MOTM

Since the subject has come up... 

Is it possible to create a digital noise module with a rotary switch (or VC 
morphing) between different "kinds" of digital noise? 

White noise is a "pure concept," and Pink a filtering of that... Digital 
noise modules tend to be registers filled with random seed values, and by 
giving VC of the clocking rate, you can get some weird effects. 

But I'm wondering if maybe there could be some other mathematical functions 
that could seed those registers with different probability spreads. I'm not 
sure exactly what I'm saying or what it would sound like, but it seems to me

that there are lots of different degreees of "randomness" in the world, and 
these could produce different sounds. 

I would imagine that some weird non-ring-modulator metallic sounds could be 
produced this way. Maybe a control for how many "peaks" in the spectrum, 
another for how spaced out they are, and another for "tuning" those peaks. 
Almost like pre-multi-bandpass-filtering white noise, but really it's done 
mathematically (i.e., not with an analog bandpass filters) and then seeded 
into the playback registers. Then a fourth control could modify the clocking

frequency and a fifth would be an attenuator for incoming voltage control of

the clock. Or maybe VC of some of the other controls too. Four initial 
controls and four complimentary attenuators. 

I dunno...just waxing poetic. I think there is great wealth in non-harmonic 
sounds, and producing these is an inherent weakness in analog synthesizers 
(usually you can only get it by filtering white noise, using a ring 
modulator, or a helluva lotta sine wave VCOs tuned all 'funny'). So I like 
to attack that weakness when thinking of "new" modules. (Still want that 
Frequency Shifter.) 

I'm looking for a way to produce the sounds of metal, wood, rubber, sizzling

bacon, bacon being rubbed on metal, the wind on Beta Epsilon Eridani... you 
know. 

I still think that a "true" (i.e., 'academic') chaos module has merit. 



Anyway, my 2 cents.

on 16/11/00 04:55, Tkacs, Ken at ken.tkacs@... wrote:

> I'm looking for a way to produce the sounds of metal, wood, rubber, sizzling
> bacon, bacon being rubbed on metal, the wind on Beta Epsilon Eridani... you
> know. 

funnily enough, did anyone try playing with that "breaking glass" patch that
was posted to the list a few months ago along with the Edgar Winter's
Frankenstein..? the version i ended up with could be varied from "jet
fighter" to "broken coffee machine" to "fried breakfast" (a well known
variant of "bacon rubbed on metal"), anyway, as it turns out it's a simple
patch - so here we go:

sample & hold out - to - vco v/oct input
vco pulse out - to - sample & hold clock input
for dirty fm set s&h level 0-2
for noise set s&h level 2+
tune vco to taste

> I still think that a "true" (i.e., 'academic') chaos module has merit.

is not a chaos module a white noise generator..? or are we talking more
fractal type stuff here..?

how's about chaining a pile of 100s & 101s together..?

cheers
paul b

>>is not a chaos module a white noise generator..? or are we talking
more
fractal type stuff here..?

More along the lines of fractals. But leaving it at that would be
misleading.



>>how's about chaining a pile of 100s & 101s together..?

People commonly use the term "Chaos" to mean "random," but it is not at
all. I like the "Dark Star Chaos" module a lot, but its use of the term
is more in line with the common understanding of Chaos than any true
'academic' use of the term.

No, white noise, and lots of 101s, are still "random." Chaos may sound
random at first to the untrained eye/ear (?), but it isn't. If you let a
chaos oscillator run, for a short while what it produces sounds random,
but as it runs, its output begins to show itself as being structured in
a "not quite predictable" way. Perhaps you've seen "strange attrtactors"
diagrams (erroneously called 'chaos butterfly graphs')? Imagine an LFO
like that, with two outputs that define two intersecting planes of a 3D
strange attractor space? I stay awake nights imagining what this might
be like, what kind of "Forbidden Planet" sounds I could make with a
thing like that.

I have heard some very awful and some very beautiful music/sounds using
Chua Chaos Oscillators ("Chaoscillators"?). Some of the eeriest, most
"alive" vocal and oboe-like sounds you've ever heard. It requires a lot
of tweaking, of course. There isn't a "sweet sound" output. You have to
"find" these sounds amidst the chaos.

Someday I am going to have the time to make one of these puppies. The
basic circuitry is astoundingly simple. Just need to add some
intelligent, useful VC stuff to it.

Ken,
> 
> I have heard some very awful and some very beautiful music/sounds using
> Chua Chaos Oscillators ("Chaoscillators"?). Some of the eeriest, most
Do you know of any web links for these?
Thanks, Jeff

h3y jeff,
i found this,
hope it helps: http://www.cmp.caltech.edu/~mcc/chaos_new/Chua.html
peace,
doc

--- In motm@egroups.com, Jeffrey Pontius <jpont@k...> wrote:
> Ken,
> > 
> > I have heard some very awful and some very beautiful music/sounds 
using
> > Chua Chaos Oscillators ("Chaoscillators"?). Some of the eeriest, 
most
> Do you know of any web links for these?
> Thanks, Jeff

Patented!?!

A specific implementation, or the whole "idea" of VC-ing it?

That's unbelieveable! *Ugh*!

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Schreiber
To: motm@egroups.com
Sent: 11/17/2000 10:30 AM
Subject: Re: [motm] Re: Digital Noise Module

Being *way ahead* of you guys, I have a 1yr old Chua file going. The
VC'd
version is *patented*,
so that makes things tough! (I haven't seen the patent, but have seen
references to it). Like
Chowning FM papers in the '80s, for Chua's circuit you see 100's of
papers
from 1994-1997 then WHAM! Nothing!

Industry marches on!

Paul S.

Being *way ahead* of you guys, I have a 1yr old Chua file going. The VC'd
version is *patented*,
so that makes things tough! (I haven't seen the patent, but have seen
references to it). Like
Chowning FM papers in the '80s, for Chua's circuit you see 100's of papers
from 1994-1997 then WHAM! Nothing!

Industry marches on!

Paul S.

In a message dated 11/17/2000 7:12:50 AM, ken.tkacs@... writes:

>People commonly use the term "Chaos" to mean "random," but it is not at
>all.

While taking some probability, statistics and stochastic processes courses 
about ten years ago, these confusions came up a lot due to term "chaos" 
suddenly bursting out inappropriately from several media. To clear up this 
confusion, the instructor explained the difference something like this: the 
definition of random events, such as the toss of a fair coin (probability of 
either event = 0.5) supposes that there is no information about the initial 
conditions nor prior trials which will in anyway help to determine the 
outcome of the succeeding trials. The term "chaos" refers to a particular 
type of nonlinear partial differential equation (possibly recursive?) where 
the input directly effects the output, but in a nonlinear way (I'm treading 
deep water here).

Regarding the (patented?) VC Chaosccillator, I've read several references to 
VCOs going chaotic by plugging the output into the FM input and varying the 
amplitude. Hmmm....

On a completely different topic entirely without relation to chaos or VCOs 
plugged into themselves, a really handy module might have a VCO and an 
undedicated VCA in the same package. Think of all the things that would allow 
one to patch up. I doubt there's a patent against having a VCO/VCA module.

JB

> 
> While taking some probability, statistics and stochastic processes courses 
> about ten years ago, these confusions came up a lot due to term "chaos" 
> suddenly bursting out inappropriately from several media. To clear up this 
> confusion, the instructor explained the difference something like this: the 
> definition of random events, such as the toss of a fair coin (probability of 
> either event = 0.5) supposes that there is no information about the initial 
> conditions nor prior trials which will in anyway help to determine the 
> outcome of the succeeding trials.
This description really applies to independent events (which
you basically mentioned) (especially the classic coin toss experiment).
There are many situations (e.g., Markov processes, Bayesian) where the
outcomes are conditional on prior outcomes, typically in a sequence of
trials, so then one considers conditional probabilities.  The latter are
still random events, only not independent events.


 The term "chaos" refers to a particular 
> type of nonlinear partial differential equation (possibly recursive?) where 
> the input directly effects the output, but in a nonlinear way (I'm treading 
> deep water here).
I'm probably treading water with you, as my area in statistics is
ecological sampling, but there is active statistical research into chaos,
especially with certain areas of stochastic processes.  I suspect that
conditional aspects of event outcomes is integral in this research.

Jeff

@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@
Jeffrey S. Pontius
Associate Professor
Department of Statistics   =^..^=
Kansas State University
Manhattan KS 66506-0802
pontius@...
@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@*@

In a message dated 11/18/2000 7:34:18 AM, jpont@... writes:

>This description really applies to independent events (which
>you basically mentioned) (especially the classic coin toss experiment).
>There are many situations (e.g., Markov processes, Bayesian) where the
>outcomes are conditional on prior outcomes, typically in a sequence of
>trials, so then one considers conditional probabilities.  The latter are
>still random events, only not independent events.

Of course you are correct here, and independence was almost certainly implied 
by the context of the example (which I've long since forgotten). I've had no 
luck using this example to explain the difference between these types of 
events to anyone without a little math background, since chaos and random 
sound so much alike in common parlance, and most people want to ask, "So how 
do you explain luck?"

JB