Is it possible to synthesize sounds no one has heard?

[golden beers]

Originally Posted by organsymphony

why bother synthesising new sounds when we'll never be able to synthesise the bassoon properly.

ah yes the holy grail of sysnthesis.

that's why they built the jupiter8 you know. how that synth failed.... shame **thows JP8 out of window**

[Ghosty Dog]

Originally Posted by Beermaster

Of course there will never be an end or a foreseeable point when new sounds can't be synthesized - anyone who doubts it needs to have a go on a synth !

What i will say tho is that even with an almost infinite number of different presets if you were to put all the tonal ones in a group and hold down middle C and start to scroll through them one at a time ( with any arpeggiation and preset gating or sample holds off ) you're going to get very bored very quickly .. the note 'C' will keep coming at you with a range of harmonic variations and transients but with the same 'C' overpowering and permeating the the sound.

If you got all the instruments of the orchestra to individually play the same C ( those that were in the range to do so ) one after the other......you'd have the same blandness creeping up on you too.

There comes a point where what you do with a sound defines it as being fresh and new ... not so much emphasis should be put on the 'sound' but on the music. I think this is the reason so many people are getting bored and stuck with their current selection of synth presets and sample libraries.... if you use vastly differing sounds but stick to basically the same boring cliches musically ...... it will sound the same regardless of the new synth sounds...

I recently heard a live performance of a piano piece by Henri Deuteiux - it sounded nothing like any other piano sound I'd ever heard.....yet it was a bog standard Steinway grand Piano........

It isn't a lack of diversity in sounds it's a lack of diversity in the music !

Beer

Good post. Good point.

[seen-da-sizer]

Thinking about music styles (a very typical thing in electronic music) requiring certain sounds. When sound becomes a (if not the defining) part of an electronic music style. For example Acid must have 303 or 303-ish bass-lines. Ultimately the limitation of sounds or sound-exploration is a human one.

[famousbass]

Originally Posted by JohnChips

LOL you have no life

cool story but tell it again i didnt understand it

Fair enough.

Let's get back to basics.

JohnChips, do you own or have access to a synth, an amp and a speaker?

[Diametro]

Originally Posted by seen-da-sizer

New sounds, easy!!! Having them musical or being able to put them into a musical context is hard, and this is an art!

But having rhythm helps ...

[kontra152]

Have you tried synth maker it's pretty cool you make your own synth plugins and use them to create new sounds.

[droolmaster0]

Still an insanely lame thread, which (to my mind) seems unique to gearslutz. It'd be less intellectual on HC (and even worse), but better defined on muffwiggler. But in general, people like to talk without having the slightest idea what the terms might mean, and whether they are using them differently than the person that they are responding to.

And that's the issue really. If you're actually answering the op, one has to have some commonality about what a 'sound' is. Is it a static sound only, which doesn't evolve at all? Does one accept the fact that if a 'pixel' is different, the sound is different, or is one talking about something that hits one as materially different? All of this pontificating, and there is no agreement at all on what one is talking about, and no consensus even that this is important.

[asbak]

Originally Posted by droolmaster0

Still an insanely lame thread, which (to my mind) seems unique to gearslutz. It'd be less intellectual on HC (and even worse), but better defined on muffwiggler. But in general, people like to talk without having the slightest idea what the terms might mean, and whether they are using them differently than the person that they are responding to.

And that's the issue really. If you're actually answering the op, one has to have some commonality about what a 'sound' is. Is it a static sound only, which doesn't evolve at all? Does one accept the fact that if a 'pixel' is different, the sound is different, or is one talking about something that hits one as materially different? All of this pontificating, and there is no agreement at all on what one is talking about, and no consensus even that this is important.

Imo it's not lame to ask questions no matter if they seem to be kind of obvious or pointless. Worthy answers can be educational. We're here to learn after all.

Originally Posted by Yoozer

Sound has 3 "classical" properties: timbre, pitch and duration.

how about amplitude?


An example of an interesting sound and how it was created.



Music Thing: TINY MUSIC MAKERS: Pt 3: The THX Sound

[tonemaker]

People are being unfair to the OP. It's a valid question. I'm sure it's one that pops into the mind of every person who has ever used a synth eventually.

[JohnChips]

I really don't care if this thread is "lame" or if we can just make sounds way beyond the hearing range to answer the question, it doesn't cover the part where I said "creating a sound never heard before which are actually pleasant enough to use". Reading skills are quite low around here and so I have to act as immature in response so I don't get bored.

I think the same people saying this stuff are the ones who are lame and cant come up with anything real (and probably make shit music yourself).

All of you know what im really asking, fresh sounds from the source without a bazillion effects to get there, but want to be smart-asses because this website wouldnt be real without you.

Lame community can be lame besides the very few who try to answer without being a know-it-all or in most cases, know-it-none.

[PeteJames]

Yes, you can synthesise sounds no human can hear, not even yourself...the range of human hearing is limited

I keep on wondering whether/when there will new totally original syntheis methods and fx in addtion to the reverbs, delays, phasers, flange, bit reduction, distortion etc. We need more innovation in software development or something - seems to be thousands of subtractive synths and reverbs etc and very few original concepts. Maybe we need to mod our own ears to hear new things :D

[synthguy]

John, I don't think being a prune face about it is going to help your cause any. Now I'll admit that this place is about as full of knot heads as any place on the net, and some of them popped in here just to throw water balloons rather than contribute. And yeah, I kind of threw a paperwad myself in one post. But for the most part, I think people have tried to have an actual conversation about the topic. I know I did. Unfortunately, you've kind of turned into the ranting husband because your wife can't tell you what you want for supper, when you don't know yourself. Never a good basis for a thread, no matter what the subject.

Originally Posted by JohnChips

Or have we heard them all? What do you guys think about this and what is required electronically/technically to come up with a cool sound no one has heard before?

I feel most sounds we dont hear in music often are rare because they sound unpleasant to most ears. But creating a sound never heard before which are actually pleasant enough to use is a different story.

Thoughts?

I could quote my posts, but evidently you didn't like them the first time around, so why bother? Let's play off of the one post you seemed to show any favor for.

Originally Posted by Ned Bouhalassa

If I go back to the OP, I don't see many people answering the question directly. The question was not, a) Is it possible to create new sounds no one has heard? or b) Is synthesizing new sounds essential to making good music? etc. If we're talking synthesis, I'm still waiting for something fresh. Add all the FX you want, I'm interested in something that sounds new from the get go (synthesis of the source). I may be waiting for a long time though.

Also, I'm an old fart, and have heard many of the synth sounds that some posters call 'original'. Which leads me to think that one's opinion on this subject is directly related to how much synthesized music one has listened to/ created/analyzed over the years.

If I was doing research, I would go deep into resynthesis, using all kinds of recorded material as starting blocks. I know that Alchemy does resynthesis, but playing with the demo did not know my socks off at all.

Originally Posted by JohnChips

Word, someone who can actually read...and between the lines too. I want something fresh from the source baby!

Okay, so what would this be? we've already discussed what's available:

• Subtractive: filtering basic harmonics from OSC waveforms
• FM and Additive: generating or adding harmonics to fundamental tones
• Waveshaping: using linear and non-linear functions to alter the structure of a source wave
• Resynthesis: adjusting harmonics from existing sonic material, either single cycle waves or samples

Do you want some new type of synthesis to be happy? But if so, just what might this possibly be, considering that there don't seem to be any proposals between music manufacturers or universities?

Are you absolutely sure that all these synthesis types have been explored to their fullest? Be it a Kurzweil or a massive Buchla modular the size of Bill Gates' mansion, all sounds have been found?

I'm interested in what you have to say, as long as it's furthering this discussion. But if you're going to be weird and petulant, I'm going to talk around you to the rest of the class.

[famousbass]

Originally Posted by synthguy

John, I don't think being a prune face about it is going to help your cause any. Now I'll admit that this place is about as full of knot heads as any place on the net, and some of them popped in here just to throw water balloons rather than contribute. And yeah, I kind of threw a paperwad myself in one post. But for the most part, I think people have tried to have an actual conversation about the topic. I know I did. Unfortunately, you've kind of turned into the ranting husband because your wife can't tell you what you want for supper, when you don't know yourself. Never a good basis for a thread, no matter what the subject.


I could quote my posts, but evidently you didn't like them the first time around, so why bother? Let's play off of the one post you seemed to show any favor for.



Okay, so what would this be? we've already discussed what's available:

• Subtractive: filtering basic harmonics from OSC waveforms
• FM and Additive: generating or adding harmonics to fundamental tones
• Waveshaping: using linear and non-linear functions to alter the structure of a source wave
• Resynthesis: adjusting harmonics from existing sonic material, either single cycle waves or samples

Do you want some new type of synthesis to be happy? But if so, just what might this possibly be, considering that there don't seem to be any proposals between music manufacturers or universities?

Are you absolutely sure that all these synthesis types have been explored to their fullest? Be it a Kurzweil or a massive Buchla modular the size of Bill Gates' mansion, all sounds have been found?

I'm interested in what you have to say, as long as it's furthering this discussion. But if you're going to be weird and petulant, I'm going to talk around you to the rest of the class.

Thank you synthguy.

Hey JohnChips.
What's your synth? What's your experience in synths. Seriously.

[LotuZia]

Besides the fact that its just my job to create both old and new instruments, and to manage Sound Designers teams ( I can assure you that every SD will end with very different instruments with the same synth, due to its sole approach, personality, and this strange mix we all have of skills and limitations ) ......

There are only 12 notes to make music. Do you think we can make some new music ?

There are several hundreds of parameters in a synth, and a lot of synths .....

Just make your maths.

To those who complain that there barely none new synthesis methods available, there are tons. But there's more ....... I've yet to find someone who really have PUSHED the quite already vintage and venerable VAST synthesis on "old" Kurzweils. As you can do tons of new instruments with FM synthesis ( Yes the Old DX one ), another synthesis engine very rarely pushed to its limits. So there's STILL a lot to explore with already known synthesis engines !

I believe in future ;shrug:

just my [0.2]

LtZ

[AcoosticZoo]

That deep note thing was brilliant. What a genius. Dr James "Andy" Moorer.

it took 20,000 lines of code. lol. custom built audio sound processor (ASP) predating DSP chips.

okay anyone else wanna beat that?

and the funny part is that it "WAS" a happy accident. Even, he himself couldn't recreate it. That's full on. The deep note has randomness built into the algorithm and it took all the stars to align inorder to create what we know as the THX sound logo. Lucky he didn't forget to hit record when he did right?


Regards
Josef Horhay
Mixing Engineer
www.acoosticzoo.com

[gremlin moon]

I have just spent the last 2 hours trying to design an "unheard" sound using Alchemy, Omnisphere and the Aether reverb. In a sense it is trying to make a sound that resists reverse engineering; all noticeable traces of filter sweeps, resonance, boomy reflections etc must be erased. Anything that resembles or fairly reminds one of a known acoustic instrument, animal (including humans), machines, nature or environmental sounds must also be avoided. Likewise for transitions, stings, hits and drones that are prevalent in cinema and television. On the whole a very interesting exercise and one that really stretches how you think about designing a sound even though it is more of a koan, a what is the sound of one hand clapping sort-of-thing.

[synthguy]

I'm enjoying this discussion and wanted to revisit this thread, hoping to spur it on a bit more. I wanted to see if I could nudge the chat into some more product/achievement direction, and here gremlin moon is already hard at it. His is quite an extreme case though. It should be interesting to hear what he comes up with.

I have thought in the past of both "have we created all the sounds that can be made yet?" as well as "Have we just about run out of new music to compose in that 12 tone scale most of us use?" I concluded the answer was "Heck no!" to both. I decided the concept of making the sound no one had ever heard before was an academic exercise in futility, since... well, how would you know? And would it even be musically pertinent? I satisfied myself with thinking of how I could differentiate myself by being less cliche.

For me, that's unique enough, seeing if I could refrain from using filtered sawtooth waves as the basis for most of my patches, which the lion's share of all synth patches are. Then seeing if I could keep from using square/pulse waves, and then... wow, I'd better start digging into what was available as far as digital waves. It took me a long time to acquire a sampler, and was blessed that it was also a very, dare I say it, vast synthesizer architecture. I didn't really do all that much sampling and sound mangling with it, as it was fun but I still wasn't getting anything I thought would fit in a track, so I spent a lot of time trying to understand what the K2000 programmers were doing with those weird DSP blocks. And mostly failing, but the experiments would occasionally yield a decent patch.

And folks, if you want a synthesizer that does it all, the Kurzweil is it. The latest, the PC3K, offers:

• Analog style subtractive resonant filtering in several modes, and even basic comb filtering and all pass filters
• FM, if in a very basic form, as well as additive synthesis
• Waveshaping, using a few different methods

And finally, organ modeling and sampling... le wow! I've been calling the Kurzweils "baby Synclaviers" for years, and this is why.

The PC3 ups the ante in several ways, the chief being that it allows you to chain DSP blocks together in as many as you want, in the order you want, until you run out of voices or DSP power. If you can't do something different with this kind of architecture, you just aren't trying.

Or... well, you're just not getting it. Which isn't hard to not-do, because VAST programming is kind of like rocket science. Using oscillators and filters is old school enough, but then, there are all those new doodads with strange names like "SHAPER", "WRAP" "xGAIN" and "DIST." This leaves Yamaha style FM in the dust as far as complexity goes, because unless you can work out Fourier transform functions in your sleep, you're at the mercy of trial and error to see what kind of sonic things happen. And it's a good idea to pick at patches in the machine to see how they're built, and what happens when you change the numbers. And strangely, it's a good idea to dig up a Kurzweil legacy manual, say for the 2661, because what you get in the PC3 manuals barely explain - or don't at all - the more arcane functions of the VAST engine. You know, the stuff involved with the really different patches, the sounds that make the Kurzweil synths unique. Fortunately, these manuals are available at the Kurzweil website.

I have to take a break and revisit this later - it is 3 am here, after all, and I should act like I have a job once in a while. But I would like to hear how some of you are using your Kurzweils, as well as getting to the Nord Modular, another mega-flexible, mega-powerful synth.

Rock on, fellow coders!

[Psynthman]

Originally Posted by gremlin moon

trying to make a sound that resists reverse engineering;

That sounds like a really interesting exercise. I think I might try this sometime.

[Dudley]

Originally Posted by gremlin moon

IAnything that resembles or fairly reminds one of a known acoustic instrument, animal (including humans), machines, nature or environmental sounds must also be avoided.

interesting thoughts, but for me i think that an entirely new sound that still has familiar aural reference points is perfectly possible - in fact, i think it's probably unavoidable.

The coolest sounds are always the ones that sound almost like something else, but distinctly not.

[Dudley]

convolution offers one of the quickest ways to new timbres - just convolving two unrelated sounds with each other can give unique results.

[maisonvague]

Goodbye, Mr. Chips!

[Praxisaxis]

A few sumarised points, some prompted from comments in this thread, others I've read elsewhere, for those who get upset about running out of potential for "new" sounds or new music.

* Actually, people enjoy hearing something which sounds like something else. That's probably why people keep buying 808s and minimoogs. It also is why people will play the same tune for over 1000 years. It is also why they make lots of pianos and violins for hundreds of years. It's also why composers bothered to write manuscript. It's why we accumulate a record collection. etc, etc, etc. Generally speaking, originality in music is subservient to repeatability, contrary to what a lot of people just assume without thinking - it's fundamentally something that we share, so it simply cannot be drastically altered all the time. This suggests that novelty in music transcends its most frequent state, which is repeatability.

* Nonetheless there are literally endless possibilities for synthesising sounds; when you get sick of that, you can try different combinations of different sounds. It bears mentioning, somewhat in relation to the first point, that limitations are psychological rather than physical - we categorise similar sounds as being "the same," when in fact, pyhsically speaking, no two sounds are ever identical (save perhaps if we are abstractly speaking about sound as digits). It's our own bodily hardware, then wetware, which makes it possible for us to say this or that sound is the same or different, in a way much more complex and remarkable than observing differences in a waveform: The former would be study more closely related to music than the latter, which would be a study in physics. What this means is that the quest to produce something "new" is more about engaging musicality - one's own or one's listener's - and not about sitting down with a list and marking a cross against any synth sounds which are confirmed as already in use (or some such silliness). It must be something done intuitively and with many hundreds of hours practice - you can't shortcut this by merely coming up with a patch that no one else seems to have used.

* There's plenty more scope for exploring electronic instruments. Synths are one thing, but I'm also personally interested in electro-mechanical instruments (like the Rhodes), but with more emphasis on the "electro." Has anyone ever built a synth that generates its initial sounds mechanically?

[Jovas]

Well you can alway's take some acid and detune some osc's.. You can also filter the decay attack into a releasable decay, without even having to trip the signal through the waveshaper while not overusing internal FX feeding back into the detuned osc's, which are heavily influenced by the acid or other mindaltering consUmable tools apart from the synth..

YouunderstahihiahoohhooohAAAAAHHRGHHAHAAAAARGHH?

[Ghosty Dog]

Originally Posted by Jovas

Well you can alway's take some acid and detune some osc's..
YouunderstahihiahoohhooohAAAAAHHRGHHAHAAAAARGHH?

Be more interesting to find a way to feed the synth the acid.

[Praxisaxis]

Let's also not forget that a concept of sound cannot be separated from duration. You can have a synth play the same patch, but in multiple different ways over the course of 1, or 10 seconds, and you'll have a range of things which will inevitably be called "different sounds," and the nature of these will vary anywhere in the gradient between melodic and rhythmic.

Actually it boggles my mind that someone would be stuck in thinking that we're running out of sounds.

[AngelRho]

Originally Posted by Praxisaxis

Let's also not forget that a concept of sound cannot be separated from duration. You can have a synth play the same patch, but in multiple different ways over the course of 1, or 10 seconds, and you'll have a range of things which will inevitably be called "different sounds," and the nature of these will vary anywhere in the gradient between melodic and rhythmic.

Actually it boggles my mind that someone would be stuck in thinking that we're running out of sounds.

When I'm running out of sound ideas, I like to keep it fairly simple (as a general rule) and go to Absynth. I like programming looping envelopes of random durations so that as the sound evolves over a LONG period of time--like, say, an hour, I'm assured of getting a wide variety of sounds. Sometimes I get a recording of something useful--MOST of the time I don't. But it's always useful to find some generative method of creating new sounds. Whatever comes out can always be shaped in its own right for whatever purpose. And rather than thinking in terms of duration, I tend to think in terms of purpose. You'll always tend to use archetypical synth sounds like pads, leads, ensembles, sound effects, and so on. The underlying waveform might work better as one type of sound or another, but sometimes that ethereal pad sound might be just what you need with relatively few changes to work as a lead.

[Morechips]

Originally Posted by Beermaster

Of course there will never be an end or a foreseeable point when new sounds can't be synthesized - anyone who doubts it needs to have a go on a synth !

What i will say tho is that even with an almost infinite number of different presets if you were to put all the tonal ones in a group and hold down middle C and start to scroll through them one at a time ( with any arpeggiation and preset gating or sample holds off ) you're going to get very bored very quickly .. the note 'C' will keep coming at you with a range of harmonic variations and transients but with the same 'C' overpowering and permeating the the sound.

If you got all the instruments of the orchestra to individually play the same C ( those that were in the range to do so ) one after the other......you'd have the same blandness creeping up on you too.

There comes a point where what you do with a sound defines it as being fresh and new ... not so much emphasis should be put on the 'sound' but on the music. I think this is the reason so many people are getting bored and stuck with their current selection of synth presets and sample libraries.... if you use vastly differing sounds but stick to basically the same boring cliches musically ...... it will sound the same regardless of the new synth sounds...

I recently heard a live performance of a piano piece by Henri Deuteiux - it sounded nothing like any other piano sound I'd ever heard.....yet it was a bog standard Steinway grand Piano........

It isn't a lack of diversity in sounds it's a lack of diversity in the music !

Beer

Well said!

I'll add...context is all important to the perception of a 'sound', synthesized or otherwise, so apart from endless amounts of micro variation in real world sound vibration machines (electronic and acoustic instruments, not digital ) we also have limitless contextual possibilities.

[slashno]

Originally Posted by MadforBrad

is it possible to make new words. Nope.

What? We make new words all the time. Every language develops new vocabulary in response to new technology, new social situations, and other changes over a span of time.

But of course you are being sarcastic no, e.

[Morechips]

Ornette's got some interesting things to say about sound and its production.

[Teknobeam]

Originally Posted by droolmaster0

Still an insanely lame thread, which (to my mind) seems unique to gearslutz. It'd be less intellectual on HC (and even worse), but better defined on muffwiggler. But in general, people like to talk without having the slightest idea what the terms might mean, and whether they are using them differently than the person that they are responding to.

And that's the issue really. If you're actually answering the op, one has to have some commonality about what a 'sound' is. Is it a static sound only, which doesn't evolve at all? Does one accept the fact that if a 'pixel' is different, the sound is different, or is one talking about something that hits one as materially different? All of this pontificating, and there is no agreement at all on what one is talking about, and no consensus even that this is important.

Actually, yes... that's a very astute observation. Sometimes it's easy to respond to a question that was never asked in the first place, all the while thinking you have the right answer to the wrong question.