posted 17 March 2003 21:14            

resonantcarla.kym

The left channel has her voice being fed to a metallic bar, while the right has her voice through a metallic circular plate. The bandwidths are clamped down to very narrow values so you wouldn't realize anyone were talking...

Every known mechanical and electrical system has natural modes of vibration, known as normal modes. When a system is struck with a sharp impulse, these natural modes oscillate at their own particular frequencies and decay over time in an exponential manner. This is even true of a room filled with air!

However, anytime a regular excitation is fed to a resonant system, that system responds at the same frequency as the source excitation. It just happens that those excitation frequencies near to resonances get enhanced over other non-resonant frequencies.

This is true, even in the case of a narrowband filter tuned, say to 1 KHz, while being excited by a 200 Hz tone. Because the filter skirts are not infinitely steep, what you hear is a 200 Hz tone, although it might be severely attenuated. But you do not hear a 1 KHz tone.

This is exactly what is happening here with Carla's voice. Her voice is made up of a fundamental tone and numerous overtones, some harmonic (vowels) and some inharmonic (fricative and sibillance). The metal resonators respond right along with the frequencies being fed to them from her voice. But because of sharp resonances in the bar and plate, some of her overtones are enhanced beyond others.

I can imaging slowing the playback speed and then using this sound as the background pad for a soundtrack...

posted 18 March 2003 13:24            

Then I turned off looping on the sample and used the Gun Shot sample through it (triggering it with a !KeyDown) just because I was looking for an impulsive sound. Woa.... (not sure how to spell that expression but, wow! )Those metallic partials are amazing! Sounds like you are inside the metal plate!

posted 21 March 2003 18:30            

Your 'Resonant Carla' is one of your coolest sounds yet! You're an inspiration.

posted 12 April 2006 11:34            

i think i had the Amp DB at about -5db and I was reading a sample out of ram backwards, and perhaps the sharper release transients of a reverse impulse , may have over cooked the all-passes...