Brakebills, Twang, Stuff!
Oh em gee. So much to report.
First, do you know Lev Grossman? He's an incredibly talented author who recently toured Portland. If you haven't read his book The Magicians, then stop whatever you're doing and procure a copy immediately. Without trying to spoil anything, the major college in the book is named the Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy. Lev saw the Brakebills T-shirt that I designed for my sweetheart's birthday present:
Long story short, my Brakebills shirts are now officially endorsed by the author! Please buy twenty of them, or thirty if the spirit moves you. Zazzle's print quality is great. The colors are vivid, and the ink has survived many washings. Rabid fans are buying and even customizing them! I love the internet.
Lev blogged some of my other work, too ("the guy who does this has the enviably fake-sounding name of Zach Archer"). It's true, I have an awesome pro wrestler name.
Second, my new iPhone app has landed in the App Store:
Twang is a handheld guitar. It's easier to play than a real guitar, and is very expressive. Instead of using audio samples, Twang uses physical modelling techniques to create a more natural, dynamic sound. No two plucks are identical. Watch my grainy first video if you disbelieve.
In the next version of Twang, left-handed people will be able to switch Twang's orientation, and serious musicians can dampen or mute strings with their fingers. And probably more! This version is already in development, and may be submitted in a week or two? Follow Control Z, Inc on Twitter if you have a ravenous thirst for updates!
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Aquatic Sound Generator in Flash
Here's something from the vaults. Aquasound was built with these requirements in mind:
- Generate sounds that aquatic animals might make
- Sounds can be "combined" somehow
- Sounds can emote
This was never used in production. I wonder if I could turn this into something? Like a paid iPhone app? ;)
Double-click the envelopes to add/remove control points. Drag lines up & down to change their curviture. The best feature is the "Combine With" dropdown, which splices the current sound with your selection. Also the "Emote" menu will play sounds with different expression.
The audio algorithm is reverse-engineered from my beloved FS1R. I generated formants in two ways (toggle the "Tonal" checkbox to hear both), the "atonal" version is closer to ring modulation than actual formants. It's more fun if you don't understand what the controls are doing, but if you insist: Pitch controls the overall pitch of the sound. Freq controls the center frequency of the formant (like a bandpass filter). LFOFreq and LFOWeight control a low-frequency sine wave, which can be applied to other controls via their "___LFOAmt" curves. Amp is amplitude, Width is formant width (think: width of the bandpass filter), Skirt adds distortion. Each voice has two formant generators, check "Formant Active" to enable them.
May all your bloops and crackles be happy ones!
Here Comes the Metal Mouth
My first iPhone app has been submitted to the app store for review! Metal Mouth is a text-to-speech synthesizer that mimics the talking devices of the 80's (Speak & Spell, "Wizard needs food, badly", etc.) The functionality is similar to my Synthetic Speech In Flash demo, but with many new features (male & female voices, auto-tune, pitch & time scratching) and a snappy interface with talking robots.
This took about 5 weeks to develop. Meanwhile, I've started another app, and I envision releasing Metal Mouth 2.0 in a few months, with more voices, and the ability to record audio.
Synthetic Speech in Flash
EDIT: I made an iPhone version, "Metal Mouth", with lots of features. Here it is on YouTube and the iTunes Store!
Recently, I learned about Linear Predictive Coding ("LPC"). This technique is used in classic arcade games (such as Gauntlet) and the Speak & Spell to synthesize speech.
Here's my first attempt at LPC speech in Flash: (click & explore)
It's great, except for one tiny problem: It sounds horrific. Can you feel the cold, robotic love? This voice will stalk your nightmares.
The phonemes were derived from an unrehearsed recording of my voice. I'm confident that it can be improved. Note that direct LPC encodings of my voice, such as this one, sound more acceptable.
EDIT: I made an iPhone version, "Metal Mouth", with lots of features. Here it is on YouTube and the iTunes Store!
Synth review: The Head-Exploding FS1R
In 1998, the Yamaha Corporation unleashed a product that was convoluted and bizarre like no other: The FS1R Synthesizer.
Like the era-defining DX7, the FS1R is an FM Synthesizer, but it boasts a massive 8 operators per voice, compared to 6 in the DX. And the FS1R sports a new toy, Formant Synthesis, capable of mimicking voices, human and otherwise! Waves and formants can modulate each other in 88 different configurations. Top that off with LFOs, filters, on-board effects... It's so flexible, and so complicated. So much power.