Timbre as Material

The third answer. Electronic music's move: stop asking which notes — ask what the sound itself is made of. Synthesis, sampling, and sequencing in Tone.js, then the week ends as it should: a jam.

10:00 — A1 Listening

A1 forms are in by 10:00 — both sketch links submitted. Then six pairs: each Western-scale study, then its raga twin, back to back, timestamps declared. One question per pair for the room: what did the constraint change? Note the answers — they are your first instrument-design findings, and they come back in Week 2. Your A1 marksheet reaches you by email, personally.

11:00 — A Lineage in Five Records

• 1948 · Paris Pierre Schaeffer — Étude aux chemins de fer Musique concrète: recorded trains, cut and looped into form. The recording stops being a document and becomes an instrument — sampling begins here.
• 1963 · London Delia Derbyshire — the Doctor Who theme Assembled sine by sine on tape, no synthesizer yet in the building. Heroic sound-construction; every timbre a decision.
• 1977 · Düsseldorf Kraftwerk — Trans-Europe Express The sequencer becomes the performer. Repetition as aesthetic, machine time as groove.
• 1982 · Mumbai Charanjit Singh — Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat Yesterday meets today: ragas on a Roland 303/808, years before acid house "invented" that sound. The traditions in this workshop have already met.
• 1999 · Cornwall Aphex Twin — Windowlicker The DAW era: timbre, rhythm, and pitch all equally plastic. Production is composition.

The through-line: each generation turned some piece of studio machinery into an instrument. Tape, then oscillators, then sequencers, then software. You are the next step in that lineage: the browser is your studio, and next week, the phone is your stage.

12:00 — How Synthesis Works

Two recipes cover most synthesized sound you have ever heard:

Four envelope numbers — ADSR: attack, decay, sustain, release — decide whether the same oscillator reads as a pluck (instant attack, fast decay), a pad (slow attack, long release), or a stab. Timbre is spectrum plus its motion in time.

14:00 — Tone.js Deep Dive

1 · The synth family

Same interface, different engines — swap one line, audition them all:

let synth = new Tone.Synth().toDestination();        // plain subtractive voice
// new Tone.FMSynth()       — the two-knob demo, as an instrument
// new Tone.AMSynth()       — tremulant cousin
// new Tone.DuoSynth()      — two detuned voices, thick
// new Tone.MembraneSynth() — drums/toms (yesterday's tabla stand-in)
// new Tone.NoiseSynth()    — hats, snares, wind

function mousePressed() {
  Tone.start();
  synth.triggerAttackRelease("C3", "4n");
}

Open any synth's envelope: new Tone.Synth({ envelope: { attack: 1.5, release: 3 } }) — the pluck becomes a pad. ADSR is now yours in code.

2 · Sampling — recorded sound as an instrument

This workshop's own sample library: an acoustic guitar, chromatic G3–B5, one file per note, recorded for a previous edition of this workshop. Tone.Sampler repitches the nearest sample for any note you ask for:

let ready = false;
const sampler = new Tone.Sampler({
  urls: {
    "G3": "g3_Pick1.mp3",  "C4": "c4_Pick1.mp3",
    "E4": "e4_Pick1.mp3",  "G4": "g4_Pick1.mp3",
    "C5": "c5_Pick1.mp3",  "E5": "e5_Pick1.mp3",
    "G5": "g5_Pick1.mp3"
  },
  baseUrl: "https://workshops.ujjwalagarwal.com/computational-approach-to-sound/assets/strings/",
  onload: () => { ready = true; }
}).toDestination();

function mousePressed() {
  Tone.start();
  if (ready) sampler.triggerAttackRelease(["C4", "E4", "G4"], "2n");  // a chord!
}

The full chromatic set (30 notes, a3_Pick1.mp3 … b5_Pick1.mp3, sharps as as4, cs5…) lives at assets/strings/. And Schaeffer's move is open to you: record anything on your phone, upload it to the p5 editor as a file, and give the sampler that instead. A door slam played chromatically is a legitimate instrument.

3 · Effects — the studio as signal chain

const dist   = new Tone.Distortion(0.4);
const delay  = new Tone.FeedbackDelay("8n.", 0.35);   // dotted-eighth echo
const reverb = new Tone.Reverb(4);

synth.chain(dist, delay, reverb, Tone.Destination);   // in that order

Order matters — distortion into reverb is a guitar amp in a hall; reverb into distortion is a broken radio. Try both. There is no wrong, only signature.

4 · The step sequencer — the chairs, electrified

const kick = new Tone.MembraneSynth().toDestination();
const hat  = new Tone.NoiseSynth({ volume: -12,
               envelope: { attack: 0.001, decay: 0.05, sustain: 0 }
             }).toDestination();

const kickRow = [1,0,0,0, 1,0,0,0, 1,0,0,0, 1,0,0,1];
const hatRow  = [0,0,1,0, 0,0,1,0, 0,0,1,0, 0,0,1,1];

let step = 0;
function mousePressed() {
  Tone.start();
  Tone.Transport.bpm.value = 118;
  new Tone.Loop((time) => {
    if (kickRow[step]) kick.triggerAttackRelease("C1", "8n", time);
    if (hatRow[step])  hat.triggerAttackRelease("16n", time);
    step = (step + 1) % 16;                       // the wheel, again
  }, "16n").start(0);
  Tone.Transport.start();
}

Add a third row driving yesterday's raga synth, or Monday's five keys, or the sampler. Layer until it grooves. This sketch — rows as arrays, a wheel of sixteen — is the floor plan of every drum machine since 1980.

16:00 — The Friday Jam (Assignment A2)

17:00 — The Final Project Brief