Question about FM with buffer contents? (From MSP tutorial 10 & 11)
I have tried connecting a signal using various different means to the patches in tutorials 10 and 11 but I can't figure out how a signal should be connected in order to frequency modulate it?
The signal I'm trying to modulate is not the same as the buffer contents, so that rules out using cycle~ BufferName, if that was an option to begin with.
Can someone tell me where I'm going wrong as I'm sure this should be relatively straightforward?
Thanks again for your help guys,
Rhys
hey there,
frequency modulation is a synthesis technique that uses a signal (coming from the modulating oscillator, the modulator) to modulate the frequency input of another oscillator.
something else is trying to modulate the frequency of a live signal or buffer. is that what you are trying to do? this is something else completely as you can't modulate the "frequency input" of the "oscillator" generating this signal.
what you seem to be trying to do would involve a pitch shifter, where the shift amount is modulated an oscillator.
does this help?
regards,
kjg
instead of modulating the pitch directly, you could modulate the playback speed of a groove~ object:
good fun! :)
i was thinking about modulating the groove~ playback speed too, but dont you have to scale that in some way so that you work with frequency, and not 'speed'?
i also want to FM some buffer~s' contents but i wanna be able to at least roughly calculate the sidebands, and this 'playback speed' thing does not help alot :)
Quote: s.k. wrote on Fri, 15 February 2008 09:15
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> i was thinking about modulating the groove~ playback speed too, but dont you have to scale that in some way so that you work with frequency, and not 'speed'?
yes.
when you go scaling, keep in mind that positive values indicate forward playback and negative reverse playback in groove~. Furthermore a speed of 0.5 is an octave down, 2 an octave up, 4 two octaves up, 8 three octaves up et cetera.
good luck
That's a nice idea kjg.
I'm using a combination of phasor~ and wave~ and if I use a sig~ object to and FM to modulate the speed of phasor~ it doesnt seem to work out as well. :(
phasor~ drives wave~ with a ramp from 0-1 at a given frequency. you could modulate that frequency.. by adding a varying signal to it..
same thing as in the earlier thing i posted, really. Or is this not what you mean?
regards,
kjg
Another approach is of course to have a granular synth (reading from a
buffer) and modulating both the overall grain frequency and the
internal pitch of each grain independently. I'm doing this in csound
at the moment and it sounds wonderfully weird! It wouldn't be too
difficult to implementing it in max though.
P
On 15 Feb 2008, at 11:09, Rhys Perkins wrote:
>
> That's a nice idea kjg.
>
> I'm using a combination of phasor~ and wave~ and if I use a sig~
> object to and FM to modulate the speed of phasor~ it doesnt seem to
> work out as well. :(
>
>
Quote: kjg wrote on Fri, 15 February 2008 05:06
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> phasor~ drives wave~ with a ramp from 0-1 at a given frequency. you could modulate that frequency.. by adding a varying signal to it..
>
> same thing as in the earlier thing i posted, really. Or is this not what you mean?
>
> regards,
> kjg
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Yeah thats what I tried.
I'm using this with a granular patch I've been working on and it makes scratching noises as the cycle~ seems to make it play forwards and backwards quickly. Changing the mod depth just makes it play faster or slower.
Maybe I've got it set up wrong, but the effects I get are no different that just messing around with the tempo.
Rhys
> Maybe I've got it set up wrong, but the effects I get are no different that just messing around with the tempo.
That makes sense, because that is what you are doing: Messing around with the playback speed.
You can't modulate the frequency input of the "oscillators" generating the signal in the buffers since there are none. The signal _is_ already generated. you can just play it back faster/slower/backwards/chopped up/inside out.
a more "advanced' and probably more exciting and controllable technique would be peimankhosravi's suggestion.
but first get through the tutorials ;)
regards,
kjg
Hi , somebody knows how. to implememt in maxmsp the synthesis algotithm used
in the old SY77 that uses a sampled sound as modulator. frecuency?
thanks ! jorge
it does not fundamentally differ from using a wavetable such as cycle~. actually ... it is almost the same.
just dont forget that FM works best with simple waveforms. using 2 spectral rich samples to modulate each other often sounds arbitrarily and all but musical or "physical". a sinewave remains the best option.
so when using samples, i may suggest that you are adding dynamic, user controllable lowpass and highpass filters to both, the modulator, as well as the carrier.
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