Issue 81
Internet has a Cat! Meet Purrli
The sound of a purring cat is one of the most comforting sounds available and can help soothe and calm you down when you’re feeling stressed. Naturally, it’s not just the sound that is important, but it’s also the presence of the warm cuddly cat. Purrli tries to recreate both the sound and the presence of your very own virtual cat through a custom sound engine modelled after real purrs.
What else can we do with the Web Audio API
Christoph Guttandin has written up his talk from last year’s Web Audio Conference in which he explores some unusual calculations that can be performed with the Web Audio API and how their performance compares to pure JavaScript.
Banger.fm
Banger.FM:
uses the web audio API to create a webapp that allows you to make sounds, beats, and songs quickly (using lots of keyboard shortcuts) so that you can DJ live. Also, it allows for realtime multiplayer interaction (that’s the beauty of the internet I guess) - make music with a friend, or remotely for a distributed audience
Odra
Odra is a generative sound engine built with Web Audio and WebGL. Build your own 3D soundscape or explore some of the most-liked favourites built by sound artist Mateusz Marpi Marcinowski.
How sound design can add texture to a virtual world
In immersive VR worlds the quality of the sound design can make or break the experience. This interesting essay explores the importance of sound design to virtual reality environments.
Holdspace
Carlos Yusim’s “Holdspace” is a monochromatic artwork combining vector art with generated soundscapes.
Slytherin - SSS - Steev’s Soft Synth
An exploration of additive synthesis showing how familiar and complex sounds can be generated by combining sine waves.
BassApp
On online tool to help bass players learn and share basslines. The application has bass-specific notation and an interface to allow you to practice the lines at your own pace.
National Park Service Remix
Ambient soundscapes created using public domain samples from the US National Park Service and the Web Audio API.
NSynth
NSynth is a new synthesis technique that uses Neural Networks (via Tensorflow) to learn how to generate sounds based on training data. One of the really interesting features of this approach is the ability to learn features of the input sounds which can then be manipulated - to generate time-stretched versions of the inputs for example.
I think the low-bit rate quality of the output audio belies the power of this technology. It’s unusual for a truly new approach to synthesis to be developed and this, as the author states, is probably “one of the most exciting developments in audio synthesis since granular and concatenative synthesis”.
I never sleep, ‘cause sleep is the cousin of death
My son is having a hard time sleeping unless someone holds him which means he and I have been spending plenty of time catching up on Netflix’s back catalogue of music documentaries. I particularly enjoyed One9’s film about one of my favourite records: Nas’s seminal 1994 album Illmatic.