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Max for Live: Shepard Risset Synth

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The Shepard Risset Synth is a Max for Live instrument designed to play Shepard tones and Risset glissandi live with a MIDI keyboard. You can also easily re-create auditory illusions such as the Tritone paradox. Interested? Get the Shepard Risset Synth . Roger Shepard & the circular perception of tones Although the idea that pitch can be presented as the combination of height and pitch class (or chroma) has been around since the 19th century, Roger Shepard was the first to generate tones giving the impression of a circular perception of pitch. He generated the sounds in 1964, when he was working at Bell Labs: he used music synthesis software created by Max Matthews . In 1967, Roger Shepard and Edward Zajac made this film, which presents a dot moving on Penrose stairs synchronized with Shepard tones: The original video is accessible from the Bell Labs archives . To achieve the illusion, Shepard applied a constant spectral envelope to a series of tones. Each tone consis