Auibled illusion - this tone seems to rise in pitch forever

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/08/12/auibled-illusion-this-tone-s.html

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An Auibled illusion? Is that Scots Gaelic?

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Hey. This is not the place for auibilist jokes.

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I need to put this on for 8 hours and assemble some Ikea furniture.

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Aha! My 35 year old mystery has been solved, thanks BB!

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Here’s Shepard’s Ascending and a couple other illusions for downloading. (Note: this is Shepard’s Ascending Tone as it might be played by a ballpark organ during the 7th inning stretch.)

All Hail Hypnotoad!

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It sounds like when people sing in rounds.

I loved that toy!!! Thanks for the reminder of the happy memories.

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Here is a 1981 interview with Harald Bode, from the old magazine Polyphony (precursor to Electronic Musician Magazine), page 14-17. He hints at an “infinite” phaser he was about to show at the 70th AES. But there is also an ad for the final product on the last page of the interview. Basically it does similar things as the barberpole sound here, only you can apply to any sound whatsoever.

If the DeepMining idiots really want to monetize this, why not make some voltage-controlled modules that do this and add some unique functions? Oh, right, I guess they want money for as little work as possible.

From that link:

Quickening Beat (MP3 738K)
This recording is subtle. A drum beat sounds as if it is quickening in tempo, but the starting tempo is the same as this finishing tempo.

Reminds me of a drummer I knew.

Put a spectrum analyser on your phone/tablet and display the spectrum yourself. Like this one https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=radonsoft.net.spectralview

It turns out that using a shepherd tone to drive anything in a synth just doesn’t work that well at least as far as every way I’ve tried it.

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Interesting. I’ve never thought of using a shepard tone as a control voltage.* How did you make your shepard tone? Piece by piece or is there a module that does it?

*But then I’m not really a synthesist or composer or musician. Synths and music made from them are just a long-standing interest – since about 1967 or so.

All my efforts around this were done in a digital audio environment, Logic to be specific. I have an AU plugin that generates shepard tones. This means that where I’ve used it to drive a filter or provide a base signal for a synth plugin or used it to create timing for an effect such as reverb depth, etc., it isnt really a control voltage

I suppose that since the theory of how to make one is just two or more oscillators, it should be “easy” to do in a analog modular synth environment, I just dont have the space, budget or hardware to do so.

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Two of my favorite examples of Shepard tones in popular music:

Wilco, ‘Born Alone’ [listen to the very end]




King Crimson, ‘Marine 475’ [not to be confused with their other variation, ‘Coda: Marine 475’]

[best live performance I could find; the studio version is hucking fimpossible to find online because Robert Fripp has very strong (and not entirely misguided) disdain for artist compensation practices in the streaming music industry.]

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Interesting! Didn’t know there was a plug-in for that. I just did a search and got this, a plug-in that says it works as a tone generator, a ring modulator, phaser, flanger or resonant filter bank. Is that what you’re using?

It’s not that one but since I’m at work I can’t check which it is. I’ll try and check that tonight my time.

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I need to contact DeepMiningCorpAssoc because they made a copyright claim against a video I made. Anyone here knows how to reach them?

At least you weren’t dating the bass player.

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Turns out its a VST plugin from http://mda.smartelectronix.com

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