This has been in the news recently, with coverage focussing on Gary Barlow and his bandmates in Take That. The following article does a reasonable job of trying to break down what is clearly a complex case.
Looking beyond the media angle of "National Treasure Gary Barlow is a tax dodger", I wanted to see what the extent of this scheme was, and the results were surprising.
| # THX Deep Note | |
| # Second draft | |
| # see http://www.earslap.com/article/recreating-the-thx-deep-note.html | |
| time = 10 | |
| wait_time = (time / 3) | |
| synths = [] | |
| rand_note = -> { rrand(note(:A2), note(:A4)) } | |
| with_fx :normaliser, amp: 0.5 do | |
| use_synth :dsaw |
| # Welcome to Sonic Pi v2.0 | |
| # SonicPi ish interpretation of | |
| # Dan Stowells' Dubstep Synth: | |
| # All the usual caveats apply - this is just a first attempt at getting it working | |
| # Refinements to follow | |
| @current_bpm = 120.0 # because current_bpm doesn't work for me | |
| use_bpm @current_bpm |
| # The funky drummer | |
| # The aim here is to experiment with | |
| # a) sequencing drums | |
| # b) playing with 'time feel' which is | |
| # music-speak for how the beat feels, | |
| # ranging from robotic (0.0 swing_time) | |
| # to ultra funky Fresh Prince of Bel Air | |
| # theme tune style (0.2+ swing_time) | |
| current_bpm = 180.0 |
| # Playing ASCII drum tabs with Sonic Pi | |
| # Ruby is an awesome language for String manipulation. | |
| # Lets use that fact to play some drums! | |
| # Tab for the Amen break taken from Wikipedia | |
| # http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amen_break | |
| # Note that %Q{ ... } is just another way | |
| # to define a string in Ruby |
| # Defining standalone wobble | |
| # WOBBLE BASS | |
| define :wob do |note, no_of_wobs, duration| | |
| # using in_thread so we don't block everything | |
| in_thread do | |
| use_synth :dsaw | |
| lowcut = note(:E1) # ~ 40Hz | |
| highcut = note(:G8) # ~ 3000Hz | |
| # DUBSTEP | |
| # Combines ideas from my other gists | |
| current_bpm = 140.0 | |
| use_bpm current_bpm | |
| # WOBBLE BASS | |
| define :wob do | |
| use_synth :dsaw | |
| lowcut = note(:E1) # ~ 40Hz | |
| highcut = note(:G8) # ~ 3000Hz |
| # Beat slicer | |
| # Taking a sample, we can divide it into n slices | |
| # (in this example we'll use 16). Using the :start | |
| # and :finish parameters for the sample method, we | |
| # can 'remix' the sound by playing the slices in a | |
| # random order | |
| sample_name = :loop_amen | |
| n = 16.0 | |
| # start and finish range from 0 to 1 |
| # better version that doesn't hard code sleep time - try changing loop_amen to another sample! | |
| s=:loop_amen;n=16;b=(0..1).step(1.0/n).each_cons(2).to_a.shuffle;loop{b.each{|p|sample s,start:p[0],finish:p[1];sleep sample_duration(s)/n}} |
Thinking about a design for a granular synth in SonicPi.
sample - i.e. takes a symbol or path to sample:rate param which is 1 by default. Default behaviour is to play a granulated version of the sample at normal speedsample, a rate of 0 will just play grains around a :pointer position.