[PD] Script-based Sound Design Patch

Spencer Russell slothlove at gmail.com
Tue Dec 13 01:19:08 CET 2005


Hey there List,
I do theatre sound design, and up till now my usual rig for
pre-recorded stuff has consisted of my hardware sampler and a couple
of DJ CD players. I've been playing around with the idea of creating a
sound design patch that would be easy to customize for different
shows. My general plan has been to have some sort of script file that
is read by PD that can trigger audio streams and alter their
volume/panning, with the user interaction ideally consisting of a "GO"
button that would trigger the next event in the script file. Anyone
who's used a computerized lighting console should know what I'm
talking about.

The idea is to have something that's simple enough that I can have
pretty complex designs that are easy to run during the show, so that I
can actually enjoy the play.

The tradeoff, of course, is that if too much is automated, and
something goes wrong, we could have a huge trainwreck, so I'd like to
have a "cancel" button, also, that would stop the current cue without
moving on to the next one, and maybe some way to easily navigate the
cues.

Has anyone played around with something like this? Can my script be a
simple text file? Can PD navigate around a text file to skip cues or
go back to previous ones? Does anyone have any different/better ideas
of ways to make sound design automation easier?

Thanks,
spencer




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