COS 325 Final Projects

First, a Little History:

• A Famous Production Company (Tom and Andy) resulted from this class
• Charlie Sullivan's Rock and Roll Guitar Model created quite a stir
• Lars Graf wrote MINC
• Kent Dickey wrote RT
• Dan Iglesia got into the graduate composition program at Columbia University
• Many, Many More ...

Transforming Reality Final Project Guidelines

Complete it by yourself (no collaborations).

Open book, notes, any other materials you want to use.

Due Dean's Date, May, submitted as a structured web page (see below).

Whatever you decide to do, you must write it up like a mini independent work project.

• What you did
• Why you did it
• How you did it
• Results
• References: When you propose your project, you will
  be assigned at least two technical papers on the topic.
  These might be directly or peripherally related. You
  should find a few more references of your own that
  relate to and inform your work. References you cite
  might also include web pages, code examples, etc.

Make a web page with the report, modified code, example score files, example sound files (for input and output), and

A 3 minute "composition" that shows off your new tool, discovery, data, project.
There should be a 200 word "program note" for the piece, describing the aesthetic and technical underpinnings.

A Few Ideas:

• Noise is beautiful: Study the noise components in sounds. Use the phase vocoder, LPC, and other tools to characterize, model, manipulate, synthesize, and resynthesize some sounds that have interesting noise and non-noise components. Examples: breathy/creaky speech, flutes and other wind instruments, others. Write a piece.
• Spectral file format flunging: Adapt pv, lpc, or MATLAB versions of those to use the Spectral Description Interchange Format file spec. Analyze a set of interesting sounds, publish the SDIF files. Write a piece.
• Score file format flunging: Adapt STK/SKINI or your own scorefile format to transmit/receive via Open Sound Control. Or, make up your own score file format. Write a "compiler" in Yacc. Write a piece.
• New scales and tuning systems: John Pierce invented the "tritave" and defined a new "Pierce Scale." Others have done scales/chords based on the Golden Mean. Dream up a new scale, rationalize it (explain it), do some musical examples that show it off, and ,of course: Write a new piece in it.
• Investigate, use, exploit, perturb, and use, Binaural, Surround, 5.1, 7.1, 14.2, Ambisonics, and other spatial sound formats/techniques. Write a piece.
• Pick an existing physical model to mess up in purposed and meaningful ways (ala Charlie Sullivan). Write a piece.
• Model an instrument that hasn't been done (well) yet. Write a piece.
• Systematically study and mess with directional instrument body filter impulse responses/transfer functions. Dan Trueman and I made a big database of these (NBody) long ago that still holds many treasures to be discovered.
• Look at directional transfer functions, both theory and experimental, of wind instruments (the voice too). I've got some data, and we can figure out some more.
• Look at, research deeply, etc. the sounds made by one particular species of animals/bugs/etc. Make a pitch detector optimized for bird calls, or fly buzzing (this is a real research project at Princeton), or other. Write a piece.
• Research and implement a really good real-time pitch detector. Write a Piece (or record you doing a live piece that uses your new detector).
• Research and implement a really good real-time beat follower, that not only can "tap its foot" but give a good indicator of how strong the beat is. Write a Piece (or record you doing a live piece that uses your new detector).
• More coming.....
• Propose your own (make sure we agree).

EMail to cos325@lists.cs.princeton.edu a pointer to the completed web page (only a pointer to your materials, not your materials), by 5:00PM on May 15.