Generative Sound Software

Download - YOU NEED A YAMAHA MU128
This program is for Mac OSX and requires Midishare to work.
Midishare can be downloaded from this midisharesite
or from here Midishare OSX

"alt click" this to download Wind Machine

Generative music software which simulates wind sounds and cries using a MU128 midi based synth,, creating a beautiful but dark and erie collage of different wind sounds - from thin sounds, to low thunderous rumblings to whistling sounds. And others.But still maintaining a sense of its artificial origins. The sounds are produced by continuously manipulating reverb, EQ and filter parameters of the MU128 with a dense stream of system-exlusive messages determined via different sets of non-linear algorithms.

I decided to write this software after spending sometime in the mountains, near Madrid, on a very windy day. Lazing around I starting comparing the artificiality of software, computer interfaces and of computer generated sounds with those of the natural sounds and landscape surrounding me. I spent much time just listening to the wind and moving to different places to hear how the landscape retuned the wind sounds. This comparison led me to wanting to create an artificial wind generator in order to explore this relation and to capture some of the sonic experience. The quest for a simulated naturality and realism often appears to be driving force and holy grail in technological developments, for example computer games and graphics chips. The work can be seen in the context of various movements in realism in art.

I has been experimenting for many years with getting a standard midi synthesiser to produce sound that are not expected from this type of equipment by sending dense flows of system exclusive midi data - a kind of granular synthesis for MIDI (avantMidi). This technique can be concieved of as a kind of data or property bending.

The use of a general MIDI synthesiser seems the most inappropriate technological tool for generating these natural sounds and sets up an opposition between the technological and the natural. Midi tone generators have stemmed from a perspective of reproducing natural instrument sounds. This software therefore uses a piece of technology designed for one sound simulation for another sound simulation.

The algorithms for sending the Midi data were based on some techniques I came across a few years before during my experiments. I extended these and then created a simple user interface. The interface is simple as its not an main component of the work. The work is for configuring and then letting it generate, then to emmerce oneself it the sound like one would when listening to natural sounds.

To use this software you need

1. a Yamaha MU128 tone generator
2. to download Midishare for OSX
3. good speakers that can handle low rumbling bass

I have used this software for one performance that took place in Madrid during 2004