#silicat

bartoku

plays the opening chord of bartok string quartet no. 4, mvt. 3. here, an array of sinoscs set to the frequencies for the chord are sent to dac 1.5 seconds one after another. some reverb and the untuned frequencies make the final chord a bit wobbly, as if adding vibrato.

tower chase

a spider is chasing you up a tower, so you scale the spiral staircase and... huh... the stairs don't seem to end... or maybe you're out of shape. here, a function takes a midi note number, plays it and moves up one half step, while gain is set to fade into the middle three/four octaves (0 --> 0.7), then fade out (0.7 --> 0), which should create a sense of never-ending ascension. sporked the function at different starting positions. my original concept was to create a shepard tone, which is an aural illusion of 'infinitely' rising notes, a 'musical barbershop pole'. the same pitch at different octaves climbs together on a pitch scale (not freq).

silicat

i wish i had a cat. i really wish i had a cat. but i don't, so i wrote my sound logo for the next best thing: my silicone cat pouch, silicat. we'll follow silicat on an adventure and come back carrying a lot more than expected. first, i zip silicat to prepare it for its journey. then, we hear silicat's theme as it adventures. suddenly, i unzip silicat, and a bunch of stuff comes flying out! silicat even meows in protest. then, tv static drones us out. i used a lot of homemade sound effects, featuring silicat's real zipper for the zips, and my 100% free-range, organic, hand-reared recycling (cans). i used scales.ck from chuck documentation to write and play the melody.

the video was very fun to make. to be clear, silicat puked up everything it collected. i did not abuse silicat.

acknowledgements