Making Cool Sounds!
video of this class
We finished discussing the incorporation of video into Unity projects.
The final demo was showing how to 'fade' videos in and out when projected
onto a render texture. See
last week's class
for the link to the 'waterfade' project at the bottom of he web page.
Next we explored various ways of building interesting sounds using
RTcmix (via the [rtcmix~] object in PD and max/msp).
These scripts can be incorporated
into Unity projects, or they can be used to write soundfiles that can
be played back as clips within Unity.
Links
Here are two links to web pages I created for Ethan Edwards when he was
in our Sound Art program. He had asked for advice about "making good
sounds". The first is about synthesis, covering some of the same
ground we did in class. The second is about 'production', based on
what I teach in our "Introduction to Digital Sound" class. It's not
directly applicable to synthesizing sounds, but the ideas and techniques
are useful.
Several of you asked about how to write soundfiles from a PD or max/msp patch.
For max/msp, there is a menu item under the "Extras" menu called "Quickrecord"
that works very well to do this. For PD, there is a built-in object called
[writesf~] that will create a soundfile from the patch.
- [writesf~] info
-- a PD forum posting with tutorials about how to use [writesf~]
We'll be talking about vst plugins in a future class. Vst plugins allow
access to many other signal-processing algorithms, although they can't
be used directly in Unity. There are ways to use them, but you will need
to explore options for different platforms (Windows vs. OSX, etc.). Below
are two links to objects that allow vst plugin use within max/msp and PD.
- [vstplugin~] object in PD
max/msp has a builtin [vst~] object for use, no link necessary
- Paul's Extreme Sound Stretch (main page)
- Paul's Extreme Sound Stretch
-- the amazing time-stretching algorithm (standalone) by Paul Nasca. The first
page has links to the Windows and Linux versions, plus the documentation.
The second page has a link to the OSX version, plus some other software
that Paul Nasca has written. There also exist versions for Max/MSP
and (I think) pd, plus Audacity has it built-in.
Class Downloads
[note: there are more max/msp and PD patches in the archives
below covering synthesis
techniques that we didn't have time to show in class. We'll be talking
about them in a future class. Have fun exploring them anyhow!]