100 single-frame UHM waveforms for Hive

[drzhnn]

I've been experimenting with UHM lately and ended up writing a python script that generates UHM scripts from a predefined template. I'm still playing with this idea and will hopefully come up with something more elaborate later on, but for now, here's a batch of 100 single-frame UHM scripts of some lovely organic waveforms. Feel free to use them anyway you please, commercially or not.

Download UHM Mindlantis



All these scripts are sharing the same basic structure: a single frame is filled with noise, which goes into a resonant filter, and the cutoff of that filter is modulated by an MSEG of a random shape. The envelope is changing the cutoff frequency of the filter within just one frame, and therefore, is changing the spectral content of the noise across the frame. This creates dynamic changes in the waveform, with regions of low, mid and high frequencies. Comparing to other, more math-oriented ways, this approach gives rather unpredictable results, but allows creating very natural sounding (and looking) waveforms.

Here's a simplified version of the initial UHM template:

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NumFrames = 1

Envelope L0=1 T1=0.3   L1=0 T2=0.3   L2=1 T3=0.4   L3=0

Seed = 123456
Wave "bandpass(1-2*rand, 0.5*env(phase), 0.7)"
//    ________ ________  ___ __________  ___
//       |         |      |       |       |
//     FILTER    NOISE  CUTOFF    |      RES
//     TYPE             FREQ      |
//                             ENVELOPE

Normalize metric=peak
Spectrum lowest=0 highest=0 "0"

One cool thing about UHM scripting, is that we don't have to learn any of its advanced features in order to make our own unique wavetables. By using Import command we can build multi-frame UHM wavetables out of parts of other UHM and WAV files. Like so:

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NumFrames = 3

Import start=0 end=0 "Waveform 019.uhm"
Import start=1 end=1 "Waveform 095.uhm"
Import start=2 end=2 "Waveform 072.uhm"

Here I created a 3-frame wavetable and filled its frames with content from three different UHM files.

Such not hard? -- Yes!

We can import single and multiple frames from both UHM and WAV files. And if a source file is more then 1 frame long, we can specify a frame number that we want to start importing from:

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NumFrames = 5

Import start=0 end=4 from=20 "Big audio file.wav"

This script will read Big audio file.wav starting from its frame number 20, and load next 5 frames into Hive.

If you don't specify a path, the Import command will look for files in the current folder. But you can also use relative path syntax to access files in other locations:

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Import start=0 end=0 "../Waveform 007.uhm"
Import start=1 end=1 "../../GrandMaNightSounds_Rec2.wav"
Import start=2 end=2 "../SomeFolder/AnotherWaveform.uhm"

The ".." notation translates to "Go one folder up". Just keep in mind that you can only point to files located within Hive's "Wavetables" folder. And you can not use absolute paths, like: "C:\Wavetables\Waveform 007.uhm".

And finally, if you really want to, you can save the resulting audio of any UHM script to a WAV file by using Export command. Just add this line to the end of your UHM script:

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Export "test.wav"

After reloading the script in Hive, a new WAV version of your wavetable will be created in the same folder, which you can then use, move around, share with friends or just keep to yourself and be like that guy who created a lot of wavetables and didn't tell anyone, cause it's like his secret weapon now or something. Seriously though, don't be that guy, share cool stuff with others. Almost everybody wins in that scenario.

[EvilDragon]

Very nice Xmas gift, D! Thanks!

[drzhnn]

Very nice Xmas gift, D! Thanks!

My pleasure! Have the happiest of holidays!

[Ranoka]

Thanks for sharing this drzhnn, I plan to give this the time it deserves when I get a proper chance!

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Very cool of you drzhnn, thanks! Especially appreciate the instructions on importing them to combine them.

[zvenx]

Thanks drzhnn.
rsp

[yellowmix]

Thank you, drzhnn.

[Howard]

[Urs]

Good stuff!

[a.cla.dio]

thank you!

[pdxindy]

Thanks!!

[cytospur]

Neat idea

[bmrzycki]

Very cool stuff drzhnn. Any chance of eventually sharing the source Python script? I have a feeling this might spur other programmer-synth-heads to create tools to programatically create uhm wavetables...

[ho66it]

Thank you!!

[drzhnn]

Thanks, guys

Very cool stuff drzhnn. Any chance of eventually sharing the source Python script? I have a feeling this might spur other programmer-synth-heads to create tools to programatically create uhm wavetables...

The only thing that stopped me from sharing it initially, was that I didn't want to spread bad coding practices But now when you asked... IT'S YOUR FAULT!

Here it is (Python 3.5+):

uhm_generator.zip

Just change the AUTHOR, SAVE_FOLDER and NUM_FILES variables to your liking. Then run it:

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python uhm_generator.py

or

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python3 uhm_generator.py

(depending on your OS) and it will generate 100 UHMs (by default) to the specified SAVE_FOLDER.