Additive Pitch Rhythms Using Hexbeat

Practice session today using additive pitch hexbeat rhythms to generate melodic contours.

Each hexbeat() is generating sequences of 1’s and 0’s which are then multiplied to alternate between things like 7 and 0.  So if I add one that alternates between 2 and 0, I get 9,7,2, and 0 as possibilities.  Then with say 4 and 0, I get additional combinations.  With the patterns of different lengths (I’ve been using mostly prime number lengths) it generates a nice long overall pitch pattern, which is then masked by the rhythmic hexplay() pattern.  I then add a choose() to say “play 70% of the time” and I find all of that together is quick to write, generates good variety, but has an underlying structure that is stable.  (It’s been on my mind how to mix randomness + stability in interesting ways and I’ve found these explorations have been leading to some interesting pattern generation.)

This desmos graph visualizes an example of a 3-part hex pitch rhythm added together:

(Click on the “Edit on Desmos” link in the graph to turn on/off visualization of the various individual hex pitch rhythms.)

3 comments

  1. 510/5000
    Hi Steven,

    I am interested in your project Live Coding with csound. It’s exciting and I will try to follow the development as much as possible.

    I’m reporting a bug in Tutorial 1. The link to the csound “schedule” manual page is wrong.
    The link to the page is: https://csound.com/docs/manual/schedule.html

    I wonder if I will not translate the doc in French, with Goggle trad, it’s a breeze, I do not know if it’s useful and how to access it later.

    See you soon

    Jean

    1. Hi Jean,

      Thanks for the interest and bug report; I’ve fixed the entry for Tutorial 1. The tutorials are not complete at the moment, so I will need to spend more time on them this summer. Translations would certainly be welcome and could be submitted as an fr sub-folder via pull request on Github if that’s something that is comfortable for you to use. Also, perhaps reporting bugs via csound-live-code github might be good so I can reference the issue number in the git commits.

      All best and hope you enjoy!
      Steven

      1. Okay, I understand your concern about centralizing on Github and I will take it into account. I put myself today to the task of understanding and use github, I already have a little experience of git, I had created a site on gitbucket. I need to understand how to work on a shared project without doing anything stupid.
        Have a good day
        Jean

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