Music: Digital Synthesiser

Partner: Rajshree Saraf

My (very brilliant partner) and I wanted to create a synthesiser that responded to a series of audio signals. Taking ordinary everyday sounds and adding repetition to them and modulating their frequency allowed for an array of permutations of outputs from one singular song. A word or sentence has a tendency to lose meaning when repeated over a period of time. Repitition is almost counterproductive to meaning when used under the structure of verbal communication but it has an almost mirrored affect when used to generate music. We have tried to translate this idea under the paradigm of syntax and tone. With a series of percussion sounds ranging from drums to normative and psychedelic beats, the idea was to create a digital player that produces ‘music’ from ordinary snippets of sounds. Synthesisers derive sounds from different instruments but the word’s core meaning refers to an intellectual who can use the human mind objectively. We have tried to take human sentiments and sounds and extracted their core meaning away from the strings to create beats and sounds that facilitate auditory communication.The repetition here of everyday statements trigger a chain of thought that is conductive to musical output.

https://editor.p5js.org/jks507/sketches/qn9p_9zW0

Process code:

Generating wave forms that respond to individual buttons:

https://editor.p5js.org/jks507/sketches/p0flCdc4z

Inspiration:

https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/8/17443170/repeating-words-sound-to-song-auditory-illusion and this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlBskd3IaNw