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A while ago i posted some ideas on how to convert the Mandelbrot or Julia sets into sound. It didn't turn out so well, however, now i've finally discovered a way to make sound with these formulas, that might really be something. I'm not going to reveal the formula itself yet though, but i want you to try to guess what i've done. Just one hint, it involves no oscillators....

http://www.mediafire.com/?m0l080yrlnwu9t5

I have no idea what you did, but it scared my cat!

@sock rofl

@mat this is at least what me as non-musician would consider "fractal" music, because it actually is "music" (regards to the quotes!) i mean it is not only white noise (roughly)
... how about more channels ?  :devil:

@sock rofl
@sock rofl
@sock rofl
@sock rofl

Oh no! ( epic lol!  :rotfl:)

My guess is that you are converting orbits to sound. This would provide a periodic source.. Probably while scanning through the complex plane.

No idea. But how about trying x coordinate as pitch, y as time and colour (itterations) as volume?

Well, i'm kinda disappointed noone came close to the solution, but here it is.

What i ended up doing is simply iterating the standard Mandelbrot/Julia squaring algorithm with a fixed number of iterations, around 20 in each of these examples, varying one of the parameters along a straight line and using the resulting value as the output level for each sample. You can either use the value of the last iteration, or add the value of all iterations together, the later gives a more complex sound which is what i used for most of the examples in the sound file.

This algorithm works with "inside" points only. This makes it rather limited, because not only is it limited to straight lines that contain inside pixels only, but most of them don't even give any audible result, for example the main bulb of the Mandelbrot set. There are only a few certain areas that have anything going on with them to give a audible result. Most of the samples i did are either of the "antenna" on the real axis of the Mandelbrot set, or the Julia sets from it. I would try with the power of 3 Mandelbrot, but i can't find a formula for it anywhere!

I also tried the "Mandelbar" and "Burning Ship" variants, but since these are the same for real numbers anyway, there's not much point to it.

There is one other formula i used however, which is the first one you hear in the sound example. That is simply a nested sine function, instead of squaring, with multiplication increasing with time. I included this because it was my first idea, and i think it's somewhat related to the Mandelbrot/Juilia formula.

I kind of imagined this having potential to be developed as a purpose made app, that lets you choose a path graphically along the M or J-set along with the other parameters, to render into audio. However upon trying this i have to conclude that there really isn't much more to find, than what is included in this sound file.

For those who really wonder, the ones that sound somewhat repetive are Julia sets from the real axis, the one that is just a single sliding pitch is -2 if i remember right, while the Mandelbrot ones sound more chaotic. Of course the difference between the "Julia" or "Mandelbrot" here is just what parameter is changed over the course of time!

But what really surprises me is how similar the results sound to sine waves, sometimes phase/frequency modulated sine waves. Is there a obvious relation between the squaring formula and the sine function that i've missed?

that link doesn work anymore but

@sock ..... epic :D

Artmatic does something like this...exports formulas into sounds with different algorhythms...fm...seq or sweep...
sometime nice
sometime scary shit
lol again...poor cat

The link still worked for me, but it scared ME (I don't have a cat)

Hmm, for some reason the post i intended to do when i uploaded this a few days ago didn't appear as intended. Anyway, here are some new examples.

The first are examples of a different kind of rendering fractal formulas to sound - instead of a fixed number of iterations from a starting point, each subsequent sample represents one iteration. The very first sound here is the infamous Logistic Map, and you can really hear the period changes as different droning pitches!

Also there's a couple of variants using the Triangle function. This is a function much like the sine function, but it returns a triangle waveform, which actually has only two angles and not three, and i'm pretty sure someone has discovered this function before, which can be describes as abs(x - int(x) - .5), but it seem that it hasn't gotten a lot of interest from mathematicians. But it's perfect for fractal sound, because the linear "velocity" of the resulting waveform is constant, unlike the sine function that constantly varies, so only the direction changes, and there's all kinds of weird harmonic effects going on!

And should i add, that these look VERY interesting when analyzed into a spectogram, too! I might post some examples of this later.

Finally, there's some examples of another way of converting fractal images into sound, which is simply rendering them as pictures (outline only) and running them through a program that converts them to sound by interpreting them as a spectogram, Coagula in this case. You could call it a reverse spectogram!

The images are just webcam video feedback and have nothing directly to do with the sounds....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jiOSPUITdU

I'm kinda disappointed that this isn't getting any more interest on here, but i guess people on here are only devoted to the visual...

recently many people registered with audio in mind, do we have already an audio fractal section ?
if not i will open up one.....

I'm a musician interested in experimental sound devices.  If you could produce something with parameters that the musician could adjust and turn it into a VST instrument, I for one would be very interested!  So might Hawkwind!

Sock, where did you get your SOH?  I want one!!!

That depends...

What's an SOH?

a small spectrogram

I'll do better, there is some interesting pattern hidden inside :)

edit :

(http://fractals.s3.amazonaws.com/vrac/fractalsound2.jpg)
(http://fractals.s3.amazonaws.com/vrac/fractalsound3.jpg)

this one is awesome. What is it ?   ;D

(http://fractals.s3.amazonaws.com/vrac/fractalsound4.jpg)

Edit : if you're interested, i use this software (widely used by radio-amateur) : http://www.qsl.net/dl4yhf/spectra1.html

I've considered something like that, but i don't have the ability to program it myself. The formula itself is trivial, it's just iteration of abs(x - int(x) - .5) with different parameter changes - addition, multiplication, starting value - resulting in audible sound. I'd still be willing to help with what i know, though.

Silly Old Human with a Sense Of Humour ;)

OMG that is the funniest thing I ever heard....downloaded it. Great work!