This week’s assignment was provided a lot of learning and frustrations, but I got around those problems and created a nice synth-based soundscape. While all this experimentation did not let me complete the visuals as I wanted, I’m sure I”ll get around that part later.

You can see the code here or play with the experiment here.

Chord and texture base

I wanted to create my own composition of oscillators, adding and filtering them, but I’m not sure I follow Tone.js’ logic completely. So I ended up just using the built-in synths manipulating the parameters to get the desired sounds.

Doing the chord base was not that complex, but I just had to figure out some functions for them to work as expected. I wanted the chords to play as long as I pressed the corresponding keys, so the keydown event only called triggerAttack, leaving the keyup with the releaseAll function. That function took me a while to discover, as triggerRelease needs the specific notes to release (which works fine for a piano, but no so well for chords the way I was playing them).

function onKeyDown( keyname ){
    switch( keyname ){
        case 'a':
        synth_sq.triggerAttack(["A2", "F#3", "G2"]);
        break;
    case 's':
        synth_fm.triggerAttack(["A3", "C3", "F3"]);
        break;
    case 'd':
        synth_xm.triggerAttack(["D3", "A3", "F#3"]);
            break;
    }
}
function onKeyUp( keyname ){
    switch( keyname ){
        case 'a':
            synth_sq.releaseAll();
            break;
        case 's':
            synth_fm.releaseAll();
            break;
        case 'd':
            synth_xm.releaseAll();
            break;
  }
}

Broken patterns

The thing that didn’t really work was using patterns or sequences. Inspired by the cool sounds of Max’s last assignment, I tried copying the code from some of the examples in the Tone.js site and see how it worked. Sadly, it didn’t. At least, not as expected: when triggered, they would create a huge sound mass (which was still cool), but would take them several seconds to stop after I pressed the corresponding key. While the sound texture was not bad, the lack of control was something I could not feel satisfied with.

stasis = new Tone.Sequence( function(time, note) {
    synths[ patterns[3] ].triggerAttackRelease(note, time);
}, ["A4", "E4", "A4", "A3", "E4", "A4"], "8n" );
stasis.loop = 0;

function onKeyDown( keyname ){
    switch( keyname ){
        case 'q':
            tritone.start();
            break;
        case 'w':
            calm.start();
            break;
        case 'e':
            suspense.start();
            break;
        case 'r':
            stasis.start();
            break;
    }
}
function onKeyUp( keyname ){
    switch( keyname ){
        case 'p':
            tritone.stop();
            calm.stop();
            suspense.stop();
            stasis.stop();
            break;
    }
}

So in the end, I just looked back on my previous assignment and replicated (with some minor changes) the scheduled function to play these progressions. I still feel the need to learn how to trigger them once and have them in a separate thread, but I think I need to understand Tone.js better first.

case 'k':
    if( prog_id == 0 ){
        prog_id = Tone.Transport.scheduleRepeat( play_progression );
    }
    break;
case 'l':
    Tone.Transport.cancel( prog_id );
    prog_id = 0;
    break;

Note for recording

If you’re using a Mac, one of the best ways to record things on your computer is using Soundflower. Sadly, this doesn’t really let you hear what’s happening! So I created this small maxpatch to help me listen and record at the same time!