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I would love to integrate a fractal music modul in my fractal app. ARe there any resources about how to write such a thing?

M. Hilpert (dentaku) wrote:
>
>    I would love to integrate a fractal music modul in my fractal app.
>    ARe there any resources about how to write such a thing?

How complex do you wish to get with this module and the resulting sound file??

Something as simple as having each generated pixel represent a single tone, similar to how colors are chosen from a MAP file??  Or the simultaneous combination of notes in a chord to produce a harmony??

I noticed in the thread title there was the word MIDI
Please dont use midi, fractal waveforms or harmonics are much more intresting.
Using MIDI to create fractal sounds is like using ms paint to create fractal imagery.

Iv'e tried using a 1 dimentional strage attractor to create a waveform

w = value of the waveform
c1 = a constant
c2 = another constant

repeat this lots of times (w = sin((w + c1) * c2))

It can sounds like someone screaming or like a bird being squashed or like an approcing train but usally eather silence or fuzz.
It all depends on the values of c1 and c2, nothing verry plesent sounding yet.

I would like to hear what cellular automata sound like such as spenski triangle or starwars (Its an MCell one) where the up\down position represented freqency and the left\right time.

truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!


interesting results and discussion, i've been thinking of ways to do fractal "music" too; i think "sound" is a more appropriate term, since the chaos of fractals might not gel well with the harmonies one expects in (traditional) musical composition. then again, most of what i listen to these days can be safely classified as static or noise ;)

Yes, it should be something like 'fractal generated modularity' or something like that. I just think of Amiga's Mindwalker (http://www.blachford.info/computer/walker/Bill_Williams-Mindwalker.mp3 (http://www.blachford.info/computer/walker/Bill_Williams-Mindwalker.mp3)). Which has a very strange and long evolving sound pattern ...

This might be one way of approaching the project.  I will say that I am pretty sure the tool I am about to link uses midi, however that is not necessarily stopping you from using sine waves.  That said though I am not opposed to midi's use with fractals.  It is all in how you use the tools to create not in what tools you use to create.  So my idea would   to take something like this fun little flash game:

http://lab.andre-michelle.com/tonematrix

Possibly with a larger grid?

Make a fractal zoom and divide it into quadrants then correlate those quadrants to squares in the sound tool  let the animation decide what squares to light up.

There is more than one way to skin the cat:) enjoy.

In fractal music there is chromatic, chords, waveforms, microtonal, most fractal music is the chromatic kind. I don't think that anyone has made a x-y waveform graph of a fractal variety? I'd be tempted for example to take a greyscale fractal that varies in shade from 0 to 1 and zoom into a fractal trap, except only keeping a pixel from every zoom level, and so tracing a line, or even a wavey line function that zooms into the mandelbrot and that can be written into 2d. then you could play that as sound.

generally speaking though, sonic structures are always made by things with mass and temporal physical reactions, and fractals have no kinds of mass or temporal component that can easily be paralleled to objects with sound.

also the ear tends to gravitate towards harmonic fiths and predictable sounds, whereby there is some form of repetition, which is easy to see in fractals but difficult to port into music. for example repetitions similar to the nightingale song, where every sound that the nightingale makes is said a number of times for a second or so, and then it repeats a different sound curve, it's so inherently relaxed and thoughtful, the way the nightingale sings, when i made a synthesizer that emulates a nightingale, with just oscillatores coping the same frequency deviations and repetitions and changes as a nightingale, and the same pauses, it was one of the best synths i ever made, only about 100 lines long in code, and the hdd got left aside at some stage, in essence though i would like to make fractal waveforms at the same frequencies as a nightingale, ... a fractal LFO for example.

If someone can tell me a formula about how to draw lines over 2d fractal traps i would be very happy.

I did some stuff with this, spiralling around the zoom center, sync'd to video - you get a noisy drone that varies octave according to the radial symmetry at that time:

https://archive.org/details/ClaudiusMaximus_-_emndl_2011-04-23 (first couple don't have sound, then some have different sonifications, also last few are silent again)
https://archive.org/details/ClaudiusMaximus_-_emndl_2011-05-19 (one higher quality with sound, watch this first maybe)

Someone said the sound reminded them of the hypnotoad (all glory to the hypnotoad)!

MrZoom, I think you more describe the audio of music, with all those repetitions, harmonics and the physical part. I think music is hard because it's also our cultural memory and a language of feeling. Musical phrases are a bit like words or pieces of a sentence. Does anyone know any research on fractals and language/grammar/culture ... ?

While I do like both fractals and music (play the piano, guitar, keyboard and some other instruments), I have not yet found a satisfying combination of those two.

Hate to say it ... but this is old stuff. Ask Bach. Yes, Bach.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5tUM5aLHPA

Fractals enter the talk from 25 minutes and onwards. Shows an example of how to make self similar music around 26:20.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjoYU5kpL6U

Tunesmithy creates that kind of self similar fractal music. Here are some links:
http://robertinventor.com/software/tunesmithy/music.htm (http://robertinventor.com/software/tunesmithy/music.htm)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tySVqsM4eM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tySVqsM4eM)

If you want to use fractal formulas to directly generate waveforms I'd suggest Supercollider - http://supercollider.github.io/download.html (http://supercollider.github.io/download.html)
Free multi-platform software for audio synthesis.
You will need coding skills (especially object orientated) as it's based on the smalltalk language and has no GUI whatsoever.
There are however, a lot of tutorials available and even a couple of books on SC.
http://new-Users forum -> supercollider-mailing-lists-forums-use-these.2681727.n2.nabble.com/SuperCollider-Users-New-Use-this-f2676391.html (http://new-supercollider-mailing-lists-forums-use-these.2681727.n2.nabble.com/SuperCollider-Users-New-Use-this-f2676391.html) 
Steep learning curve but worth it (IMHO) :)

Cheers.