Music

Here you can listen to some of the creative projects that students in our class have composed! Some projects also include composer’s notes and source files so you can read about their vision or see how they accomplished their creative goals.

Project 4: Granular Synthesis

Lang Qin

Shreyas Subramanian

Composer’s notes:

For the composition:

I vary the amplitude and pitch by using different pwl’s, and changing the value of the parameter ‘speed’ respectively. I created different ‘clips’ of sound, and then put it together in my DAW of choice to essentially create an interesting texture of sounds. I also added a reverb on top of it all for an extra effect. In terms of inspiration, it was just trying to play around with the parameters and envelopes and create some interesting sounds and textures. I used grains from the audio file we had to choose, as well as the sine-grain function. To me, with all of it put together, it sounds like a ‘digital pattering of rain’ so to speak.

Lin Mo

Composer’s notes:

My goal was to make granular-ize Tchaikovsky's summer (music box version) and overlay a granularized beat from a free soundtrack to make it sound like a cute video game background music sound track. The first half features a beat and the original music made from granular bits to resemble a harp/crystal sound. It usese dynamic amplitude control via an envelope function. The second half features dynamic pitch control by setting different speeds when composing the granulate-score. I used dynamic pitch control to make it sound like the atmosphere is being warped, intended to resemble a character diving underwater.

Source file: proj4comp.sal

Veda Vaishnaavi Vakkada

Composer’s notes:

Amplitude is changed by a general envelope on the sound.\ Pitch is changed by changing the speed parameter in the make-granulate-score function.\ \ No additional effects were used, I like the sounds of the drums coming across strongly so I ensured they had a longer grain-dur.\ \ I\'92ve often heard the flute and an Indian drum called the tabla played together in various musical settings and trued to recreate that with the audio clippings used.

Source file: proj4comp.sal

Anonymous

Composer’s notes:

I was interested in the "speech mumbling" effect of granulation discussed in the course videos. I applied this to a poem I really like, "A Poem on the Underground Wall", that I read the first line of. It's about subways so I tried to somewhat mimic that sound, getting a constant, steady beat track like a train moving. The granulated poem is then wrapped in one *big* raised-cosine, so the whole thing is like one grain composed of smaller grains, but it also mirrors the increasing -> decreasing volume of a train approaching and then leaving a station.

(Simon and Garfunkle have a song for the poem, they also do the volume crescendo->decrescendo in theirs).

Pitch, reverb, and more amplitude envelopes come from the chords over the whole track, on top of the beat track layer.

Source file: proj4comp.sal

Evan Zhang

Composer’s notes:

Hi! My composition has three parts to it, all of which use the same base trumpet sound. The general motivation behind my overall composition is that I wanted to introduce different granular and stretched variants of a base sound as if it were in different parts of a play.

The first part is slow, melodramatic, and meant to “introduce” the sound to the listener. In a play, it could be used to portray a sad death. To create these effects, I split the first part into four quarter sounds. Then I used different stretch factors for each quarter, alongside varying grain duration and ioi values. I also implemented a significant pitch shift in the second quarter so the sound became extra melodramatic.

The second part is more choppy and static. In a play, it could be used as a transitioning excerpt from one part of the play to another. To create this effect, I sped up the first three notes and played them on repeat. Then I played the rest of the base sound with a higher ioi value and slight stretch to create the choppiness of the sound.

The final part is fast and full of energy. In a play, it could be used as the ending sound, or it could be used during the climax. This effect was quite simple, I just compressed (stretch value < 1) the sound with a somewhat high ioi value.

Finally, you may have noticed some white noise between each part of my composition. The white noise is actually granular and created from performing a significant stretch on a small excerpt of the sound. I think it gives each part a nice transition! I also included a custom made pwl envelope for amplitude control. It should add a nice progression to each part of the composition.

Source file: proj4comp.sal

Yasemin Rees

Composer’s notes:

I varied the amplitude and pitch using LFOs on an audio editor. For 2 of the samples, I automated its volume and for 1, I randomized its pitch. I also used note echos/repeats towards the end of the piece. I used each of the granulized samples as a sound in my instrument. My goal was to use this instrument in a way that was interesting and slightly overstimulating. I wanted to complement the grains with a beat to support the textures.

Zihe Zhao

Composer’s notes:

ALMOST EVERYTHING IS SYNTHESIZED / AI-GENERATED. IT DOES NOT REPRESENT MY PERSONAL MUSIC TASTE.

I created a synthesized snippet that (somewhat) sounds like a Taylor Swift song. Not that I’m a fan but I’ve been seeing too many AI generated TS snippets on instagram so I wanted to join the party.

I used granular synthesis to create the bubbly sound during intro (resembling her Laverdar Haze intro style). This involves dynamic amplitude and dynamic pitch control (small granular of 4 notes chosen at random).

I also used granular synthesis to create the chords. Each chord is one big grain, and I used Markov chain to randomly generate each chord. Specifically, according to this youtube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbW3sES2zCw), four out of five Taylor’s most common chord progressions are just permutation of I IV V vi. In C major, that would be C F G Am. So I decided to let the chord progression just to be randomly generated using a Markov matrix of these 4 chords.

The lyrics are generated by some TS lyrics generator: https://www.reddit.com/r/TaylorSwift/comments/vb2i4b/i_made_an_ai_that_writes_taylor_swift_lyrics/.

The voice melody is something I improvised (which is bad improv but I am lazy and unfortunately cannot figure out anything pretty for this bad and long chord progression). Then I used this AI voice model to output Taylor’s version of the singing: https://app.kits.ai/convert/shared/taylor-swift-lover-era-w-index-file.

The drum beat is pulled from FreeSound: https://freesound.org/people/Leifgreen/sounds/232336/.

The result is definitely somewhat messy because this is not how chord progression should layout in a song, plus the improvised AI-generated TS singing is kind of horrible. But it is still nice to see what granular synthesis and AI tools can do.

Lydia Yang

Composer’s notes:

1) Amplitude control was done via envelopes in both Nyquist and audacity. Pitch control was done by modifying speed in my granular synthesis. Cross fades were used to smoothly transition between audio clips. 2) I also added some distortion and reverb to some of the audio. 3) This piece is based on the butterfly effect and aims to emulate how a change can perpetuate throughout time. The butterfly is represented in 3 ways: the spoken word butterfly, the sound of butterfly wings, and twinkling music to represent a butterfly. As the audio file plays the audiio gets more and more distorted. The distortion starts off low and eventually becomes higher and more clipped. You can still hear the original intent, however it has been distorted to become something different. For example the wings of the butterfly have turned into more of a buzzing.

Jack Liu

Composer’s notes:

I was inspired by the nature of granular synthesis to make something "pointillistic." There are three streams of grains running at different subdivisions of 150bpm, and they get panned around your ears. For fun I also strummed a bass guitar. The sample is "Tamara Milashkina Spring waters by Sergei Rachmaninov" on YouTube: https://youtu.be/YbtuVQLW_G4?si=cbPwegPTEtVk72KA

Source file: proj4comp.sal

Arthur Kajiyama

Molly Niehaus

Jacob Doughty

Composer’s notes:

CREDITS: Input Audio for Parts 1-3 is a clip from "Frequent - Dream Recall (feat. Alexander Panos)"

  1. Amplitude is controled by setting the IoI and grain Duration to be equal. The raised_cosine function allows for a cool amplitude pulsing effect to be created when IoI and grain duration are equal. The Sal code itself does not control pitch. Instead, I wrote an original composition in FL Studio 21 that I could apply cool granular synthesis techniques to.

  2. In addition to using lots of different granular synthesis effects in the final composition, I added a small bit of reverb to help give the composition a fuller sound. Not too much, but just enough.

  3. This piece is inspired by the “Glitch Hop” genre of electronic music. When I composed the original piece, I had the idea to alternate every other measure between the original source audio and some sort of modified glitched audio using granular synthesis techniques. The proj4comp.sal code contains several different granular synthesis functions used for applying effects to an audio file. I exported the composition into two wav files: “drums.wav” and “else.wav”. Then, I ran these wav files through each of the granular synthesis functions to get whole audio tracks with the effects applied. Then, in FL Studio 21, I interwove segments of each audio file (source and effected) to give an interesting final result.

(See “./composition_input” for the original composition (“COMP_RAW.wav”) and each source/effected track)

Hope you like it!

Source file: proj4comp.sal

Zetong Zhou

Composer’s notes:

1. How you vary the amplitude and pitch. I varied the amplitude by the Audacity envelope tool. I made the too loud part sound more quiet, especially the echo I created because it was the sum of 2 scores and produced clippings. I controlled the pitch by changing the "speed" parameter by pattern generators.

  1. Also include any additional effects that you added. I added fade out to the end. Reverberation was applied to the whole audio because I think it has good effects. I created an echo in the final part.

  2. Lastly include your motivation or inspiration behind your composition. I wanted to combine the use of pattern generators and grain synthesis, which we learned recently, with previous techniques about scores to enhance my mastery of knowledge.

Tianyue Ruby Sun

Composer’s notes:

15322 Introduction to Computer Music Project 4 Composition

The project 4 composition consists of primary sections: Two times repeats of four of the same file grain, short, alternating speed 1.0 and 2.0 Alternating lower and higher speed file grain with speeds [1.0, 2.0] and [1.5, 2.5] Sine grain File grain with low pitch, repeated Sine grain File grain with low pitch Failure sound consisting of four notes

In the project 4 composition, the amplitude was varied with a fade in and the different sections of the piece had distinct amplitudes, for instance, the sine grain rapid bubbly sounds versus the static messy file grain sound. The pitch was varied with the speed parameter, as the case with the file grains with different pitches, and random different pitches in the sine grain. The notes at the end, which did not use granular synthesis, also varied in amplitude and pitch for a contrast to the prior parts. Aside from the four ending notes, all other sounds used granular synthesis. These contribute to shaping the overall music.

All of the file grains are based on the same file, “Sound.wav”. This sound file was made in GarageBand loops by me. The parameters were changed in the file grain to achieve different purposes, and then everything was pieced together with a sequence, which is returned by the function project4composition().

The inspiration for the project 4 composition is based on a video game. It starts with a character running, and the game becomes more intense with the increasing amplitude and the pattern of the file grains alternating with less repetition of the same pitch. Suddenly, at the most important moment, the game disconnects, signified by the sine grain bubbly sound, and there is “static” noise, a low-pitch file grain, where the game is attempting to reconnect. The piece ends with a failure sound, as the player of the video game loses.

Marco Cardenes

Composer’s notes:

I saw this really cool video about fractalizing swing a few weeks ago and I have been trying to explore and implement it in my own writing ever since. Unfortunately due to the shallow stack of XLISP, the full effect of a deep fractal cannot be seen, but a shallow one looped several times sounds nice as well. I wanted to make something cool and loopy, so the chocie of irregular rhythm over a strong backbeat, wabbling in amplitude, seemed to be a fun way to go. The repetitious amplitude change only works if automated, so I used a raised cosine LFO idea to create an amplitude modulation.

Source file: proj4comp.sal

Nikolai Stefanov

Composer’s notes:

For the composition, I knew my sample was something akin to a ringing telephone, so I almost wanted to make it turn out like a call center. It's meant to start off with a weird kind of ringing, then introducing a piano melody to almost ground all of the ringing that comes next. I tried to line up the melodies in the piano and from the samples together. I finally ended it quietly with phones clicking, almost like they're hanging up their calls.

Source file: proj4comp.sal

Project 3: FM synthesis, spectral centroid

Mukundh Balajee

Composer’s notes:

For this project, I used Nyquist to get the Frequency Modulated sound, based on the spectral centroid of the input file and a couple other different sounds, and generated a some random notes. I imported the generated sound to audacity, and split the clips into 3 distinct sections, and used multiple effects, (high pass filters), and added Rhythm tracks, and modified these tracks by changing speed, pitch, etc. to generate different sounding beats, and added them as layers, to create a musical beat, and finally ended the clip by cutting off each layer from the main track to the "Bass" beat/drum sound.

Source files: proj3comp.sal, proj3input.mp3

Marco Cardenes

Composer’s notes:

The intent behind this composition was to take Bicycle Built for Two and make it into a fun polyphonic piece of music using my own spectral analysis. I took the brightness of a harpsichord, a common instrument for fugal writing, and the variation of pipes falling to channel a different kind of brightness to the sound.

Source files: proj3comp.sal, proj3input.mp3

Jacob Doughty

Composer’s notes:

CREDIT: proj3input.wav is a clip from Steven Universe - Something Entirely New (Remix by "Video Game Remixes" aka VGR)

Intention: My main goal in this composition was to let the main FM instrument (modulated by spectral centroid) occupy the background space of the track and suggest chords for the melody to follow. Then I wanted to establish a groovy drum rhythm and a beautiful piano melody over the top.

I used FL Studio 21 to throw together this composition. I used the audio generated from Nyquist and added Reverb and Lowpass modulation in FL Studio. Aside from that, I composed the drum pattern and piano lines in FL Studio as well and layered them all together.

Source files: proj3comp.sal, proj3input.mp3

Arthur Kajiyama

Mingkang Li

Composer’s notes:

The intention of this composition is to create a mysterious and ethereal soundscape that gradually becomes more majestic and ends with a mysterious, reverberating feeling. The foreground consists of slow piano notes with adds uncertainty to the composition, and the background consists of the soundscape created by the fm instrument. (Chord progression is Am, Dm7, Gmaj7, Cmaj9, Fsus2)

The input was from a classical violin piece which has rather stable spectral centroid (except for the beginning)

Owen Li

Composer’s notes:

The intention is that I noticed the instrument sounds like nature-themed musics that are slow-paced, so it makes sense to make a composition that feels like sounds of nature. FM synthesis naturally produces varying sidebands over time, creating harmonic sounds due to my magic choice of C:M ratio. The spectral centroid function is derived from sea wave sounds, which drives the entire composition with a natural rhythm.

The source ocean wave is found at https://freesound.org/people/xserra/sounds/161700/

Source files: proj3comp.sal, proj3input.mp3

Anoushka Naidu

Composer’s notes:

I was going for an eerie, oceanic sound with my composition. I wanted it to sound like you were deep underwater, with muffled noises and lots of reverb. I also tried to evoke a sense of aloneness, as one would feel in the vastness of the ocean.

Source files: proj3comp.sal, proj3input.mp3

Molly Niehaus

Connor Maas

Composer’s notes:

I wanted my composition to sound like nature if it were to produce perfect melodies all the time.

The most obvious part of my composition is the instrument, which is what initially got me the idea to imitate nature. Specifically, I believe it sounds like owls.

As for the input sound, it was actually a recording of me humming. I opted for vocals here to try to gain a deeper level natural sound with the modulation. I applied autotune and compression to this recording, however, to make sure it would be easy to work with in Nyquist. The sound turned out to be just what I was looking for.

I believe that nature itself is very simple but unpredictable, so I created a equally simple melody with a fluctuating rhythm. Too perfect of a rhythm or sequence of notes would not imitate nature in the way I desired. Therefore, after some tweaking, I was able to find the perfect combination of musicality and randomness.

Two more things I did to make my composition sound even more like melodic nature were (1) apply a low pass filter at 10Hz and (2) add some reverb. I feel like nature is a peaceful thing and taking out some of the high frequencies helped to calm down the composition overall. Next, the reverb gave the feeling of being in a small valley or a cave because of the deep 2-second echo.

Megan Xu

Composer’s notes:

I am taking the general melody/tune of the song Vanished by Crystal Castles, which is known for creative use of synthetic sounds. I have several different spectral centroid sources to use, which includes a harsh tapping noise, a long ambient rhythmic tapping noise, a speaking noise, and a general soft noise. I have several different 8 seconds composition which overlap each other - starting with a bass octave-jumping line, a melody, an adjusted melody. I choose long notes to have softer spectral centroid sources, whereas shorter/melody notes have harsher stronger spectral centroid sources. I also make sure to have varying volume, combination, pitch-shifts, and overlaps in order to make an interesting composition overall. I hope you enjoy!

Source files: proj3comp.sal, proj3input.mp3

Randy Zhang

Composer’s notes:

For my composition, I wrote a melody with a bass and treble line that I had stuck in my head for a while. My favorite composer by far is named Gerald Finzi, and his music is distinctly classical, British, and elegiac, which is what I modelled my melody after. I used a guitar piece by the legendary composer Francisco Tarrega named "Gran Vals" as the spectral centroid source and liked the effect on the brightness of my melody when adjusted with smoothing.

Fun fact: The piece “Gran Vals” is actually the source of the famous “Nokia theme” that you definitely know. Give the original work a listen - it’s beautiful!

Source files: proj3comp.sal, proj3input.mp3

Rick Zhou

Anonymous

Composer’s notes:

This is just meant to be a chill, evolutive composition. It has 3 instruments: - the chord base was doing using Nyquist. I used a drum loop as an input sound, and re-used an instrument similar to what I did in part 1, with different parameters and the modulation directly from sc-calc. Then I created a score that used the instrument to play basic chords. The score I used can be directly reconstituted by typing: play chord-base1(). I added a low-pass and high-pass filter and a chorus effect in Logic to make the sound a bit cleaner. - the synthesizer lead comes from Logic Pro. The lead itself had a lot of modulation, so I thought it fit pretty well with the modulations of the chord. - The plug that starts at the middle of the composition also comes from Logic, I added it because it worked well with the rest of the combo and added a bit of rhythm

Source files: proj3comp.sal, proj3input.mp3

Project 2: Envelopes and scores

Reed Barmada

Composer’s notes: I intended to create a musical-sounding composition that moves from a 5-7 chord to a minor chord and loops that in a different pattern, namely D 5-7 and A minor.

Source files: instr.sal, tapcomp.sal, tapping.wav

Kaan Gucyetmez

Composer’s notes: I wanted to make a transition from my “tapscore” to an intense techno-inspired music. I tried to make the transitions as smooth as possible.

Source files: instr.sal, tapcomp.sal, tapping.wav

Angel He

Composer’s notes: My musical intention for p2comp.wav was to create a sense of tension, suspicion or perturbation, which reflects the character’s mood during a spy action in a 007-style movie. The blend of scores with different pitches, durations and amplitudes, occasional small shaky effects, crescendos and decrescendos, were intended to achieve this goal.

Source files: instr.sal, tapcomp.sal, tapping.wav

Arthur Kajiyama

Lang Qing

Composer’s notes: Winter, heavy snow, and have to walk to CMU. This piece is to generate the musical environment along the way to school.

Cami Streuly

Tianyue Ruby Sun

Zihe Zhao

Composer’s notes: Puccini extensively used pentatonic scales in Madama Butterfly and Turandot to match with the oriental background of the storylines. In this composition, I’m putting in the pentatonic notes CDEGA and letting the program to generate each note randomly. Sounds pretty oriental to my ears.

Source files: instr.sal, tapcomp.sal, tapping.wav

Anonymous

Composer’s notes: For each note in tap-score, I randomly generated a pitch from a major pentatonic scale (the one I used in the composition was the best score in a few runs). Then I added some simple chords (and an automatic drummer) to make the piece sound better, and the final work sounds like a ringtone😂. Hope you like it :)

Source files: instr.sal, tapcomp.sal, tapping.wav

Anonymous

Composer’s notes: In Logic Pro I added a synth, a bass, some drums and a couple of effect to the main nyquist melody. I really tried to give a rising-intensity feeling to the composition - to contrast with the main melody’s repetitiveness. Hope you liked it!

Source files: instr.sal, tapcomp.sal, tapping.wav

Anonymous

Composer’s notes: I started with the intention of wanting my tapping rhythm to be the base behind the piece (the beat), but realized it would work best as a bunch of different melodies layered as the same rhythm. After that, I wanted to create a layered piece that built up from a basic rhythm and slowly got more complex over time. I was aiming to come up with a dramatic piece that kind of built suspense over time.

Source files: instr.sal, tapcomp.sal, tapping.wav