Joel's CSound Composition
"Sandy Toes"
by Joel Glanfield
Artistic Inspiration
It is important to note that this composition of mine is complete void of
any artistic inspiration whatsoever.
The closest to "inspiration" I could possibly get
is the movie Star Wars since someone told me one of my samples sounded like C-3P0.
Technical Details
Part 1 (Drums)
I felt that I wanted to use a lot of granular synthesis in my composition, so I could get
a feel for how it works and what kind
of output that can be generated using it.
The first thing that I did was make a simple drum loop using the program Cubase SL.
I did this
because I knew I wanted to process an audio drum loop through the granule opcode to see
what I could do with it.
The original drum loop can be heard by clicking the following link:
Simple Drum Loop
The result of running the drum loop sample through a CSound instrument that uses the granule opcode can be heard here:
Granulated Drum Loop
This sample was stretched to 10-times it's original size by setting the granule opcodes iratio variable to .1, meaning it
will take samples from the wave at 1/10th the rate of the sampling pointer. The following .orc and .sco CSound files show
the details required to create this sample:
.orc file .sco file
The same original drum loop sample was used for the main beat of the bulk of the composition. It was also
processed through CSound's granular synth, but this time the gap between grains was decreased in an effort to
preserve more of the original sound - so it would be obvious to the listener that the granulated sound is still
a drum beat. The following link is the output of this sample:
Main Drum Loop (granulated)
The following .orc and .sco files show how the sample was processed:
.orc file .sco file
Part 2 (Other Sounds)
The next sample is a neat sound I stumbled across while learning the grain opcode. It uses the expon opcode
to generate sounds along an exponential curve. I took a chunk of this sample and used it as one of my main sounds
in the composition. Check it out:
R2D2 Sound
The following .orc and .sco files show how the sample was processed:
.orc file .sco file
By combining the previous samples, I was able to generate the main portion of my composition. Once I had
done this, I took the main portion of my composition and ran it through an instrument using the granule opcode again.
It generated sounds which make up the time from about 0:41 to 1:04 of my composition.
However, the most interesting part of the composition (in my opinion) is when I run the main part of my composition
through an instrument I created that combines both granular synthesis and a phaser effect. This chuck of the composition
can be heard here:
Phased Portion
The following .orc and .sco files show how the sample was processed:
.orc file .sco file
The following is the data flow diagram for my instrument:
Data Flow Diagram
Final Result
The following link is an mp3 file of the complete composition, which was put together using Cubase:
Sandy Toes