Ok, lets have a look at some continuous functions! This is quite a large topic (hence the longer video, partly also because I got sidetracked playing with binary patterns) but will help for getting stuck into randomness later in the week.
This video is basically all about waveforms (apart from that binary sidetrack).
- 0:28 - basic waveforms, a.k.a. continuous patterns
- 3:16 - sinewave patterns
- 4:09 - changing the range of waveforms with addition or the range cycle
- 5:33 - waveforms have no rhythmic structure, so no events! Dealing with that using segment
- 7:46 - Giving waveforms rhythmic structure with the 'struct' function and binary patterns (I get sidetracked into binary patterns here)
- 10:56 - Slowing down waveforms
- 12:16 - square waves
- 12:30 - triangle waves
- 12:45 - sawtooth waves
- 12:55 - using waveforms in different control patterns, e.g. reverb (room and sz)
- 15:00 - doing arithmetic on waveforms, e.g. multipling them together
- 16:25 - random waveforms #1 - rand
- 17:46 - random waveform #2 - perlin
-- 'Continuous functions' provide different kinds of waveforms.
-- There's a nice graphic showing sine, square, triangle and sawtooth
-- waves here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waveform
-- Here's what the sine waveform sounds like applied to sample playback
-- speed:
d1 $ sound "bd*32" # speed sine
-- and to panning:
d1 $ sound "bd*32" # pan sine
-- and to waveshape distortion (gets loud):
d1 $ sound "bd*32" # shape sine
-- You can manipulate continuous patterns just like other kinds of
-- patterns, for example slowing down:
d1 $ sound "bd*32" # shape (slow 2 sine)
-- The waveforms all move between 0 and 1. So at its lowest point, sine
-- will be 0, and at its highest point it will be 1. Having a value
-- near 0 can be problematic with 'speed', as you can end up with
-- sounds played very slowly that take a long time to complete.
-- To get around this you can add to the sine:
d1 $ sound "bd*32" # speed (sine + 0.5)
-- Or use the 'range' function:
d1 $ sound "bd*32" # speed (range 0.5 1.5 sine)
-- Lets listen to triangle, sawtooth and square waves:
d1 $ sound "bd*32" # speed (range 0.5 1.5 tri)
d1 $ sound "bd*32" # speed (range 0.5 1.5 saw)
d1 $ sound "bd*32" # speed (range 0.5 1.5 square)
-- What happens if you put the continuous pattern on the left?
-- Remember that with '#', the rhythmic structure comes from the
-- left. Try this:
d1 $ speed (range 0.5 1.5 sine) # sound "bd"
-- Silence! Why's that?
-- It's because continuous functions don't actually contain any
-- events. They have values which continually change, without
-- triggering anything.
-- If we want to trigger events in a continuous pattern, we have
-- to explicitly sample values from it. One way to do that is with
-- the 'segment' function:
d1 $ speed (segment 32 $ range 0.5 2.5 sine) # sound "bd"
-- The above samples 32 values per cycle, generating discrete
-- events from them.
-- Another way to do this is with 'binary' or 'boolean' patterns,
-- using the 'struct' function:
d1 $ speed (struct "t(3,8)" $ slow 2 $ range 0.5 2.5 sine)
# sound "bd"
-- 't' stands for 'true'. So that euclidean rhythm is used to sample
-- events from the continuous sine function. We'll return to
-- binary patterns in another video.
-- You can also add or multiply continous patterns together:
d1 $ sound "bd*32" # speed (range 0.5 2.5 (sine + (slow 2 saw)))
d1 $ sound "bd*32" # speed (range 0.5 2.5 (sine * (slow 2 saw)))
-- I slowed the 'saw' down in the above patterns, so you end
-- up with a sine wave that rises in pitch over two cycles.
-- In Tidal, random functions are also often continous.
-- For example, rand works like sine, saw etc, but returns random
-- values:
d1 $ sound "bd(5,8)" # speed (range 1 3 rand)
-- Perlin is similar, but returns 'perlin noise'. In Tidal, this
-- means that the pattern smoothly transitions between random values,
-- every cycle:
d1 $ sound "bd(5,8)" # speed (range 1 3 perlin)
-- Lets try that with some reverb:
d1 $ sound "bd(7,16)"
# room 0.7
# sz (range 0.4 1 $ slow 4 perlin)
Next lesson:
Thanks a lot for this tutorial! I have a question regarding these two lines of code: