1 bit Music Symphony.

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BillyGreen1973

Senior Member
I was doing a bit of web surfing today and stumbled across this.

http://www.1bitsymphony.com/

It's by an artist called Tristan Perich. He produces music using square waves and pwm etc in a microprocessor. The whocircuit is built into a CD jewel case. When I listened to the YouTube clip I was very impressed!

Then got to thinking, what micro is he using? Can it be done with Picaxe, especially the new 08M2, even if it is in a simpler form.

I'll have to wait for my 'M2 order to arrive and have a play. :D
 
hippy

hippy

Ex-Staff (retired)
I'm not sure 1-Bit Symphony or 1-Bit Music will be to everyone's style or cup of tea but it's an interesting and entertaining idea.

PICAXE almost certainly could perform in the same way, and especially those with multiple PWM which would allow for some interesting polyphonics.

I'm not that musically talented but was inspired by an article in the 80's which used an early micro to generate full ( never ending ) compositions, building a sequence of notes - randomly splitting full notes into halves, crotchets and quavers - then applying chord progressions to them. That idea was fun to play with using MIDI and a PC. The formal rules of music ( that is, what should sound right ) are quite well defined so in theory it should be fairly easy to get something which sounds reasonable and credible.

Most music is also pretty slow; 240 bpm is a massive 250ms per quarter note ( often 7/8th on, 1/8th off per note ) so plenty of time in which to churn multiple notes out, and plenty of tolerance for notes not kicking in at exactly the same time. Go for ambient-style and you've got a lot more scope for slower changes and overlaid melodies.

Tie a number of PICAXE to a master which says how long a bar will be, the tone to start with, the tone the next bar will be and you could let the slaves all autonomously generate their own bars; melody, bass, harmony etc.

I got credible random note length and chord progressions and melody on top but my conclusion was it needed more consistent beat ( less randomness in note length ). There's plenty of scope for trying things. I think you'd only really be limited by your creativity and talent.
 
hippy

hippy

Ex-Staff (retired)
Thanks for the inspiration and bringing back happy memories :)

Knocked-up for the 28X2 but should work with any PICAXE which supports PWMDIV16 and can be adjusted for others. Just slap a piezo across PWMOUT (C.1) and 0V, let her rip, wait for the Grammy.

The note progression could be better and frequencies may be off but sounds okay to my tone deaf ears.
 

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premelec

premelec

Senior Member
RomanBlack

www.romanblack.com has a number of sound generation areas and a 1 bit sound generator program... a lot of interesting stuff there... as PICAXE speeds go up the prospects are getting better for sound contained in external RAM.
 
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manie

Senior Member
The cocept is great ! The music is not for me, I'm more "soft" or "orchestral" orientated.
But it remains an excellent idea.....
 
techElder

techElder

Well-known member
"rich composition with 1-bit audio"

Oh come on ... we call these ring tones and attach them to error messages.

Let's not go overboard and describe this as symphonic music because an "artist" discovered electricity. :D
 
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AndyGadget

Senior Member
But "The device treats electricity as a sonic medium, making an intimate connection between the materiality of hardware and the abstract logic of software"!

I briefly read the discussion and he does say the device isn't composing, it's playing back a pre-composed piece, so it looks like he's composing elsewhere and then converting to the 1 bit audio as per the Roman Black concept. Someone compared this to a musical birthday card and he didn't disagree.

I'll post my little 08m composer later :)
 
hippy

hippy

Ex-Staff (retired)
AndyGadget said:
But "The device treats electricity as a sonic medium, making an intimate connection between the materiality of hardware and the abstract logic of software"!
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Where an artist may see 'a metaphor' or some 'grand concept revealed' many may well just see a pile of bricks :)

It's all about view and viewpoint and there's rarely any right or wrong; one either buys-into how the artist puts it or dismisses it as pretentious clap-trap, though entirely possible to hold both views and somewhere in between as well !

For those of an artistic bent; I would suggest, instead of "letting the magic smoke out", we put a positive spin on that and refer to it as "creating a tribute to Gustav Metzger".
 
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AndyGadget

Senior Member
hippy said:
"creating a tribute to Gustav Metzger".
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Auto-destructive art. Now I like that idea.

How about fitting out an industrial robot with an angle grinder and seeing how much of it's own structure it could grind away and still operate.
 
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techElder

techElder

Well-known member
This is the key to this guy's "art" as it seems to me ...

Order Online:
- $29 from Cantaloupe Store
Now shipping
Click to expand...

Might sell more of them if he just sold them as programmable sound generators with an I2C control structure.

Well maybe this old saying is closer to reality: "... a fool born every minute ..." :D
 
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eclectic

Moderator
Texasclodhopper said:
This is the key to this guy's "art" as it seems to me ...



Might sell more of them if he just sold them as programmable sound generators with an I2C control structure.

Well maybe this old saying is closer to reality: "... a fool born every minute ..." :D
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@Hippy.
I played the composer from post#4. Bravo.
It sounds, to my ears, like background music from
"Blackadder" or "The Tudors".

@Texasc. For sheer "chutzpah" / aplomb / tongue in cheek,
google
The Turner Prize.
Magnificent! :))

e
 
hippy

hippy

Ex-Staff (retired)
eclectic said:
@Hippy.
I played the composer from post#4. Bravo.
It sounds, to my ears, like background music from
"Blackadder" or "The Tudors".
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"Middle Ages" is what I thought too. Probably the fast eighth notes sounding a bit like a harpsichord. I think I got lucky with the RANDOM command and choice of note progression as it gives it a much better rhythm than I'd expected, seems to have a motif.
 
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BillyGreen1973

Senior Member
Well, I've been away for the weekend and haven't managed to keep up with this thread.
When I read the blurb about this '1bit Symphony', I did think it was very arty, but I was quite suprised when I listened to the music on the youtube clip. I was expecting something more in keeping with the old monophonic ringtones etc.
Of course the atrist is only in it to make money, otherwise he would be giving them away, but I do think the simplistic approach to the design and layout is quite cool, in a geeky way (my wife didn't get it:rolleyes:)

Anyway, thnks Hipy for the 28x2 code, very interesting. My musical talents, however are limited to 'play' and 'pause' on the mp3 player:D
 
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AndyGadget

Senior Member
This is an attempt to enrich the artistic environment by abtracting one of the possible universes of latent musicality from an inanimate slice of base material, the parameters for release being moulded by the Id, the Ego and the Super Ego of the programmer. The unilayered auditory oscillations are created in a restricted but ever varying form, with regard for tonality, repetition and rhythm. The most mysterious and intriguing aspect of the process is the phrases which are created but never played. They exist for a transient period only in the ‘mind’ of the silicon architecture. Is this a metaphor for the hopes and dreams we can never express in our mayfly-lives?

Offers starting at 5 Grand please. Dipping it in elephant poo comes extra ;)

Will run on anything with a beeper. Don't forget to add the pin ref to the TUNE command if you're not using an 08M. Sometimes takes a while to get into its stride. Tab size set at 4 in the code.

Andy.
 

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hippy

hippy

Ex-Staff (retired)
AndyGadget said:
The most mysterious and intriguing aspect of the process is the phrases which are created but never played.
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I think you may be bookmaker's favourite for the Tracey Eminem award for Sonic Landscaping so far. Superb.

MIDI is handy because the quality of the sound is so much better than the piezo tones ( though I appreciate they have that retro quality ) so you can get much further into chording and harmony. Most people though don't have any MIDI kit.

But ... there must to be some way for a PC to take normal serial ( at a standard baud rate a PICAXE can use ), turn that into MIDI notes and play them through the PC sound card. I think I might have to investigate that.
 
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AndyGadget

Senior Member
hippy said:
MIDI is handy because the quality of the sound is so much better than the piezo tones ( though I appreciate they have that retro quality ) so you can get much further into chording and harmony. Most people though don't have any MIDI kit.
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Then there's the 4 PWM channels of the 14M2. Only 2 independent frequencies, ISTR, but you can get some pretty good attack / decay and phasing effects by playing about with the duty cycle.
 
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vttom

Senior Member
BTW - I only just now watched the YouTube video and heard the composition. It sort of reminds me of "Change Ringing". I'll bet an electronic version of that using a PICAXE's PWM output is pretty doable.
 
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