All I need to learn and create for the Pure data portion are the noise generators.
I decided to create 2 different noise generators for each of the 4 layers so that there is a 1 in 2 chance for the same generator to be picked again on each start-up. This means that there would be 128 different permutations of the program, I think that’s fine for variance. Those noise generators are:
Water;
Wind;
Bird calls;
Countryside footsteps;
A police siren;
A pedestrian crossing;
Car engines;
“Urban footsteps”?
While I could go through all the patches, the first noise generator I decided on was the pedestrian crossing as it was one of the tutorials that were on the moodle page (the designing sound one).
The basic version is something like this
You use the toggle to activate the metro object that is sending a bang every 100 bpm. Then the float object outputs the stored float which also triggers the “+ 1” object(binary arithmetic object), adding 1 to the float and then sending that back to the float object that will then output the float from the binary arithmetic object to the mod object. The mod object divides the float input into 2 and outputs the reminder (0s or 1s in this case). Those numbers are converted into a signal that controls when the oscillator at 2500hz is heard(so the amplitude), creating the classic beeping sound from a pedestrian crossing.
This small part would still have to be changed a lot, like balancing it with the other sounds, giving it a ramp (using the line~ object) so that it doesn’t click at all (I hope) and also making sure it turns off when you turn off the toggle.
All of these patches are ones made after going through all the practicals in the Designing Sound book, which are all designed to work stand-alone, something I have to solve.
When trying to learn what every does in the PD patches, I struggled a great deal with understanding the order of maths operations and what operation is appropriate for different situations, these 2 pet peeves really exemplify themselves in the bird call and footstep patches.
At this point, the patches are far from finished but after I’ve learnt all the necessary tools I’ll revisit the patches for one final iteration.