Finally I finish it. It wasn’t easy and I think my patch is not efficient at all, you can see it in image below. I tried to make it efficient but in the end it just the same and I’m just wasting my time. Maybe I will tried it again tomorrow but for now I think it’s enough.
Last post I wrote about my abstraction that represents one Angklung note. I create this abstraction so I can use a whole set (30 notes) of Angklung melody. Want to know how it sounds? check this video
Today I cleaned up my abstraction and add help file. I already finish three abstraction for my project; ak_speaker, ak_player, and ak_pitchshifter. There are just basic abstraction. Not just cleaning up my abstractions, today I also managed to create another abstraction. I called it ak_angklung_2tubes. Why Angklung 2 (two) tubes? I tried to structure my patch so that it’s easy to understand. Angklung 2 (two) tubes means in this abstraction I use two sample, one for big tube and another one for small tube. As I wrote in my blog post, Angklung has many variant, 2 (two) tubes called Angklung melody, 3 (three) or 4 (four) called Angklung akompanimen so this new abstraction was created specifically for Angklung melody.
This abstraction represents one Angklung note so I need to create another abstraction so it can be used for any Angklung note. I hope I can finish it tomorrow.
Last time I already got recording for some Angklung notes. In my recording, I record each tube for one Angklung note so each Angklung note I have two sound. Originally I only record 7 notes of Angklung which are Angklung number 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30. Today I finished processing the recording and got 14 audio file from these 7 Angklung notes. These 14 audio represent single tube of Angklung notes. Using this 14 audio sample I already got 14 notes of Angklung starting from G3. With these audio then I will use Pure Data patch to get the other notes using pitch shifting.
Yesterday I met Bobi Aulia Syafiq, president of Keluarga Paduan Angklung (KPA). KPA is a student society in ITB (Institut Teknologi Bandung) that has interest in Angklung. They also have annual concert using Angklung as their musical instrument. In their concert, usually they have 30 to 40 performers and each of them can hold 5 to 7 Angklung. I met Bobi (KPA) to borrow some Angklung for my audio sample. They are really supportive because I told them than I do this for my final project. I borrow 9 (nine) Angklung from them, 7 (seven) Angklung melody and 2 (two) Angklung elephant. Angklung melody have 30 (thirty) notes, numbered from 1 to 30. In this set I choose number 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30. Angklung elephant have 1 (one) full octave of notes from G to Fis and I choose C and F.
Each Angklung that I borrowed has two tubes. The bigger tube is the original note and the smaller tube is one octave above it. For my project I record each of this tube separately so I have to bind the other one using rubber band. Just like I wrote before in my last post, I will only record snapping so with this 9 (nine) Angklung, 2 (two) tubes, I have 18 sound samples. From this sound sample I will process it using Audacity to get the best recording.
This afternoon I met Dr. Eko Mursito Budi in my past university ITB (Institut Teknologi Bandung) to ask about Angklung. In this interview, my question was around creating digital sound of Angklung. It isn’t easy to synthesize Angklung sound. Dr. Budi said that it is nearly impossible to create realistic sound of Angklung. This is because Angklung is an instrument from bamboo (an organic material) even two Angklung with the same note can have slightly different sound.
When we want to create digital sound, there are two way of doing this, using procedural and sample. Angklung’s sound wave pattern is not consistent that’s why it is hard if we want to create Angklung sound using procedural approach. Instead of using procedural approach, the only way to create Angklung sound is using sample based synthesizer. Even if we use sample to create Angklung sound, there are still some problem with it which are human factor and Angklung’s sound itself. When we play Angklung, even if the player is an expert, when he/she play the same note, it won’t have the same sound so we won’t get the exact same sample. The other problem is about Angklung sound itself. Like I said before, even two Angklung with same note can sound different. Even though there are still some problems, using sample is still the best approach right now.
Currently Dr Budi using sample approach to create digital sound of Angklung. Normally when we want to use sample, we will record as many sample as possible but Dr Budi use only one sample. Dr Budi said if we use too many sample, it will become inconsistent unlike guitar or piano that has consistent sound for every notes. Not only one sample, Dr Budi only record one way of playing Angklung. In my last blog post I wrote that there are three way to play Angklung; shaking, snapping, and holding. Dr Budi only record sound sample for snapping. This approach is suitable for Angklung because it will become more consistent and if we want to produce shaking sound we can just overlap snapping sound and repeat it.
After this interview, I decided to use Dr Budi approach to create digital sound of Angklung.
All Things Are Possible 