AudioMulch beginners experiments 1 : BubbleBlower

[haydxn]

Audiomulch beginners experiments....
experiment 1 : BubbleBlower
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For me, the most immediately fun components are the BubbleBlower (signal generator) and the DLGranulator (effect).

[I'm assuming you've set up your sound card correctly for this...]

Start the program, and you’ll begin with just a SoundOut. It’s a good idea to begin by connecting up a large mixer (say S4Mixer – 4 stereo channels), so that you don’t have to keep disconnecting things. Right-Click near the soundout, and select NEW->Mixers->S4Mixer. Connect the two outputs to the inputs of the SoundOut object. If you DOUBLE CLICK the mixer, its panel pops up on the panel side of the screen. Mixers start with all controls set to minimum – bear this in mind if you wonder why you get no sound when you start messing around.

DOUBLE CLICK the SoundOutmodule, and click the ‘open’ folder button on it. This lets you choose where to record the output to. Choose a location and filename, and click SAVE. Now, if you click the RECORD button, the sound you hear while you are tinkering will be recorded directly to that file. Remember this while you are messing around!

Now, lets add a BUBBLE BLOWER. RightClick->New->SignalGenerators->BubbleBlower. This is a cool granular .WAV playback module. Connect the outputs to the first input pair of the mixer. DOUBLE CLICK the bubble blower and you’ll see its panel, which looks quite confusing at first.

The main thing to note about the panels on AudioMulch is the controls: some sliders have one handle, others have two. The ‘normal’ sliders function as you’d expect – simply set the value. The ‘double’ sliders let you set minimum and maximum values, which cover all ‘grains’ – each grain will be given a random value somewhere between the two settings. You drag each handle separately, but to move them both together, you simply drag on an empty portion of the fader strip (i.e. above or below the handles).

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BubbleBlower Controls:

Amp : Min/Max values for the amplitude of the grains

Pan : Min/Max (i.e. left/right) stereo position for the grains

InSkip : Selects the starting point for each grain in the selected wave file. You can choose anywhere from 0 to 15secs. Min/Max controls means that grains can begin over a given range.

Trans : Transpose – each grain will be transposed by a random value selected from the min/max sliders. At both 0, there won’t be any transposition.

Density : This controls the grain rate, but it’s a control you only really fully understand with practice. Lower values mean the grains pop out individually, higher values make them almost join together. If they come out really densely, however, they start to cancel each other out, and therefore the level goes down.

Quant : This controls how rigidly the grains stick to the beat – use it in conjunction with the tempo (at the top of the screen) and the beat division selector (just under the quant slider). Minimum means that there is no quantisation, while max forces all grains to the beat. Somewhere near the top produces rhythmic yet organic results.

GDur : This controls the length of the grain, which can be anywhere from 0 to half a second. This control in conjunction with the density control can be used to make the difference between a washy pad sound and a juddery techno glitchfest.

Shape and Skew controls the envelope of the grain. Maximum ‘shape’ is a rectangular envelope (no attack or decay). Minimum shape is a triangular envelope, so the grain fades in and out. The skew control biases this triangle either way – at the bottom there is no attack (so the grains ‘pop’ out and fade away), whereas at the top there is no decay (so they fade in and disappear abruptly). Again, you are able to specify a range of values here.

So, that’s the controls explained, but in practice they become more meaningful.

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Load up a wave file (with the bubbleblower’s file parameter). Make sure the appropriate mixer control (and its master control) is turned up, and click Play (at the top of the screen). This starts the audio engine, and you’ll hear a glitchy random stuttery version of the file you loaded.

Experiment with the controls!

If you’ve loaded a musical element... (with chords and melodic qualities) then it’s good to learn how to make washy sounds.

Make the INSKIP control cover a short range (by dragging the top one up slightly).
Increase the GDUR controls to near the top (so that the grains are long - thus allowing for a smooth sound), set the density about two thirds up,
and then slowly experiment with moving the INSKIP pair up and down. This is effectively moving the ‘playhead’ thru the file. You are limited to to 15 seconds of control, and the range never changes. This means that SHORT files are difficult to scrub, and LONG files are restricted to only 15 seconds of action with the bubble blower. Anyway, slowly dragging the ‘playhead’ will change where in the sound file your ‘wash’ is coming from. It’s fun to get a feel for the location of different chords in the sound, and moving between them. All these controls can be automated too, but that’s something that you’ll get into later no doubt. If you turn up the QUANT control, you’ll notice the wash become a rhythmic pulse.

If you’d loaded a drum loop..., then it’s fun to see what the bubble blower can come up with from it. Turn the density down to about a third from the bottom, and adjust the GDUR until each grain spans roughly one drum hit. Drag both shape and skew down to the bottom (fast attack, decaying envelope). Now, drag the INSKIP controls so that they cover a range (enough to cover the occurrence of several different types of drum hit). You should hear a fairly random sporadic sequence of drum hits. Turning up the density control makes them come out faster, and turning up QUANT makes it more rigidly quantised. Try out different drum loops, you effectively end up with random drums from a single loop, without trying! If you tinker til you’re getting some interesting results, it’s good to let it record for a few minutes while you go and get some food (surely you’re hungry by now?). When you look over the wave file you’re bound to find something useful in there, maybe some more ideas or inspiration for a new track. Another thing you might find interesting is to make the TRANS controls cover the whole range, turn density up quite high and pick a medium spread of GDUR, with low or zero QUANT, and you get a bizarre ‘raining pots and pans’ effect.

These are, of course, just some examples of how the bubble blower can be used, but hopefully they make you see the potential of granular mangling!

The DLGranulator lets you do all these kind of things to LIVE incoming audio! Also, the NEBULISER is a DLGranulator with an added filter (with random range controls) so it’s good to experiment with that one too. I’ll cover them in another post tho.

[vurt]

cheers haydxn
ill have a proper read in a bit
but thats some work youve put in for us new guys to AM

[Klemperer]

Those are the things I like here at KVR . I got Audiomulch recommended once by phz and think I have a version here that's expired (Demo) but will have a look at Ross Bencina's website. Thanks for that.