Cymatic Sounds

Posted on February 16, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

One thing that I think we don’t do enough is record amplified synthesis with microphones. I must admit to recording an unhealthy portion of my work direct. There’s a reason. It’s much easier. It’s clean. It’s fast. But some really great qualities can be achieved by going the extra mile. Some of my favorite sounds were made by plugging my Pro-One into my Leslie cabinet and using the motor speed for expression. During our cymatics tests last week I recorded some of the sounds made by the oscillators, and the agitated granules with my PCM-D50 and my mobile phone. Here’s a combination of those sounds layered into an ambient microtrack.

Cymatic Sounds

Long Grain Rice

Posted on February 15, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

Here one more short video from our cymatics experiments last Friday. This time a the audio is agitating long grain rice on a one eighth inch think plywood platform.

Mustard Seed Activity at 73Hz

Posted on February 14, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

Getting these mustard seeds to scatter and converge in this cymatics test took tuning the cycle~ object in Max to around 73 Hertz. The spherical shape of this material lends itself well to this sort of experiment. The next time we attempt this we will be using a more controlled environment with a leveled, more sensitive membrane between the speaker and the seeds or grains.

Rice Dance Experiment

Posted on February 13, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

Today’s synthesizer sound is contained within the video above and includes the acoustic sound of rice grains bouncing on a speaker cone. The tone was generated by the cycle~ object in MaxMSP and set to a frequency of somewhere around 156 Hertz.

Cymatics Test: Mustard Seed and Max

Posted on February 12, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

After a few attempts and creating cymatics with the WSG, we switched to creating a simple Max patch that we used to generate the frequencies. This allowed us to isolate specific frequencies that worked well to excite the mustard seed on the platform. This time it is much easier to hear the hissing sound of the mustard seed as is vibrates on the platform. It sounds a little bit like white noise, but brighter and less consistent

Cymatics Test: Mustard Seed and Max

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