[PD] A "broken" guitar flanger effect recreated in pd

Derek Holzer derek at umatic.nl
Mon Mar 10 18:21:57 CET 2008


Part of me wants to ask... why bother with the computer when you can 
make the sound already with something so simple?

Anyways, what you need is either the 'voltage drop' (i.e. connect the + 
of the battery to the first two pins of a potentiometer, connect the + 
of the effect power to the last pin and connect the - of the effect 
power to the - of the battery) or a 'voltage divider' (i.e. connect the 
+ of the battery to the first pin of the poti, the middle pin of the 
poti to the + of the effect power and connect the last pin of the poti 
to the - of the battery and the - of the effect power...or something 
like that).

I've always felt that it's quite a bit of work to simulate the nonlinear 
behaviour of analog electronics in the superlinear world of digital 
synthesis. Unless you know *heaps* of math. The problem with PD and it's 
brethren is that it is far too predictable. I don't consider using 
[random] a way out of this trap, since the results are still linear... 
i.e. linearly randomized, making them quite characterless.

Probably the simplest way to get a nonlinear kind of sound out of PD is 
by chaining different oscillators together in feedback AM or FM 
situations. But since you have to use [send~] and [receive~] pairs to 
make the feedback loops (to avoid the dreaded "DSP loop detected" 
message), it's never really responding in realtime to what's going on 
(like an analog circuit where all the electrons move more or less 
simultaneously), so it can never really get to this nonlinear nirvana I 
dream of....

OK, rambled enough... back to work.

d.



-- 
derek holzer ::: http://www.umatic.nl ::: http://blog.myspace.com/macumbista
---Oblique Strategy # 22:
"Be less critical more often"




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