Jean-Francois Charles

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...

In this post, I'm giving insights into the creation of the Spectral Stretch Max for Live Device . There are many ways to achieve audio time stretching without transposition . Some time-based methods build on Pierre Schaefer 's Phonogène . Another approach consists in processing the sound in spectral domain, using a phase vocoder . In this case, the audio samples are converted to spectral data through a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). Then, even if we focus on extreme time stretching, the details of the phase vocoder implementation have important consequences on the sound quality and the tool's flexibility for live usage. Before introducing the Max for Live device Spectral Stretch, let's have a look at a selection of four possible algorithms: Paulstretch Max Live Phase Vocoder Interpolation between recorded spectra Stochastic Re-synthesis from a recorded sonogram Paulstretch Paul's Extreme Sound Stretch , also known as Paulstretch , is an algorithm designed ...

Spectral Freeze Pro is a Max for Live device. It allows for live audio freeze , with powerful and refined controls: Fade Attack and Release (fade from a frozen sound to the next) Denoise (spectral gate) Feedback (freeze several successive notes to turn them into a chord) Freeze and Clear buttons Dry/Wet Mix Use it as a live audio freeze plugin or to create ambient sonic landscapes. This stereo device has been optimized for Max for Live. It has a very low CPU load and has been tested at all available sampling rates in Ableton Live. All parameters are available for automation and MIDI mapping in Ableton Live. Make sure you have access to a device and host application allowing the use of Max for Live devices to use Spectral Freeze Pro. This software does not work as a standalone application, it only works as a Max for Live device. Tested with Ableton Live 10.1. License: GNU GPL v3.0-or-later Download the Max for Live device Spectral Freeze Pro . P.S.: I made this focused ...