
Recreating the THX Deep Note - EarSlap - jawngee
http://www.batuhanbozkurt.com/instruction/recreating-the-thx-deep-note
======
cesare
Turn it up! Turn it up!

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3_HHZFi0As>

On a more serious note, I'm really a fan of SuperCollider (especially for it's
smalltalk-like dynamic language). It's incredibly good for sound design and
real-time experimentation.

But for the best quality output, Csound (<http://www.csounds.com/>) is hard to
beat. Here are some people who tried to recreate the same effect in Csound:

[http://csound.wordpress.com/2008/08/08/the-thx™-sound-
from-c...](http://csound.wordpress.com/2008/08/08/the-thx™-sound-from-csound/)

[http://joesprojectblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/thx-deep-note-
ch...](http://joesprojectblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/thx-deep-note-
challenge.html)

~~~
ensignavenger
I like this one-
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMchJfsIj7E&NR=1](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMchJfsIj7E&NR=1)

------
paulgerhardt
I find the note at the end about SCTwitting the most fascinating. Music
represented as code confined to a character limit of a broadcast medium...just
wow.

I know a few digital poets who will have a field day with this. Thanks for
sharing!

~~~
kragen
Thomas Dolby apparently made a living for some years composing cellphone
ringtones, which I think also have to fit into a small amount of space and be
synthesizable in real-time on a limited processor.

~~~
cesare
They were almost certainly prerecorded. Or he could have composed some MIDI
tracks.

But seriously doubt that they were synthesized in real-time.

~~~
kragen
Playing a MIDI track involves synthesizing waveforms in real time, so I'm not
sure what you're saying here. There have been plenty of phones that supported
monophonic or mildly polyphonic ringtones without supporting full PCM, and
plenty more that supported PCM samples but have limited space, kind of like
old .MOD files.

~~~
cesare
I'm saying that they probably use a general midi sound bank, with sample
sounds and limited control. You can only choose instruments from a predefined
palette.

I doubt you could generate your own waveforms, apply your own custom effects
and so on.

I never researched much into MIDI ringtones so I might be wrong.

------
yan
This reminds me to ask, is anyone aware of any beginner-friendly books on
audio synthesis? Be it using csound, supercollider, or chuck, just something
that explains concepts reasonably well.

~~~
cesare
For SuperCollider there's a book which is not out yet (I have read a draft and
found it excellent, especially for beginners) but it should be out soon.

You can try to send an email to one of the authors:
[http://www.music.utah.edu/faculty/faculty_a-z/david_michael_...](http://www.music.utah.edu/faculty/faculty_a-z/david_michael_cottle)

He used to send a pdf of the draft version if you asked him, but since the
printed book is due soon (by MIT press) I don't know if this is still true.

There's also 'The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music' by Miller Puckette
(the author of Pure Data):

<http://crca.ucsd.edu/~msp/techniques.htm>

The examples are, obviously, in Pure Data. But it is an excellent book and all
the concepts can be applied to any synthesis language/tool.

For Csound there's 'The Csound Book' by Richard Boulanger (MIT Press):

<http://csounds.com/shop/csound-book>

This is also excellent. Disclaimer: the author is a friend.

~~~
blasdel
My old roommate was recruited to write one of the chapters (on language
internals and his CocoaCollider bridge), but last I heard MIT Press had
dropped the project.

IIRC it would have been the first supercollider book.

------
philwelch
If I was teaching someone how to program and wanted to get across the idea of
incremental development, this is the first example I would use. You can just
_hear_ at each step how he's getting incrementally closer.

