ValhallaShimmer

[valhallasound]

Jumped on the Shimmer train last night, here is a short track with a solo Euphonium, automating the sends to 5 differently tuned instances of shimmer - so composing with harmonic spaces so to speak:
Dark Interlude

This example really shows why I want ValhallaShimmer to stay simple (as far as controls), instead of building in the ability to cascade N numbers of the algorithm within a single plugin. The 5 differently tuned instances in parallel is something I haven't tried. If I hardwired the plugin to do multiple instances, I may not have come up with the parallel option. Plus, just having N parallel algorithms would not get the sound in the example by itself. The automated sends are critical for getting the desired harmonies at a given moment, instead of just building up sonic soup (as I tend to do when playing with series instances of Shimmer).

Sean Costello

[mandolarian]

Brilliant point, Sean. But, I feel you're missing the bigger picture of our unreasonable feature requests.

We're not wanting just n serial or n parallel in a single plugin - nopers. What we really want is a ValhallaShimmer DAW - with one input, no controls and 144,000+ self-automating, perfectly sync'd, harmonically precise yet exactly random Shimmersonic soup outputs. Phat and Wide. And deep is good too. Imagine what a time saver it would be for us too busy to create-a-track on-the-go KVR artistes.

[valhallasound]

What we really want is a ValhallaShimmer DAW - with one input, no controls and 144,000+ self-automating, perfectly sync'd, harmonically precise yet exactly random Shimmersonic soup outputs.

Why do you need an input? Honestly, it seems like you don't TRUST ValhallaShimmer!

"Do not taunt ValhallaShimmer."

[mandolarian]

Good point. Just trying to save you a little coding time up front - but you're right. No inputs - just outputs. Sorry to offend. Can I still be on the ShimmerDAW beta team?

[Sampleconstruct]

Shimmer should stay simple, it's not a CPU Hog so using several instances in a project is a no brainer. One instance already stacks intervals up and down if you use it in double mode, for creating controlled harmonic space single mode is actually better. Sending the same source into differently tuned instances, e.g. on set to +7 semitones, the other one to -5 creates a beautiful harmony. Stacking minor thirds will instantly sound like Wagner's music, stacked minor sixths are also interesting. Any way, in a Mix just sending selected events into harmonic spaces that fit the current harmony of the track makes the sun shine right away...

[ariston]

The beginning of the track has a sound I am presuming is Shimmer with a fairly small size setting, pitch set to single (+12 semitones), and a fair amount of feedback. With smaller size settings, the octaves feed back faster, and can get kinda aggressive.

Sean

Good guess! There's actually too much going on in this track, but I really liked that particular setting because of its aggressiveness.

[Sequent]

A very very big +1 to Simon's post.

Please don't mess with something that is working so well and is already very useful. Keep it simple!

If a super feature-laden version is something that people want, perhaps that could be a different version of Shimmer, but I think just piling on features to what this plugin already offers is entirely missing the point. As it is now, the cpu usage is nil, so using multiple instances within a project most definitely IS a no brainer and is very flexible.

Shimmer should stay simple, it's not a CPU Hog so using several instances in a project is a no brainer. One instance already stacks intervals up and down if you use it in double mode, for creating controlled harmonic space single mode is actually better. Sending the same source into differently tuned instances, e.g. on set to +7 semitones, the other one to -5 creates a beautiful harmony. Stacking minor thirds will instantly sound like Wagner's music, stacked minor sixths are also interesting. Any way, in a Mix just sending selected events into harmonic spaces that fit the current harmony of the track makes the sun shine right away...

[Captain]

OK, let me draw a very crude picture of what I mean.

Let's say we want to put 4 instances of VS in a series. I assume that's something people are doing a lot (I am! ) We'll end up with something like this:



Right? Although a single instance of VS is very simple, we now have four instances of it, and every single detail of the interface is multiplied by four, and scattered into four different windows, which are usually all over the place.

How about we could (and only if we want to), do that inside a single instance, and get something like this instead:



Now you can control the whole chain in a single window, with all controls nicely aligned. Of course when you open the plugin, it would look exactly like it looks now. There would just be some little control somewhere that allows you to add new iterations, and maybe the GUI grows dynamically to reflect that. But only if you want to. It doesn't take anything away from you, it doesn't make the plugin any more complicated (to the user - of course what happens internally is another matter, and I can't comment on that), you are still free to use it exactly as you use it now. It just makes the case of chaining VS's simpler than it is now, and that's it.

But once again, let me repeat that this was only a wild theoretical idea. I'm obsessed with GUIs, usability, and optimization, and this was just something that popped into my mind when I realized I'll be chaining lots of VS's in the future. I already love the plugin more than life in its current form, and I'm perfectly happy if it stays like it is now.

[metalifuxx]

11-08-2010
*new remix, levels readjusted and the other one was limited way too much*
Alienz Are Here (Remix 2)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6185854/kvr%20s ... mix%29.mp3

Shimmer as the reverb send for all tracks except the bass

Shimmer sounds very 1994 IDM on the drums! The algorithms don't have very much in common with the Quadraverb reverb algorithms (the reverb used by Aphex Twin and Autechre around 1994), but there are some definite similarities in the sound, especially on the high hat sounds.

Sean Costello

Yes, right on. I love what it did to the drums, especially the hats. I think it was only the Bright Hall preset loaded up on a send from the drum bus channel. I am now wondering what it could sound like with Sampleconstruct's example but with the multi out of a drum vsti going into separate tuned instances of Shimmer in parallel all automated. I need to wire up my M-Audio Trigger Finger and have some automation fun.

[metalifuxx]

hmm, or tuned percussion, if not already tuned, use an auto tune like plugin on the sends before Shimmer. You could create a bed of harmonic melodic padding from just drums

[valhallasound]

hmm, or tuned percussion, if not already tuned, use an auto tune like plugin on the sends before Shimmer. You could create a bed of harmonic melodic padding from just drums

If you use Live, there is a built-in Resonator plugin, that is roughly equivalent to the PCM70 effect with the tuned combs. This would be useful for getting pitches out of drums.

Another good trick for pitching unpitched sounds is to run things through a "dumb" pitch shifter with no randomization. I call it a "dumb" pitch shifter, as opposed to an "intelligent" or "deglitched" pitch shifter, which tracks the pitch in order to find the best splicing points. A "dumb" pitch shifter has a fixed splicing interval, which can generate a pitch artifact at the splicing rate. Audio Damage's Discord 3 does a nice job of this, and apparently the Sound Toys Crystallizer does this as well.

The pitch shifter in Shimmer simulates an "intelligent" pitch shifter that is trying to track the period of a polyphonic signal that has had its phase totally scrambled by reverberation. Which turns an "intelligent" pitch shifter into a "dumb" pitch shifter with special characteristics - essentially a form of randomization. By simulating the effects, instead of actually tracking the pitch to get the same results, I saved a huge amount of CPU cycles. My pitch shifting block in ValhallaShimmer uses around 0.1% of my 2006 MacBook Pro's CPU. Most of the cycles in Shimmer are spent on the reverb portion of the algorithm, which uses a large number of modulated delays.

Sean Costello

[valhallasound]

Shimmer should stay simple, it's not a CPU Hog so using several instances in a project is a no brainer. One instance already stacks intervals up and down if you use it in double mode, for creating controlled harmonic space single mode is actually better. Sending the same source into differently tuned instances, e.g. on set to +7 semitones, the other one to -5 creates a beautiful harmony. Stacking minor thirds will instantly sound like Wagner's music, stacked minor sixths are also interesting. Any way, in a Mix just sending selected events into harmonic spaces that fit the current harmony of the track makes the sun shine right away...

Your sound example was very Wagnerian, although the harmonies were more 20th century to my ears. I did some experiments with series instances of shimmer, with += 12 semitones, +- 7 semitones, and +- 4 semitones in series, playing a single note of TAL-NoiseMaker through the network (which is an AMAZING free synth, BTW). The results were somewhere between Wagner (to my ears), and the Ligeti-izer that I always wanted to make around 1999.

This reminds me of a dream I had in 1992. At the time, a local music store had a Micromoog for $125, which I didn't buy. In the dream, I played a note on the Micromoog, and the output was this beautiful swirling mass of sound, full of stacked tone clusters. Very different from the single (beautiful) monophonic note that a real Micromoog generates. I wonder if ValhallaShimmer was influenced by that dream - I just remembered it.

Obviously, the Eno/Lanois influence was strong during the design period of Shimmer. However, when I first started taking computer music and DSP seriously, I took a yearlong course on computer music at the University of Washington. The instructor, Richard Karpen, had a compositional style that leaned towards 20th century "maximalism," which was definitely influenced by serialism, but relied on the computer to generate stochastic note events that would build up huge clouds of sound. This was undoubtedly an influence on my DSP work. Instead of creating lots of notes, I tend to create signal processing networks where the goal is to create a similarly huge effect within the network itself. Sometimes the results can end up being sonic mud, which is why I am impressed with Sampleconstructs example, which has the sort of tonal complexity I was aiming for in my computer music days, but with a far better sense of composition.

Sean Costello

[jensa]

I wonder if ValhallaShimmer was influenced by that dream - I just remembered it.

Did you perchance code it while sleeping?

[valhallasound]

I wonder if ValhallaShimmer was influenced by that dream - I just remembered it.

Did you perchance code it while sleeping?

Back when I had the dream, I knew how to make a computer print "Sean!!!" over and over again, and that was about it.

My code dreams never work. And are as boring as they sound.

[Sampleconstruct]

Shimmer should stay simple, it's not a CPU Hog so using several instances in a project is a no brainer. One instance already stacks intervals up and down if you use it in double mode, for creating controlled harmonic space single mode is actually better. Sending the same source into differently tuned instances, e.g. on set to +7 semitones, the other one to -5 creates a beautiful harmony. Stacking minor thirds will instantly sound like Wagner's music, stacked minor sixths are also interesting. Any way, in a Mix just sending selected events into harmonic spaces that fit the current harmony of the track makes the sun shine right away...

Your sound example was very Wagnerian, although the harmonies were more 20th century to my ears. I did some experiments with series instances of shimmer, with += 12 semitones, +- 7 semitones, and +- 4 semitones in series, playing a single note of TAL-NoiseMaker through the network (which is an AMAZING free synth, BTW). The results were somewhere between Wagner (to my ears), and the Ligeti-izer that I always wanted to make around 1999.

This reminds me of a dream I had in 1992. At the time, a local music store had a Micromoog for $125, which I didn't buy. In the dream, I played a note on the Micromoog, and the output was this beautiful swirling mass of sound, full of stacked tone clusters. Very different from the single (beautiful) monophonic note that a real Micromoog generates. I wonder if ValhallaShimmer was influenced by that dream - I just remembered it.

Obviously, the Eno/Lanois influence was strong during the design period of Shimmer. However, when I first started taking computer music and DSP seriously, I took a yearlong course on computer music at the University of Washington. The instructor, Richard Karpen, had a compositional style that leaned towards 20th century "maximalism," which was definitely influenced by serialism, but relied on the computer to generate stochastic note events that would build up huge clouds of sound. This was undoubtedly an influence on my DSP work. Instead of creating lots of notes, I tend to create signal processing networks where the goal is to create a similarly huge effect within the network itself. Sometimes the results can end up being sonic mud, which is why I am impressed with Sampleconstructs example, which has the sort of tonal complexity I was aiming for in my computer music days, but with a far better sense of composition.

Sean Costello

Until Shimmer was released I used to fake similar "pitched reverb" effects by editing reverb samples of Instruments and electronics in Melodyne, tuning them to the needs of the current project or by just sampling reverb tails and using them in Kontakt. So Shimmer opens up a totally new field here and it can be great to follow the stacked interval chords that Shimmer creates by enhancing them, e.g. just lay out a chord with a synth pad that uses the same stacked intervals that the current Shimmer cloud has generated and bring it in underneath the Shimmer Cloud, then follow the harmonic direction this chord creates and so on. Really inspiring stuff...