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Fractal Art => Fractal Music => Topic started by: eiffie on February 19, 2013, 05:46:20 PM




Title: Mandelbrot Set as Musical Instrument
Post by: eiffie on February 19, 2013, 05:46:20 PM
Since this hasn't been talked about here I thought I would mention the simplest mapping of the mandelbrot formula to audio. Just map the values (iteration#, atan2(y-cy,x-cx)) into time and amplitude. Then you hear the orbit rotation as a pitch. You need to interpolate between values to shift the pitch into the audible range. Each bulb contains points that have stable rotations that repeat after a certain number of iterations so the pitchs of the bulbs are musically related. Not the musical scale we are familiar with but something like the pythagorean scale. Child bulbs play a "chord" with the notes of their parents. These chords get more and more complex as you zoom into the set.

Not the greatest musical instrument but worth looking into:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=m5S6wB90plM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=m5S6wB90plM)


Title: Re: Mandelbrot Set as Musical Instrument
Post by: matsoljare on February 19, 2013, 06:19:42 PM
You would get more interesting results if you vary the parameters slightly with time....


Title: Re: Mandelbrot Set as Musical Instrument
Post by: eiffie on February 19, 2013, 07:33:31 PM
Actually the point was to hear the orbits - you get more interesting results choosing points that don't have stable orbits. I just wanted to show the relationship between bulbs and frequency. Also it probably would be better to find the rotation around a moving average.


Title: Re: Mandelbrot Set as Musical Instrument
Post by: erstwhile on February 25, 2013, 07:19:57 PM
This is a great idea.  I've been playing around with translating the orbits into sounds too, but not at such a low level - just translating the radius and angle of points in an orbit to a set of arbitrary pitches. 

Do you have any source code for this?


Title: Re: Mandelbrot Set as Musical Instrument
Post by: menokefug on September 15, 2013, 08:09:11 AM
eiffie, the microtonal scale produced will have 'just intonation' intervals, something i have studied for years. Never seen rotation creating pitch before.