Mr Michael ask is one of the basic question
that every advanced beginner need to confront to.

Thanks,
ciao,
francesco.




--
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Hi francesco,

For the field recording idea, I meant playing a field recording
through a bank of bandpass filters. So, as a variant of subtractive
synthesis, instead of using white noise you could use a natural (but
perhaps quite noisy) source for the filtering. The natural timbral
changes and the dynamics in a field recording (f.ex. recording of a
river stream, or of city traffic) could be used to make the
subtractive synth more lively.

best
Oeyvind

2012/10/17 francesco :
> Hello Mr. Oeyvind,
> could/would You please elaborate what do You mean with:
> "The field recordings can create animation in timbre and amplitude"
> I mean i understand filed recording and also (maybe!) filtering,
> but i would like to understand how this interact with other sounds
> in a composition.
> I think that the question Mr Michael ask is one of the basic question
> that every advanced beginner need to confront to.
>
> Thanks,
> ciao,
> francesco.
>
>
>
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://csound.1045644.n5.nabble.com/help-with-timbre-ideas-tp5716963p5716965.html
> Sent from the Csound - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>             https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>



-- 

Oeyvind Brandtsegg
Professor of Music Technology
NTNU
7491 Trondheim
Norway
Cell: +47 92 203 205

http://flyndresang.no/
http://www.partikkelaudio.com/
http://soundcloud.com/brandtsegg
http://soundcloud.com/t-emp

On 10/17/2012 12:14 AM, Oeyvind Brandtsegg wrote:
> Hi Michael,
> Nice development (is there perhaps an Lsystem in there too?)
> For timbral ideas, Victor has a new heterodyning technique for
> creating formants, it sounds very nice as a choir/vocal/synth timbre,
> also the modal/mode examples by Ian McCurdy could possibly be used to
> create a more updated realism in the sonic image of your composition.
> Another thing that I've been experimenting with lately is using
> bandpass filtered field recordings for long (drone) notes. The field
> recordings can create animation in timbre and amplitude and the
> bandpass filter(s) focus the timbre on a selected pitch.
>
> best
> Oeyvind

Thank Oeyvind. The source of all the details (pitches and rhythms), is 
pseudo-random noise, but I choose the distribution (gaussian, linear) and 
probabilities of certain rhythmic events. I also disallow audible octaves 
and too much repetition of pitches. And that's it. Each phrase is shaped 
uniquely. Oh, and pseudo-random generator is reseeded for each phrase , and 
I try two or three seeds until I like it. I was startled to find out that 
it doesn't take more than three seeds to find something that seems to work 
well enough for my purposes. This is really an experiment, not something 
representative of my traditional composition, but it makes it feel like the 
"space/set of good music" is wide and flexible, given that it only takes a 
little fiddling to make it sound like I hoped.

My composition teacher said that the timbres are old-fashioned, but that 
the pitch and rhythmic material is "relevant" to contemporary composition. 
I didn't tell him it's mostly pseudo-randomness, not yet. :)

Mike