Light into Sound. (Was: learning to play perfectly to a click track)

[S V G <vsyevolod@yahoo.com>]

     Douglas Baldwin opined:
 And Edgar Winter, in
> > "Frankenstein," drops an oscillator down and down, then throws an 
>envelope
> > follower on it for that pee-ow-pee-ow-pee-ow
> bullet-through-a-tennis-racket
> > sound, which gets slower and slower until the drums pick up on it, and 
>it
> > leads into the drum solo...

     I think you're confusing things a bit here.  While I appreciate the 
thread of your post, the
thing that you are referring to in "Frankenstein" is nothing more than a 
sawtooth LFO modulating a
filter.  It is the filter that is dropping in pitch, not the LFO or other 
oscillator.

 
> Brand new insert here, inspired by Rick's observation that he hears a
> similar effect when he slows his Repeater way down (120 b.p.s. to 1 
>b.p.s.,
> ferinstance): Digital sound slowed down creates a similar effect, but 
>for a
> different reason. In the digital world, the pitch remains the same, but 
>it
> st-tu-ut-stutters as bits of silence get inserted between bits of sound. 
>The
> bits of sound effectively become like pulse waves, but it's not the same 
>as
> slowing down an analog signal.

     While the digital time stretching thing may seem similar on the 
surface, again it is a
different beast.  On the Repeater, the artifacts generated by the 
stretching of the wav file are
what's producing the interesting sounds, it's not an actual representation 
of a stretched wav. 
Were the resolution high enough, we would get to hear what very long and 
stretched out sound
really sounds like.  As it is, all we hear are some very interesting 
artifacts.  Very different
than the transformation of pitch into rhythm.  Don't get me wrong, I love 
these particular
artifacts.  Some of the best artifacts to come out of digital equipment in 
decades.  While analog
consistently produces usable artifacts, digital tends to produce mostly 
artifacts that fry
people's sensibilities.  The Repeater is a happy exception.

     And in response to Duncan's observation of flickering light coming 
out of his JBL Eon's... 
I'm not sure if the Eon's do this or not, though I am familiar with some 
non-powered PA speakers
emitting a blue flashing light when peak levels are exceeded.  This is a 
strobe built into the
system to alert the sound dude that testosterone levels have been met and 
surpassed.  Might be
what he was observing.

     Stephen







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