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Editorial

Hans Mikelson

hans@csounds.com

Machines, Atoms and Dinosaurs

For some reason I like the to listen to the sound of machines. As I walk around past different plants and factories I like to listen to the sounds they are making. Different frequencies fade in and out as move you past them. The sounds beat in and out of phase with each other over several seconds. Sounds build to a crescendo and suddenly drop off over and over again as something reaches a limit or threshold and is released. As I walk around a facility I notice the pulses of different machines fading in and out interrupted by different alarm conditions. How can I implement this in Csound? What sound would electrons orbiting an atom make if they oscillated at audio frequencies? Is it possible to use the Schrodinger equation to model this? What would a voice sound like if it were produced in the vocal tract of a tyrannosaurus rex or a triceratops? Can models be developed to find out? Ah, but I digress.

I have written a brief introduction to filtering for the beginners section this time. In the synthesis section I combine terrain mapping synthesis with dynamical systems and for the processing section I introduce a simple pitch shifter. Richard Bowers provides a system for real-time composition, rasmus ekman has offered some notes on Csound program flow and Jeff Harrington's Espace des Cloches is a featured composition.