Aleph Grains

[Yann_Coppier]

Back on grains as well… so no modification before some time, right? I’ll work on a scene then, that could help for future development. I have recorded great stuff today, really fine module you made here - although some of it is still a bit obscure, actually!

[rick_monster]

well feel free to field any specific questions on the obscure parts of the module - I have a very clear picture how it works/what it does but I found it very hard to explain and/or draw a diagram of the internal structure.

In particular the way turning scrubbing on/off changes the functionality of several other params is a bit nuts! But helps to create quite a few sonic possibilities and I think this ‘feature’ is actually explained ok in the readme…

Don’t hold your breath for updates to this module. I am fascinated and frustrated by the control side of things and feel I need some progress there before coming back to module dev. Haven’t made much progress in recent weeks I think some work on @zebra’s pforth app might be the way forward.

I also recently have been screwing around with icestick fpga, which runs a forth softcore! Could be an interesting direction. Think my next step with aleph should be try to shove my picolisp thing into old aleph repo - the encoder events seem broken in new framework, which sucks. If insane bugs with picolisp persist I will try to get pforth app working.

It’s very possible I can’t make much more progress on bees or picolisp without a jtag debugger - hoping @mattbrockuk’s aleph boards will actually happen so I can have a second aleph for screwing around with more low-level experiments like wiping out bootloader and trying to run hempl lisp machine rather than avr32lib…

[Yann_Coppier]

Hello hello,

Just found out after recording a whole track with Grains that there was something strange in the high range. I recorded in 24 bit 96 kHz and analyzed the result, and here’s what I got:

First with spectrum analysis, you can see all the way through my recording (which is more than 20 minutes long) a peak around 16 kHz, with a symmetry there (meaning what is above and below 16 kHz looks exactly alike all the way).

And then on a sonagram, the symmetry is just even clearer and it happens precisely at 16 kHz, where there is a hole all the way: a perfect notch.

Can you reproduce this, and if so any idea about what this could come from? I mean, it could come from some of my equipment around the Aleph (mainly my OTO Biscuit, I’d say) but as I can’t try it now I thought I should check with you first. If it is not coming from Grains, then well I’ll apologize and remove the post!

[rick_monster]

Ha certainly haven’t been over the sound from my aleph with a fine-tooth comb. My unit is noticeably electrically noisy, especially with many lights on grid, noticeable both through cans and out the main outs. Kind of assumed that was a pcb layout issue not manufacturing defect in my particular device.

So ignoring that for a sec, there are some weird hacks used to squeeze the naiive processing for grains onto blackfin at single-sample latency - wouldn’t be at all surprised if my hack DSP introduces this kind of craziness -80dB down (0dB == full-scale i assume?). Did you check sonogram from any other sound generated by the aleph? Also quick enough for me to hook up aleph to jaaa audio analyser see if I also see that weird hollowed-out sideband artefact at 16k coming off my aleph…

[Yann_Coppier]

Let’s see if you have anything as well. Then I’ll narrow it down by tomorrow, as I’ll be in my studio then. By the way I never noticed that with Waves before, for instance, and have widely ignored Lines because of some of its limitations, as I have an arsenal already with delay lines and such (mostly Kurzweil synths and effects). But yes, the Aleph is noisy as such and even with a 5V external supply it rings when the grid is widely lit… but this is something else.

[Yann_Coppier]

ok, I tried with Lines and can confirm: it only happens in Grains, and it happens without any extra processing. For instance with a guitar plugged in input 4, I can simply use aux1_i3 and aux2_i3 with values of 0.0000 and record the result. All the rest is off, and I already have a very clear bump at 16 kHz, with a parallel rise both before and after 16 kHz, plus a perfect notch precisely at 16 kHz.

So it is not the Aleph, which is great: it means Grains can sound even better !

[Yann_Coppier]

ok I am checking a long Grains track I should have posted long ago. Should be ready by tomorrow, just wanted to say I would love to contribute to its development… Such a great module, it is hard to believe what one can do with it!

[analogue01]

Are you still have problems with noise?

[rick_monster]

Oh how I would love to have enough time to dedicate to debugging grains! Noticed the CV on that module is also somewhat borked…

My priorities outside of full-time work for now:

1. go hiking & canoeing (probably necessary atm for my sanity)
2. build a working setup for making music (requires beaglebone/linux ‘serial-hub’ to glue together aleph, my looping sequencer & boomerang pedal - now underway once more)
3. finish bees enhancements
4. (ummm maybe get round to making music again in 3 years at this rate…)

Unfortunately enhancing grains just isn’t ever going to pop back to the top of my stack - already way too many possibilities with that module, waves & lines. I haven’t even scratched the surface of music-making possibilities due to the sheer unbridled horror of wasting all these precious alive moments holding down a pretty straight job.

Ah well think I narrowly missed some kind of nervous breakdown after all the late-night hackathons that gave birth to grains, picolisp on aleph & unfinished business with bees, partially hence the hiatus last few weeks spending all my spare time in nature, away from screens…

[Yann_Coppier]

Ah well I can certainly understand that! @analogue01 the noise issue is still there, yes, but as you’ll hear once I post it it doesn’t matter that much in the end. Good luck with the canoeing, and let me know if I can help with the Bees enhancements!

[rick_monster]

the thing that would help with bees dev would be to get any bugs with arbitrary op deletion / insertion characterised, so I can pin down malfunctioning code in gdb/linux environment…

I suspect there are still some glitches with preset system under certain corner cases. If someone could come up with repeatable test case for any outstanding bugs on my grid-refactor.merge.net-use-malloc branch on github (pretty sure that’s the right branch), might stand a fighting chance to get things all straightened out…

Btw other goodies in there, such as bfin module flash over serial, ping bees net from a computer over serial, repatch bees over serial, arbitrary op deletion/insertion, more flexible grid-oriented ops. Many potentially awesome things are cooking in there but I need to develop host software (aka beaglebone glue code) in tandem to realize the integration into a working setup…

[sam]

2. build a working setup for making music (requires beaglebone/linux ‘serial-hub’ to glue together aleph, my looping sequencer & boomerang pedal - now underway once more)

I’m intrigued… is this a way to connect a single grid to multiple devices or a multiple devices to an Aleph?

[Yann_Coppier]

Well here it is, maybe I should post it somewhere else though?
The long-time promised track I made with Grains. Basically one guitar, one Aleph+grid, one distortion unit and one reverb/delay, all recorded live at my studio. This just to show how amazing this module is, and how much can be done with it, and to thank @rick_monster for his amazing contribution to the Aleph community!

Hope you like it.

[Yann_Coppier]

Ah well, the upload didn’t function so here it is, sorry!
Yann Coppier - Grain Rain

[sam]

Amazing, I really enjoyed that.

[kza]

Absolutely stunning @Yann_Coppier! I am listening on my RCF Mytho 6. Sound is very detailed and well distributed in space.

[Yann_Coppier]

Thanks, glad you like it. I never tried the RCF speakers, but I did a slight bit of mastering and listened to it on some Genelec 8351 and Neumann KH310 to cover for the strange things happening around 16 kHz, as detailed above. No spatial change though, it’s all part of Grains. Interesting enough, I have only scratched the surface of this thing, I started to make some feedback between the grains and it can really go wild!

[rick_monster]

I’m intrigued… is this a way to connect a single grid to multiple devices or a multiple devices to an Aleph?

certainly - the aleph serial protocol is pretty useful already. With the grid-interaction-as-bees-bangs paradigm, I could jerry-rig something quickly to enable a type of ‘grid-forwarding’ from host to aleph, leveraging the monome-osc server. Having said that I’d prefer to crack the monome serial protocol & have lisp directly drive /dev/monome serial, as I’m doing with /dev/midi & /dev/aleph or whatever.

My beaglebone project is codename serial-hub - that’s all I really aim to do in the first instance. Routing some midi & metronome signals etc through the beaglebone usb hub, down the aleph serial tubes to ‘special’ inputs/outputs on the bees net. The metronome signal provides bidirectional, tap-hinted boomerang sync.

Then I want to resurrect & extend my midi sequencer inside the ‘serial-hub’, at which point it gets a more exciting codename…

[rick_monster]

Basically one guitar, one Aleph+grid, one distortion unit and one reverb/delay

absolutely wild - I am amazed you manage to make sense of the mess of parameters & choices with this module to make a coherent piece of music! I was so sucked into the code with this project, I only managed to find the time so far to play enough to test for really heinous audible glitches & faff around with some FM-textured corny dr-who things on the boomerang…

I’m curious, and hope you don’t mind me prying into your creative process - is this roughly an improvisation, or do you compose & plan the different sections & sounds before beginning the performance? Does this piece have any kind of visual notation? Do you methodically collect scenes/sound-gestures in a notebook or similar, or just using named presets or something? Also wondering which bees version you are using to such devastating effect?

[Yann_Coppier]

Ah well it wasn’t so difficult after spending a few hours on each parameter haha. I deliberately chose to restrict my use to some distinct parameters in this one, using the matrix a lot with the 128 grid. And in this case it is full improvisation, no overdubs nor cuts afterwards - just a bit of equalization, as explained before.

I would add though, that even if there is no visual notation of any kind here, I always try to tell a story when I improvise. I usually find a starting point, and then I listen a lot and work on the duration. No presets either, but I did make a special version of Bees to add some elements I wanted. Nothing crazy, just to ease my programming. Can’t remember which version it was based on actually so I’ll have to look again.

Anyway thanks!