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SOUND SYNTHESIS
Only a small number of synthesis functions are provided within CDP, which is predominantly a sound-processing system. Note that in Soundshaper, the outfile needs to be named.
- Wave: create one of a number of traditional synthetic waveshapes: sine (single freq.), square (odd harmonics), triangle, ramp.
- Chord: synthesise a chord (based on sine tones) from a datafile of (possibly fractional) MIDI pitch values. The components cannot be weighted in amplitude; however you can hear what a particular combination of pitches might sound like (e.g. before setting pitches in Stack or Tune). The function was not written for audio-processing use, but you could apply Stack to the output to generate some harmonics and then Vocode the result to give it some dynamic life.
- Addsynth (CDP: newsynth 1-2) generates a waveform with a time-varying spectrum and any number of (harmonic or inharmonic) partials. Mode 2 allows each wave-cycle envelope to be shaped, to a degree.
- MchSynth (CDP: newsynth 3) generates pulsed selections of the spectrum (as defined in Addsynth) sent to a multi-channel output. Each output event is a random selection of partials from the overall spectrum and subject to octave-transposition over a specified pitch range.
- Noise generates white noise (random selection of all fequencies) or uses filtering to create "pink" noise and other filtered variants.
- Silence generates a silent file of any length.
- Spectra synthesises a warbled tone of varying pitch, centred around a chosen frequency, within a given band, which can be time-varied randomly. The effect is akin to, but generally more focussed than, band-filtered white noise. Two outfiles are produced, automatically named
1.wav and 2.wav. You should enter only in the outfile box: CDP adds the file extension (.wav). The two files are the L and R channels of a stereo file which you must mix yourself.
- ClikTrak (CDP: synth clicks) creates a Click-Track from a datafile that defines the format required. This is a comprehensive approach to the problem, but the datafile is daunting at first: see CDP's File Formats description and one example.
DATA-GENERATING FUNCTIONS
Some utility programs to generate data files for various processes. Soundshaper's Graph-Edit is also a general-purpose page for generating data, and has several presets as well.
- BankFreqs: create a list of frequencies for use with Filter Userbank. Amplitudes have to be added to the frequencies. Similar presets are available in Soundshaper's Graph-Edit, where you can "add" the amplitudes by manipulating the Y value, or by typing them in as text.
- VFilters generates a basic textfile for use with Filter Varibank. (Soundshaper's own implementation of the function.)
- Filtrage generates random-frequency filterbank data for use with Filter Varibank, the degree of randomness being under user control.
- Roomresp generates an early-reflection datafile for use with Reverb / Roomverb.
- Sinedata (CDP: modify spaceform) creates a sinewave data file, intended for use with Pan, but it can be used wherever a sinusoidal LFO is required, e.g. for Tremolo.
- Doppler calculates the necessary transposition data for a Doppler pitch-shift. Run Pan; select SPARE FILE and load your pan file; process it with Dshift, which outputs a breakpoint file of time-semitones. (Name the file as necessary.) Uncheck SPARE FILE and run Speed (Mode2) using this .brk file. The distance parameter is critical: small values may be more effective.
- BrkptToRatio: Soundshaper's own conversion routine from "any" breakpoint file to equivalent ratios of the first breakpoint value. Intended mainly for pitch transposition, but has more general uses too. To avoid division by zero, if the first value is zero, a very small value is substituted, but this may still give huge ratios in some cases, so use with care.
DATA-TRANSFORMING FUNCTIONS
Soundshaper's Data-Editor page implements CDP's COLUMNS program, containing around 100 processes for transforming data files. These are documented in the Data-Editor section of this manual.
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