The Sound Loom – An Overview

What is The Sound Loom ?

The Sound Loom is an integrated graphic interface to the CDP sound-processing software, a comprehensive collection of over 500 instruments for sound transformation developed as practical working tools by composers over many years, available from the Composers' Desktop Project.
There is also a CDP Users' Discussion Group.

The Sound Loom + CDP software is a powerful toolbox for composers, not a performance instrument. Using it, you can specify the parameters of any process to any degree of time-varying detail, detail you may have composed or have extracted from some other complex sound-event. You cannot, however, alter these parameters while the process is running.

In compensation, the system offers almost any conceivable process for transforming sounds and sound-data (the data might be loudness envelopes, pitch-tracking information, spectral analysis data, filter specifications etc.) all running in a unified, intelligent environment.

The CDP instruments

The CDP instruments fall into four broad categories....

• Transforming the waveform of the sound e.g.
  • extracting and transforming the loudness contour.
  • various time-variable banks of filters.
  • different types of 'waveset' distortion.
• Segmenting the sound, and reassembling segments e.g.
  • 'harmonizer' type time-stretch or pitch-shift.
  • sound-shredding.
  • reverberation.
  • regular, to random, brassage - from spectral modification to event-scale montage (similar to granular synthesis).
• Transforming the time-varying spectrum of the sound e.g.
  • spectral tracing.
  • pitch and formant extraction and manipulation.
  • morphing from one sound to another.
• Building new events from the whole sound e.g.
  • naturalistic iteration.
  • multi-dimensional time-varying texture generation (also known as granular synthesis).
  • mixing, e.g. with attack synchronisation.

The Sound Loom environment

The Sound Loom offers an intelligent working interface to all of these processes. On the workspace page, you can load the source sounds or data files you wish to work with. The Sound Loom keeps track of the properties of these files, and knows automatically which CDP processes are appropriate to any (list of) file(s) you choose to process and what parameter types (fixed values, time-varying values, filter-data etc.) and parameter ranges are appropriate to use in each case.

Every page of the Sound Loom comes with built in Help information, and there is a New User Help facility which can be turned off once you are familiar with the Sound Loom. The Sound Loom Process Page holds brief descriptions of each CDP process, and the parameter requirements of each process are documented from an Information button which appears when you call the that process. In addition, the Which? button allows you to query the Sound Loom to find out what processes might be appropriate to achieve a desired result (e.g. time-stretching, pitch-extraction etc.).

In addition, the Sound Loom interface has powerful facilities for creating and manipulating data (e.g. time-varying parameters, filter specifications, mix sequences etc.)...

• a Table Editor with hundreds of automatic processes for generating or transforming data files.
• a Music Calculator making conversions between various musical and technical units.
• a Reference Store where important values can be held during and between sessions.

and for processing sounds in bulk...

• Bulk Process allows you to apply the same process to a whole list of sounds without having to enter each sound separately.
• Batch Processing allows several different processes to be remembered and rerun, all at once, at a later time. Powerful editing facilities allow new input sounds to be substituted, or parameters to be changed in a systematic way.

The Sound Loom also allows you to....

• remember favourite processes (to recall at a single button press)
• remember patches (particular sets of parameters used for a particular process, all recalled at a single button press)
• build hyper-instruments, i.e. a sequence of existing CDP processes, combined into a new, named, super-process with its own parameter set. Once created, this can be run just like a single CDP process.
• organise your sounds in musically appropriate 'virtual directories' : you can store the same sound in any number of named B-Lists e.g. 'Introduction', 'Section3a', 'Coda' etc and load an entire virtual directory to the workspace, to work on a specific section of a musical piece.
• sketch your compositional ideas, arranging and rearranging sounds (and comments) on a Sketch Score on which you can also run different types of test mixes, before deciding on a final running order.
  
  all of which are permanently stored between sessions; and.....
  
  
• experiment with harmonies, either in standard (tempered) tuning, or using any frequencies you want.
• experiment with sound interpolation, to get the best results for changing one sound gradually into another.

The Sound Loom also....

• Remembers where you are at the end of a session, restoring that situation at the start of the next.
• Maintains a record of activities ( a log), allowing any previous action (from the current or any previous session) to be recalled, and allows intelligent reconstruction where a sound or data file has been renamed or deleted in the interim.
• Uses a very simple data storage strategy and is therefore very robust: a system hang or crash will leave all data intact except, perhaps, for the very last action you were performing. No previous data, or input sound, or output sound, or system configuration, or patch, or hyper-instrument or activity-log will be lost.

Reporting Faults

You can report faults to the CDP, but fault reports must be specific i.e. please report....

1. which version of the software you are running.
2. the exact sequence of operations leading up to the fault (please try to reproduce the fault - if it is not reproducible, it may be due to factors outside the Sound Loom or CDP's control).
3. the type and size of all sound, analysis (or other binary) files being used with the process that fails.
4. the contents of any (text) data files being used with the process.
5. The exact fault message received - this may be
   • a Sound Loom message.
   • a TK/TCL message, which shows up in a window which allows the fault to be traced - please follow the trace, and report the complete contents of the TK/TCL fault report window.
   • a message from you operating system, e.g. reporting a software crash.

If you have operational problems, please consult other users first.

Last updated: 2 November 2010