[Fluxus] max-synths

[Kassen]

On Sun, Jun 03, 2012 at 11:10:53AM +0100, David Griffiths wrote:
> 
> Hope it went well!

It did! I'm happy with Vim as a interface for FLuxa, having a "undo"
on it's own is nice already (whimsical edit, count to 4, undo; instant
break/variation). Also good is that MIDI sync is back to working
properly, including mid-performance hot-plugging... though we need to
remember that the proper order for that is to first have Rob Bothof
load his PD samples and only then start Fluxa slaving to it. Anyway it
was a good session and I'm happy with my progress.

> Not really that thought out, but after writing some modular soft synths
> and then looking closely at supercollider, I wondered if it was possible
> to remove all statefulness and make an immutable synth engine.
> 
> An then, a couple of weeks ago at the supercollider symposium, James
> McCartney's wish list was based all around removing state - so I
> definitely feel its an interesting direction to work on.

It's a sound idea, I think. It does leave some questions in that there
is some state implied in some musical structures. I would say that the
monophonic nature of the TB303 or the fragments of loops in Jungle
(which cut each other) both imply a bit of state while also being the 
kind of sound that suits Fluxa.

I've come some way with using the "scrub" node with a modulation
signal that sums a "ramp" and a lfo towards cutting breaks and that
concept could be taken further, probably with just the stuff we have
already. Illustration;

;play a sample over 4 bars while slaved
(scrub									;uses a index for the playpos
	"my_break-wav"						;of a sample
	(ramp 0 1 (* 4 (midi-bar-dur)))) ;ramps from a to b over a duration

;the same, but now with crude cutting


(scrub									
	"my_break-wav"
	(+
		(ramp 0 1 (* 4 (midi-bar-dur)))
		(* 0.125 (lfo-saw (midi-bar-dur)))))

That kind of thing will work, though of course such long lasting notes
will quite likely be recycled if we'd try to add a bassline.

For a monophonic synth the best I can come up with is still
that idea of having pools of nodes with a ID and making certain
node-graphs only take from that pool, forcing the recycling of nodes.
That would be a major thing to implement though, at least for me. I'm
still not sure about reverbs, maybe we could simply have Fluxa have a
variable amount of outputs so some could be routed to external plugin
effects.

Yours,
Kas.