Density

[code]

Density is something of a test patch, originally built as a playground for lsys, a new and still very underused microlanguage in Sporth for describing L-systems. Full explanations of what lsys is doing is beyond the scope of this document. Besides lys, is a very short and simple patch, make good use of exponential envelopes, sinusoids, and delay lines to create organic bubbly textures.

Clock

The clock signal utilized in this patch is generated using clock and stored in the variable clk.

 _clk var
 0 150 4 clock _clk set

LSYS 1

In Density, there are two very lsys-driven instruments, the first of which is described now. An instance of lsys is spawned. It is controlled with the clock signal clk, and has an order of 16. The output of lsys is fed into thresh in order to generate a trigger signal for tenvx.

 _clk get 16 "bab|a:bba|b:a" lsys 10.5 2 thresh

The exponetial trigger envelope generator tenvx is then instantiated. It is a very quick envelope with 1ms durations for attack, hold and decay parameters.

 0.001 0.001 0.001 tenvx 

This envelope drives a sinusoidal oscilator sine, whose frequency is controlled by another sine lfo running between 2000Hz and 3000Hz. The speed of this (1/30) Hz, efficiently calculated via inv.

 30 inv 1 sine 2000 3000 biscale 0.5 sine *

LSYS 2

The second lsys instrument in the patch is nearly identical to the first lsys patch, with a few notable differences. Firstly, the order of this instance of lsys is 17 instead of 16. This creates an interesting phasing effect with the other lsys generator. Secondly, the sinusoidal oscillator sine is set to a fixed frequency of 800Hz.

 _clk get 17 "bab|a:ba|b:a" lsys 10.5 2 thresh
 0.001 0.001 0.001 tenvx 
 800 0.5 sine * +

Effects

The first part of the effect chain is delay line, with a very high feedback amount. This delay line is set through a highpass fitler with a rather aggressive cutoff point (4000hz) so that the delay line only effects the high end. This signal is then attenuated by 20db.

 dup 0.8 0.2 delay 4000 buthp -20 ampdb * + 

Dark noise

This is an underlying sound which I call "dark noise" because of the dark timbre. The initial noise source is generated via randh changed at audio-rate. The rate of randh is controlled by a sinusoidal LFO, going between 100Hz and 110 Hz.

 -0.1 0.1 (40 inv 1 sine 100 110 biscale) randh 

This signal is "softened" using the butterworth lowpass filter butlp. It is put through a bitcrusher bitcrush, set to be 8 bits with a sampling rate of 8000Hz. This bitcrusher adds lots of nonlinear aliasing and brings back some of the high end lost with butlp. This is then added to the rest of the mix.

 400 butlp 8 8000 bitcrush +