Audio - midi conversion with melodic natural sounds - birds etc

I've been working with birdsong for the last 3 years and I'm hoping to take it to its logical extreme with my newer stuff.

I've been listening to parakeets for so long, that I actually understand them now. Seriously. Or, I actually only decided to pay attention this past time moving back to Tokyo almost 3 years ago. But unfortunately I can only distinguish maybe 5 different things... Or 3. Maybe if I concentrate hard enough, I can hear inbetween the tones or whatever. Or if I use cassette tape and slow it down, I might be able to hear some supersonic shit they're saying. Cuz maybe for birds, English speech sounds like, "The the the the a a the the birdy the the the a the the."

Also, I've done experiments with breathing and heartbeat, but I haven't done music with my heartbeat. But I did make a contact mic and pre-amp, and then when I hooked it up to my heart it was trippy as fuck.

  On 8/12/2015 at 9:12 AM, peace 7 said:

I've been listening to parakeets for so long, that I actually understand them now. Seriously. Or, I actually only decided to pay attention this past time moving back to Tokyo almost 3 years ago. But unfortunately I can only distinguish maybe 5 different things... Or 3. Maybe if I concentrate hard enough, I can hear inbetween the tones or whatever. Or if I use cassette tape and slow it down, I might be able to hear some supersonic shit they're saying. Cuz maybe for birds, English speech sounds like, "The the the the a a the the birdy the the the a the the."

 

Also, I've done experiments with breathing and heartbeat, but I haven't done music with my heartbeat. But I did make a contact mic and pre-amp, and then when I hooked it up to my heart it was trippy as fuck.

oh my god that was EXACTLY something I wanted to do. The heart beat I mean...can you give me specifics. I'd love to do that too. Why did you have to make a pre-amp, can't you just run the contact mic through an interface and amp it from there? My plan was to use it as a live modulation source, so the faster your heart beats, the more rapid the sidechain compression on the master or something. I was also thinking it could be linked the Ableton's track BPM and used as a clock speed sort of thing to boost up the BPM as breathing rate increases but I have no idea how to do that.

I want a contact mic.

Like use your own heart rate to naturally increase the BPM of a track as it gets more intense etc. A resting heart beat is about 60-100bpm so you could easily get it up into the 140s,50s etc just following a bit of jogging on the spot.

  On 8/12/2015 at 8:30 AM, Entorwellian said:

I've been working with birdsong for the last 3 years and I'm hoping to take it to its logical extreme with my newer stuff.

Can you post an example? Did you convert audio-midi and use the strange melodies found within? I'm finding really odd stuff, kinda tom waits fucked up weirdness.

  On 8/12/2015 at 9:35 AM, Polytrix said:

 

  On 8/12/2015 at 9:12 AM, peace 7 said:

I've been listening to parakeets for so long, that I actually understand them now. Seriously. Or, I actually only decided to pay attention this past time moving back to Tokyo almost 3 years ago. But unfortunately I can only distinguish maybe 5 different things... Or 3. Maybe if I concentrate hard enough, I can hear inbetween the tones or whatever. Or if I use cassette tape and slow it down, I might be able to hear some supersonic shit they're saying. Cuz maybe for birds, English speech sounds like, "The the the the a a the the birdy the the the a the the."

 

Also, I've done experiments with breathing and heartbeat, but I haven't done music with my heartbeat. But I did make a contact mic and pre-amp, and then when I hooked it up to my heart it was trippy as fuck.

 

oh my god that was EXACTLY something I wanted to do. The heart beat I mean...can you give me specifics. I'd love to do that too. Why did you have to make a pre-amp, can't you just run the contact mic through an interface and amp it from there? My plan was to use it as a live modulation source, so the faster your heart beats, the more rapid the sidechain compression on the master or something. I was also thinking it could be linked the Ableton's track BPM and used as a clock speed sort of thing to boost up the BPM as breathing rate increases but I have no idea how to do that.

 

I want a contact mic.

 

 

Like use your own heart rate to naturally increase the BPM of a track as it gets more intense etc. A resting heart beat is about 60-100bpm so you could easily get it up into the 140s,50s etc just following a bit of jogging on the spot.

 

Cool idea about the changing BPM with heartrate.

I made a pre-amp circuit, cuz I didn't have an audio interface at the time. I decided to make a contact mic, because I have a lot of piezo discs from energy experiments. They are really cheap, but soldering them can be tough.

Anyway, I connected the piezo to speaker wire and a 3.5 mm audio jack, which connected to my pre-amp, powered by 9v battery, then output jack to headphones. I believe my circuit was able to boost input far beyond what would be acceptable from an audio interface, so I was able to hear my heart extremely clearly.

The gain was so high, that when I touched the contact mic to the floor, I could hear THE WIND ROARING from the parakeet flying in a room over, behind two closed doors. The drop of a hair onto the wood floor sounded like a log being dropped onto carpet. Pins sounded like industrial machinery.

I looked through my electronics notes, and this is prolly it:

Both schematics are essentially the same... The transistor is NPN. The caps are merely smoothing caps (I think, but the input might actually make a difference when combined with the resistor), so something like .1 µF. Replace 1.5v with 9v. Also, the resistor is the main part of the circuit where frequency cutoff is set, and if I recall correctly, the higher the value, the more bass that gets through (that part is basically a high pass filter, where for a general amp ting, you'd want to cutout low freq). To get the ultra boom and full freq response, I believe I used 1M ohm.

Yah, but if you just make a contact mic, you can use an audio interface, if you don't wanna build random shit. Here's how to build a contact mic:

[youtubehd]aOJuCYgmPPE[/youtubehd]

BUT BEWARE! Note that if you use some other shit to seal the wires instead of epoxy, it could fuck it up. I used wood glue on one, but it turns out that it's slightly conductive when dry- or, it added to the capacitance of the piezo and GREATLY REDUCED the piezo's ability to output audio. It became almost silent, so I had to toss that shit. Or, the glue dampened vibrations.

Any recordings of your heart using your contact mic? That sounds fantastic.

I think I might buy a contact mic. Any recommendations?

  On 8/12/2015 at 9:35 AM, Polytrix said:

 

  On 8/12/2015 at 8:30 AM, Entorwellian said:

I've been working with birdsong for the last 3 years and I'm hoping to take it to its logical extreme with my newer stuff.

 

Can you post an example? Did you convert audio-midi and use the strange melodies found within? I'm finding really odd stuff, kinda tom waits fucked up weirdness.

 

I didn't convert to MIDI. I did FFT waveform analysis on samples of birds that I recorded and transformed the features into frequency modulation transform data very painstakingly slowly. Path Too Deep off of Northern Flicker is a track that features a lot of it.

  On 8/12/2015 at 1:42 PM, Polytrix said:

Any recordings of your heart using your contact mic? That sounds fantastic.

 

I think I might buy a contact mic. Any recommendations?

Nope, don't have any recordings.

And I dunno about any pre-made contact mics, cuz I've only made my own.

  On 8/12/2015 at 3:01 PM, Entorwellian said:

 

  On 8/12/2015 at 9:35 AM, Polytrix said:

 

  On 8/12/2015 at 8:30 AM, Entorwellian said:

I've been working with birdsong for the last 3 years and I'm hoping to take it to its logical extreme with my newer stuff.

 

Can you post an example? Did you convert audio-midi and use the strange melodies found within? I'm finding really odd stuff, kinda tom waits fucked up weirdness.

 

I didn't convert to MIDI. I did FFT waveform analysis on samples of birds that I recorded and transformed the features into frequency modulation transform data very painstakingly slowly. Path Too Deep off of Northern Flicker is a track that features a lot of it.

 

nice idea.

have you seen this plugin?

guy who made this is a genius and i guess it also incorporates some concepts from yamaha Vl1 digital waveguide synthesis creator Julias smith

You can also cut the cup end end of a cheap stethoscope off with an inch or so of tube attached and then stuff a little electret condenser/lapel mic into the tube, works better than a contact mic for some things but not as well for others. For some reason I never thought to use it on my heart, though.

Using your pulse to control tempo is an aweome idea, especially if you used it as the master clock during a live set. I know the old MOTU Midi Express XT has an input for converting an auio click track to midi time code, but I've never tried it so I do't know how well it would handle something like a heartbeat. I have a feeling you'd end up needing to make a custom program (Ma/MSP or PD or something) to make sure the diastole and systole were seen as a single tap, not two taps then a pause, and to smooth over any irregularities in your heartbeat.

  On 8/13/2015 at 1:42 PM, John Ehrlichman said:

 

  On 8/12/2015 at 3:01 PM, Entorwellian said:

 

  On 8/12/2015 at 9:35 AM, Polytrix said:

 

  On 8/12/2015 at 8:30 AM, Entorwellian said:

I've been working with birdsong for the last 3 years and I'm hoping to take it to its logical extreme with my newer stuff.

 

Can you post an example? Did you convert audio-midi and use the strange melodies found within? I'm finding really odd stuff, kinda tom waits fucked up weirdness.

 

I didn't convert to MIDI. I did FFT waveform analysis on samples of birds that I recorded and transformed the features into frequency modulation transform data very painstakingly slowly. Path Too Deep off of Northern Flicker is a track that features a lot of it.

 

nice idea.

 

have you seen this plugin?

 

 

guy who made this is a genius and i guess it also incorporates some concepts from yamaha Vl1 digital waveguide synthesis creator Julias smith

 

 

haha oh fuck me. This is very close to what I have been working on. That is really really cool.

Haha, you guys have so much more technical knowledge than me and my little craptop.

As much as that bird synth plug looks AMAZING, I'd probably be overwhelmed by all the macro controls and just end up making sounds that don't sound like birds at all!

I suppose I'm more interested in the underlying melodies that are produced by bird song rather than sonically recreating the bird song...even though that is really cool though!

I intend on buying a contact mic and seeing to what extent I can actually get a clear recording from my heart - I suppose after I've reached that stage I'll revert back to you guys for help. I don't actually know how to use any external audio/midi source to act as a clock control signal to affect BPM in an Ableton session - I don't own any external hardware so haven't had the need to do that. BUT, I think it would be awesome if one of you have the time/interest/knowledge to make that into a plugin for someone like me to use??

I'm a little surprised something like that doesn't already exist if I'm honest.

melodyne creates a (constantly changing) clock based on a sample that has been processed. I'm not sure if it can be exported to midi though, it should be able to be. hmm