Re: Generating pretty sounding Shepard Tones
Re: Generating pretty sounding Shepard Tones
- Subject: Re: Generating pretty sounding Shepard Tones
- From: Ian Kemmish <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2010 09:42:47 +0000
On 28 Nov 2010, at 10:53, Pi <email@hidden> wrote:
I would like to create 12 Shepard Tones, one for each of the 12 pitch
classes on a piano keyboard.
(Shepard Tone -- this means that by cycling through them it gives the
illusion of an infinitely ascending or descending scale).
I can create something that sounds convincing but hideous by
compositing
sine waves. but I would like to create a beautiful sound.
I'm considering starting with a synthetic tone generated with
Karplus, ( or
maybe a sampled piano note ), doing an FFT, enveloping the
individual bins
I think you may not have fully understood the illusion. The unusual
spacing of the partials in the Shephard tone is essential to the
illusion. If you were to attempt the same thing with any common-or-
garden sound with harmonic partials, then the illusion would
disappear. Let alone inharmonic partials like a piano :-)
To understand why, just sketch out the spectra of the highest and
lowest notes in the scale on a piece of graph paper for a) the
Shephard case, b) the harmonic case.
The most you can do to tailor the tone is to tinker with the shape of
the bandpass filter you apply. If you want to do this, any free (or
demo version) additive synthesiser should be adequate.
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Ian Kemmish 18 Durham Close, Biggleswade, Beds
SG18 8HZ
email@hidden Tel: +44 1767 601361 Mob: +44 7952
854387
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