Modeled Modules

A collection of SuperCollider extensions which model a number of analog synthesizer models. This project was undertaken as my senior capstone project. Deciding what to do for my project was not an easy task. In my studies I had worked in a studio, built audio hardware, worked with live sound, and created many musical projects, but I was looking for something which tied more into my passion for computer science and development. I didn’t want to make a basic plugin using an online tutorial and framework like JUCE. I wanted to do something more hands on, where I had to design and solve the problems myself. Creating custom extensions for SuperCollider based on existing hardware synthesizer modules fit this perfectly. I had to first figure out roughly how each module worked, design the digital counterpart, and implement the design. Learning the SuperCollider server API and digital signal processing proved a fun challenge. SuperCollider is primarily written in C, but the modern API is meant for C++. Diving into the SuperCollider codebase for examples involved translating not only on the fundamental “what does this function do” level but also reframing into the adapted C++ API. I learned plenty of new concepts while working on this project. My biggest challenge was the Ripples module because I tried to implement my own IIR filters in the code. I did not have the mathematical background to learn to design digital filters in one semester on top of everything else I had to do. That’s when I learned how to compile external libraries and the difference between static vs. dynamic linking (that one held me up for a while). Overall, this project served as a way to gain further knowledge of digital signal processing and programming for real time audio. It’s crazy to see how far things have come from MUSIC I.

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Video

The video of this presentation is currently in the possesion of my university. I am in the process of procuring it.

Presentation

Without the video of my presentation, there is not much the slides provide other than the basic structure. My personal philosophy is that presentation visuals should be an outline not a script. The presentation was created using reveal.js and a custom theme.

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