Nature sound timelapse

I've got some ideas on how you could do this. What you're describing is a bit like a macro scale granular process, so shouldn't be too hard. One thing though, is it a single ten hour wav? If so, how big is that file?

Hi Ben . Very interesting .
Which way u will choose for the final effect ,it will be part of an aesthetics . When i think of it , splitting it up into equal range clips will let u keep some of the characteristics from the original recording but at the same time i think u wont really notice them because compressing such long take its a huge compromise over the audio information that it consist of .

The second solution i can think of now is to interpolate between given points in audio table . 6 minutes is about 15876000 samples of a audio data . if u divide whole length over 6 minutes u will get the factor over which u would jump within the original data . These new points will complete your new output .

For the sake of curiosity i would try both approaches , Your first idea and interpolation . may sound interesting depending on data looseness . Also waiting for others with what they will come up with .

#EDIT
its a Karlheinz Stockhausen school :))))))

also, just in case this is lost on me, is there a particular reason to actually use a 10-hour long recording, rather than simply taking little recordings at fixed intervals?

WETTERBERG,

What I is similar to what you are saying, taking periodic clips from a long recording. I have several applications for this type of nature sound time-lapse, and almost all of them begin with a pre-existing long-duration recording, inhibiting me from simply taking little recordings at intervals. In fact, the most urgent application is creating a sonic timelapse to accompany months of continuous audio and visual data, and so '10 hours' was just an example / starting point.

Any ideas or patches / objects would be super helpful.

MARK DURHAM and DO WHILE,

Could any of you provide me a rough patch to illustrate what you are envisioning? That will help me have something that I could then refine, but seeing how this concept could be roughly sketched out in max would be a big help to me.
Thanks,

Ben

Sure thing.

I'd split the patch up into two sections. First you will need some kind of control structure for the device - the bit deciding which piece of the file to play, and for how long. You could either do the maths for this before you press play, so analysing the length of file plotting points and creating a list of slices to play. Alternatively you could create a machine that just 'runs', playing say a 5 second slice from every 1 minute of your file till it runs out of file to play. They would both work, the first is perhaps more elegant and would take a little more work, but could give you more control and some visual feedback such as marking sections on a waveform image.

Think before you start about which controls you need.

The other section will be the playback bit. Here you need at least two sample players which the patch will alternate playback between. They will need an envelope applied for volume, so whilst one is fading up, the other is fading down. As if the patch is constantly crossfading from one section to another.

I'm assuming that the file is too big to be loaded into memory, so the sfplay~ object will be the way to go. sfinfo~ can provide details of file length. You will need something to trigger each slice, probably the metro object. For an envelope I'd probably fill a buffer~ with half a sine wave, then use line~ and wave~ to create the control signal.

I'd be happy to sketch this out in rough if you get stuck.

get two sfplay~s and one m4l.bal2~, that should do it, right? Then we don't need envelopes at all, but rather a simple "fade this way, fade that way" thing.

True enough... I was following the granular approach too closely there.

One thing I'm not sure of - is there a way of displaying a waveform image in the patch (like waveform~ does) if the file is not in a buffer? Thinking it would be nice to have some visual feedback of where in the file each section was from.

Hey guys,

Wetterberg and Mark Durham.

Could you scrap together a "sketch patch." I've been trying but am not really even close. I am able to load the file in, and play it for a certain amount of time (eg: 5 seconds), but then to write a program that says, ok, now the next file you play is going to be X amount of time ahead of this one is what is messing me up.

Looking forward to your ideas!

Thanks a lot,

Ben