xavriley

Researching the Icebreaker Tax Avoidance Scheme

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.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/take-that-tax-avoidance-how-gary-barlow-howard-donald-mark-owen-dodged-hmrc-1448258

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.

The Decision

xavriley

# 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

xavriley

# 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}}

xavriley

Thinking about a design for a granular synth in SonicPi.

Proposed name - warp_sample

• based on sample - i.e. takes a symbol or path to sample
• takes a :rate param which is 1 by default. Default behaviour is to play a granulated version of the sample at normal speed
• as rate is reduced (to say 0.5) the sample takes twice as long but because it's a granular synth the pitch will stay the same
• unlike sample, a rate of 0 will just play grains around a :pointer position.

Arguments

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use_bpm 130
use_synth :saw
use_synth_defaults release: 0.4

bassline = (knit :a3, 4, 
                 :e3, 5, 
                 :f3, 4, 
                 :d3, 5, 
                 :b2, 4, 
                 :c3, 5, 

xavriley

use_bpm 110
live_loop(:dr) do
  with_fx :compressor, pre_amp: 10 do
    with_fx :reverb, mix: 0.1, room: 1 do
      with_fx :ring, freq: scale(:eb4, :minor_pentatonic).choose, mix: 0.4 do
        "100100101110".chars.map(&:to_i).each.with_index do |beat, i|
          sample :bd_808 if beat == 1
          sample :bd_808 if beat != 1 and one_in(12)
          with_fx :bitcrusher, bits: 8 do
            sample :elec_blip, pan: -> {rrand(0,1)}.call, amp: 5 if [4,13].include? i

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c_bebop = [60,62,64,65,67,68,69,71]
current_scale = (c_bebop.map {|x| x - 12 } + \
                 c_bebop + \
                 c_bebop.map {|x| x + 12 } + \
                 c_bebop.map {|x| x + 24 }).flatten

def chord_tones(n, scale)
  return n if n.nil?

  idx = scale.to_a.index(note(n).to_i)

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uncomment do
  define :pad_times do |target_length, time_values|
    if time_values.reduce(:+) < target_length
      return time_values << (target_length - time_values.reduce(:+))
    else
      truncated_times = time_values.take_while.with_index {|x,i|
        time_values[0..i].reduce(:+) < target_length
      }
      return truncated_times << (target_length - truncated_times.reduce(:+))
    end

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live_loop :dr do |c|
  with_fx :reverb do
    synth :zawa, note: (knit :c2, 32, :a1, 8)[c], release: 3, phase: 0.25, wave: 1, phase_offset: 0.5 if factor?(c, 16)
  end

  with_fx :echo, mix: 0.3 do
    synth :pulse, pan: Math.sin(vt), note: (scale :a3, :minor_pentatonic).choose, release: 0.1 if spread(7,16)[c]
  end

  sample :bd_haus if spread(5,8)[c]

xavriley

Degrade effect for Sonic Pi

Our old friend Tidal has a function I quite like - degrade

Tidal is a pattern based language and degrade simply drops an event from a pattern 50% of the time.

input: [1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1]

-> degrade(input)