Shepard tones

[chuckbeginner]

Hello everyone.

I recently became interested in the phenomenon of Shepard tones, an audio illusion where it seems that a series of tones seems to 'rise' in an infinite loop, like the Roger Penrose/M.C. Escher staircases.

I'd imagine that other people have done this in CHuCK, but I would like to confirm that other listeners hear it 'right' (I think it achieves the desired effect, but I'm inclined to hear what I'm trying to convey) and I'd appreciate any suggestions on the code.

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shepardtones_1.ck
Description:		Download
Filename:	shepardtones_1.ck
Filesize:	434 Bytes
Downloaded:	45 Time(s)

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[Inventor]

Very interesting effect, it would be nice to use it in a song. The only "comment" I have on the code is that it need comments, haha.

[chuckbeginner]

The basic idea is that at each 'step' of the staircase you have a combination of two (or more) tones an octave apart. The tones have different weights which change with each step. (I first heard Shepard tones on a random noise cassette a few years ago, though I didn't know what they were called until I read the book Godel, Escher, Bach. Wikipedia has a pretty good article on it, too.)

[ico]

[Inventor]

Can we apply this concept to other musical things like chord progressions or scales? That would sound wicked-cool, to do a song that sounded like M C Escher's work. Not that I could play it yet, but I could probably ChucK it...

[ico]

[Inventor]

Oh, i see said the blind man (me).

[Blue Hell]

[Inventor]

Very interesting, though the meaning escapes me.

I can understand a system in which we have notes separated by multiples of the 12th root of two, that double every 12 notes, sure. But why name them so funny?

A A# B C C# D D# E F F# G G# and back to A again. We should just use the first 12 letters of the alphabet. Why all the sharps/flats, and why skip two of them. This all seems highly illogical to me.

[Blue Hell]

[Flevo]

thats a long story. let say that first they only use the white notes on the keybords. later people realized the distance between notes didnt fit
if then they started again counting we wouldn thave these problems

nobody learns from history: do you know why al the keys of your pc keybord are mixed thisway? almost same problem.

there are a lot of examples of wrong choices................

[Flevo]

funny, same answer same time

[Blue Hell]

Must be true then

[Flevo]

yours is the scientistic way

[Flevo]

i forgot to ask: the ~~.ck patch is not usable in G2 isn't it?

[Inventor]

Aha! I thought it was a mix-up of some sort. So why haven't we had a revolution in music, a redefinition of things properly. Or is it time for that now?

[Blue Hell]

[Blue Hell]

[Blue Hell]

There are a lot of interesting experiments with musical scales recently, one of the causes being that computers make experimentation so much easier nowadays. Carlo (seraph) tries to educate us in this ... try a search on this forum on the keyword "scale" with author "seraph".

[Inventor]

Some college friends of mine got latched onto the phrase: "revolution begins in the mind". I heard it over and over again:

"revolution begins in the mind"
"revolution begins in the mind"
"revolution begins in the mind"

So I said: "Everything begins in the mind, what's so special about revolution?"

And I never heard it again. I guess that was the end of the revolution.

[chuckbeginner]

[Blue Hell]