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Bird Calls

Hans Mikelson

hljmm@werewolf.net

rtbirds.orc rtbirds.sco csm.bat

Adapting Bird Calls for Performance

For the real-time section I have converted my bird call instrument into a real-time instrument. I went through and tried to optimise it for performance. The final result relies on both frequency and amplitude modulation to create the sound. The rate of modulation ramps between two values set by continuous controllers. The starting modulation rate is set by controller 50 and the final rate is set by controller 56. The time it takes to ramp between these two values is set by controller 52. Modulation depth is set by controller 21.

imstrt   midictrl 50, 0, 50               ; Mod start
imend    midictrl 56, 0, 50               ; Mod end
imdur    midictrl 52, 0, 2                ; Mod duration
ipan     =        rnd(1)                  ; Random panning
kmdpth   midictrl 21, 0, 1                ; Mod depth

; Ramp from the start rate to the end rate
kmrate   linseg   imstrt, imdur, imend, imdur, imend

kamod    oscil    kmdpth, kmrate, 1 ; Amplitude modulation oscillator
kfmod    oscil    kmdpth, kmrate, 1 ; Frequency modulation oscillator

aout     oscil    1-kamod, (1+kfmod)*ifqc, 1 ; Birdcall sound

         outs     aout*kamp*sqrt(ipan), aout*kamp*sqrt(1-ipan)

Figure 1.
Bird call flow diagram.  

This is a fun little real-time instrument especially if you have pet cats. With a little practice you can make some fairly realistic sounding bird calls.