XScanTable is a simple and efficient implementation of the Scanned Synthesis Algorithm by Verplank, Shaw and Mathews.
It uses the trajectory of a “circular string” and animates a collection of external tables for variety and richness.It is a simplified version of XQuadScanned particularly suitable for large string pads.
XQuadScanned uses a unique synthesis technique devised by Bill Verplank, Rob Shaw, and Max Mathews between 1998 and 1999 at Interval Research,Inc. They were working there on new ways of “animating” sound and how to directly control,in a complex and interesting way,the evolution of the timbre during live performance – a human/haptic rates.
The result was “Scanned Synthesis” in which wavetables are given “physical” characteristics by assigning to the elements in the table (the samples) physical parameters (mass and elasticity) and connecting them to each other in a network to each other and to the “ground” via “damping”.
You can read more about this powerful new synthesis and processing technique in The Csound Manual and from some of the online tutorials, but CsoundForLive is the best place to “explore” the sound world that this technique reveals – one in which dark, rich, timbres and textures are “constantly and naturally evolving”.
XQuadScanned follows four pre-defined trajectories around the network of masses which can be unique or identical and used simultaneously – for even more sonic depth.
A resonator is a device or system that exhibits resonance or naturally resonant behavior.It’s a filter, but one with “personality”, “physicality”, and “attitude”.
Based on François Blanc’s “mode” opcode, the CsoundForLive resonator effect gives the user a wide range of physically
modeled percussion instruments to use are a controllable filter for their sources audio.
In the Csound Manual, John Bower has compiled a list of “modal frequencies” for various objects and materials such as tabla, wood, string, tibetan bowl to name but a few,and these were used as the basis for this collection.
This beautiful, unique, and rich “filter” adds interest and nuance to samples and synths and will surely become one of your go-to processors in all your Live work.
Built with Victor Lazzarini’s PVS opcodes, that allow for real-time “streaming” phase-vocoder based analysis-resynthesis, PsychoDelay creates a complex “cloud” of unique (multiple) delays in different frequency bands.
The pvsanal opcode is used to analyze the input and generate “fsig” data using phase-vocoder based overlap-add analysis.Using the pvsbuffer opcode, a second process reads from a circular buffer, of user specified length (in seconds),taking a handle for the buffer and a time pointer that holds the current read position (also in seconds) and wraps around when reaching the end.
Multiple instances of this process, with different time positions, are resynthesized using an inverse FFT producing this spectrally shimmering result.
Metallics is a 4-operator Phase-Modulation (PM) synth.In a way, PM is related to Frequency Modulation (FM), but the difference is that whereas in FM the frequency of the carrier is modulated to produce harmonic and inharmonic “sidebands”, in Phase Modulation, the sidebands are the result of modulating the Phase of the “carrier”.
Like Yamaha’s classic Tx81z 4-operator FM synthesizer, Metallics also features four “operators” that can use a variety of waveforms as their starting “spectrum” and thus produce much more dramatic, complex, and interesting resulting spectra.
These four operators can be configured into many unique modulator-carrier arrangements and each features an independent LFO,ADSR.These “algorithms” mix to a choice from a bank of complex classic filters and resonators which can be controlled and automated using an onscreen XY control or MIDI.
To round out the instrument, there is a multi-effects section featuring delay, chorus, phaser,flanger, and comb-resonator, plus an independent reverb too!
Many sections of the instrument feature “global-random” buttons that produce a wide range of complex textures and futuristic timbres. Infinitely rich. Infinitely beautiful.
Metallics is “heavy.”
Chorus/Filter employs two banks of Csound’s variable-delay opcodes controller by scaled interpolated random generators to produce a rich sounding chorusing.
Independent depth and rate controls for each channel account for the phatness of the overall sound and the width of the stereo perspective with the addition of highpass filters to enhance the overall brilliance.
