Evan X. Merz

musician / technologist / human being

Tagged "app"

Make Explosive Soundscapes with Circular Sound

I've just finished work on a new musical instrument for Android devices. It's called Circular Sound, and it's aimed at people who like noise.

Circular Sound is similar to my other recent mobile instruments in that it combines a sampler with custom digital signal processing, and a unique interface. Sounds can be loaded from a configurable directory on the device, or you can play around with the default sounds, which are from freesound.org. Then they are loaded into spheres that are arranged in a circle on the left half of the screen. The left half of the screen is the source audio mixer, while the right half is used to control effects. The effects include waveshaping, granulation, delay, and modulation.

The goal of Circular Sound is to give a simple access point into generating various types of noise that is related in some way to the source sounds provided by the user.

Download it for free on Google Play and shoot me a comment to let me know if you make something cool with it!

UPDATE: I have been unable to continue maintaining Circular Sound, so it is no longer available.

Granular Synthesis for Android Phones

Granular is a granular synthesizer for Android devices. Play it by dragging your fingers around the waveform for the source audio file. You can upload your own audio files, or just play with the sounds that are distributed with the app.

The horizontal position on the waveform controls the location from which grains will be pulled. The vertical position controls the grain size. The leftmost slider controls the amount of frequency modulation applied to the grains. The middle slider controls the time interval between grains. The rightmost slider controls randomness.

Download Granular from the Google Play Store and start making grainy soundscapes on your phone.

EDIT: I have been unable to continue maintaining this app, so it is no longer available