Guillermo Rivera

Hi There, i have been trying to build in Max a patch that allows me to replicate something like Amon Tobin's ISAM souns.

I know that he used Kyma and spectral morphing, granular synthesis; adn the fact that he used Kyma makes it harded, but i think i can come close with Max.

Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbJwyTkCJk0

By now i have in some (probably wrong) way covered granular using wavetable, buffer~ and waveform, at least to do stuttery things with the audio in the buffer, and increase speed and all.

But im still trying to wrap my head arround Spectral.

The ideal is to be able to manipulate and process acoustic sounds, being found sounds or instruments, in a similar way as his.

Hi There, i have been trying to build in Max a patch that allows me to replicate something like Amon Tobin's ISAM souns.
I know that he used Kyma and spectral morphing, granular synthesis; adn the fact that he used Kyma makes it harded, but i think i can come close with Max.

Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbJwyTkCJk0

By now i have in some (probably wrong) way covered granular using wavetable, buffer~ and waveform, at least to do stuttery things with the audio in the buffer, and increase speed and all.
But im still trying to wrap my head arround Spectral.

The ideal is to be able to manipulate and process acoustic sounds, being found sounds or instruments, in a similar way as his.

Hi There, i have been trying to build in Max a patch that allows me to replicate something like Amon Tobin's ISAM souns.
I know that he used

amon-tobin's-isam-sound-design

It sounds to me as though you can do (most of) this with granular synthesis, realising that there are many ways to implement that technique. A combination of filtering and grains can achieve a great deal, especially if you have full control over the number of grains, their overlap, the envelope shape, start point, loop length, and jitter (random factors in the above). It is straight-forward to write your own algorithm and much can be learned from this. Then when you use one of the packages that might make the process easier (Petra, for example), you will have a deeper understanding of how to get the most from it.

Spectral techniques mean little more than "doing different things to different frequencies". You could, for example, divide the original sound into frequency bands and apply different granular parameters to each.

Usually, however, spectral processing occurs in the frequency domain and for that you would need FFT. There are some good techniques for this in Max, with tutorials online.

I would stress the importance of capturing good sounds to begin with. What constitutes "good" is not obvious until you begin manipulating. Some sounds are simply more expressive than others. It is often handy to use high sampling rates and microphones that reach above the hearing range. Such frequencies can be made audible by pitching them down. 

It sounds to me as though you can do (most of) this with granular synthesis, realising that there are many ways to implement that technique.  A combination of filtering and grains can achieve a great deal, especially if you have full control over the number of grains, their overlap, the envelope shape, start point, loop length, and  jitter (random factors in  the above). It is straight-forward to write your own algorithm and much can be learned from this. Then when you use one of the packages that might make the process easier (Petra, for example), you will have a deeper understanding of how to get the most from it.

Spectral techniques mean little more than "doing different things to different frequencies". You could, for example, divide the original sound into frequency bands and apply different granular parameters to each. 

I would stress the importance of capturing good sounds to begin with. What constitutes "good" is not obvious until you begin manipulating. Some sounds are simply more expressive than others. It is often handy to use high sampling rates and microphones that reach above the hearing range.  Such frequencies can be made audible by pitching them down. 

It's a whole world of experimentation.

I expected FFT, so i am planing to see dude837 videos on.

But now that you mention it, i really yhink that my approach to granular is very poor as is basic. As just allows me to do common stutters and glitches just by reducing sample lenght, and changing the speed of the playback.

But i have seen some more complex granulars like this:

Audio sample of a female voice was played back 10 times slower in a granular sampler. Each grain was controlled by x, y and z coordinates of particles in a particle system. x was modulating panorama, y was modulating pitch and z was modulating sample reading position. There was 16 particles and hence 16 accompanying audio grains.

Everything was made in Max/MSP/Jitter.

www.tadej-droljc.org

Particle System Based Granular Synthesis: Test 1

Wich seems really amazing and efective for complex manipulation, do you have any recomendations for it?

I expected FFT, so i am planing to see dude837 videos on.

But now that you mention it, i really yhink that my approach to granular is very poor as is basic. As just allows me to do common stutters and glitches just by reducing sample lenght, and changing the speed of the playback.
But i have seen some more complex granulars like this: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69A1kGNFYIc

https://cycling74.com/tutorials/the-phase-vocoder-%E2%80%93-part-i

https://cycling74.com/tutorials/the-phase-vocoder-part-ii

https://cycling74.com/tutorials/advanced-max-ffts-part-1

https://cycling74.com/tutorials/advanced-max-ffts-part-2

https://cycling74.com/tutorials/advanced-max-ffts-part-3

https://cycling74.com/tutorials/advanced-max-ffts-part-4

https://cycling74.com/articles/fft-part-5

https://cycling74.com/tutorials/advanced-max-ffts-part-6

https://cycling74.com/tutorials/advanced-max-ffts-part-7

Also Eric Lyon's book has some valuable stuff about it, too: 

https://cycling74.com/articles/an-interview-with-eric-lyon

And I am especially indebted to Vol 2 of this, for helping me to understand FFTs better than any other reference i've ever seen:

Good stuff for FFT learning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69A1kGNFYIc

https://cycling74.com/tutorials/the-phase-vocoder-%E2%80%93-part-i
https://cycling74.com/tutorials/the-phase-vocoder-part-ii

https://cycling74.com/tutorials/advanced-max-ffts-part-1
https://cycling74.com/tutorials/advanced-max-ffts-part-2
https://cycling74.com/tutorials/advanced-max-ffts-part-3
https://cycling74.com/tutorials/advanced-max-ffts-part-4
https://cycling74.com/articles/fft-part-5
https://cycling74.com/tutorials/advanced-max-ffts-part-6
https://cycling74.com/tutorials/advanced-max-ffts-part-7

Also Eric Lyon's book has some valuable stuff about it, too: 
https://cycling74.com/articles/an-interview-with-eric-lyon 

And I am especially indebted to Vol 2 of this, for helping me to understand FFTs better than any other reference i've ever seen:
http://www.musimathics.com/ 

Hope it all helps a little.

The author of that video has full explanations of what he's doing elsewhere on YouTube. He is using the IRCAM granulator, which might be responsible for how smooth the result is. The 3D graphic is just a simple way of choosing three of the many granulator parameters, as the description says: panorama, pitch, and start position. It doesn't have anything particular to do with the granulator; it's just a controller.

There are several externals available. You could start with Petra, from the Package Manager.

The author of that video has full explanations of what he's doing elsewhere on YouTube. He is using the IRCAM granulator, which might be responsible for how smooth the result is.  The 3D graphic is just a simple way of choosing three of the many granulator parameters, as the description says: panorama, pitch, and start position. It doesn't have anything particular to do with the granulator; it's just a controller.

Thank You very much :) this have been really helpful

Amon Tobin's ISAM Sound Design