SPEAR

SPEAR (Sinusoidal Partial Editing Analysis and Resynthesis) is a software application that visualizes sound and is a great way for you to translate between sounds and images.

It works by running a Fourier transform on a sound. Fourier figured out that any complex sound can be described as a sum of simple sine waves, each with different frequency and amplitude (loudness). The Fourier transform breaks a sound into its basic “recipe” of sine waves, and SPEAR lets you tweak those or draw your own and see what they sound like!

Here’s a demo of what it can do. It’s fairly frenetic, but should help you get started:

Important: To save a sound from SPEAR, click Sound | Synthesize to New File…, enter a file name and chose a folder, and an AIFF sound file will be created for you.

Other Compositional Ideas:

• Open a sound file, take a screen shot of it (on a Mac, run a program called Grab to take screenshots), and use the image for content or structure in an intermedia piece (like spectralist composers have done).
• Start with a blank window in SPEAR and draw sound using the pencil tool.
• …or just some extreme audio processing.
• …or any combination of the above.

Photosounder

Photosounder is a software application that visualizes sound and is a great way for you to translate between sounds and images.

It works by running a Fourier transform on a sound OR interpreting an image as if it were a Fourier analysis. Fourier figured out that any complex sound can be described as a sum of simple sine waves, each with different frequency and amplitude (loudness). The Fourier transform breaks a sound into its basic “recipe” of sine waves, and Photosounder lets you use this to convert sounds into images OR images into sounds!

Here’s a sample of what it can do:

All you really need to Photosounder to do is open and save. You can use other audio or image editing tools before or after Photosounder as you like. It does have some tools that may be helpful in shaping how your image/sound is interpreted. See a quick run-down of those tools here:

This page has some examples on using Photoshop with Photosounder to synthesize or process audio: click here. More techniques are on their blog: click here.

It’s hard to compose long works just using Photosounder, so feel free to use it to transform your basic material, then assemble it in audio or video editing programs.

Photosounder runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. It’s not free, but it’s not too expensive, either. It’s running in the Music Computer Laboratory (LAAH 242). Here’s the main website for more information on Photosounder: click here.