Say It With Pictures

Sep 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Dennis Miller

           
 

EIGHT PROGRAMS THAT CONVERT IMAGES TO MUSIC

BONUS MATERIAL
The UPIC System

You can create new waveforms for use in rendering, but depending on what type of waveforms you want, the process can be very simple or somewhat oblique. For instance, to build a static waveform containing only harmonic partials, you use an intuitive display in which the amplitude of each partial can be adjusted with a slider. Similarly, to create a noise-based waveform, you can adjust sliders representing the spread and density of the noise. For FM, however, you need to use the main graphic display and create an association between the source sound you want to modulate and a second sound that will serve as a modulator. I haven't seen this type of implementation in any prior software, but to be fair, it is modeled on the original UPIC approach (in fact, it offers much better visual feedback than UPIC), and with a bit of practice it becomes second nature. All new waveforms and any default waveforms that you modify are saved automatically when you save the piece you are working on, and you can access the waveforms you create in one piece when working in another.

HighC's drawing tools are fairly basic and though it currently uses only synthesis to create sounds, according to the developer a version that can also incorporate samples is in the works. Still, it is unique in its approach to working with image conversion and has a strong heritage from which many interesting compositions have been created. At the developer's Web site (see the online bonus material “Manufacturer Contacts”), you'll find a free trial version that doesn't allow you to export your audio file; links to lots of examples; and some handy tutorials to get you started.

Camel Audio's Cameleon 5000 1.5 (Mac/Win, $199 [MSRP])

Cameleon's image-to-sound conversion features are a relatively minor yet still very useful portion of the program. Like Audition, Cameleon treats audio files and images that you import in much the same way, but Cameleon, like Poseidon, provides an editable set of parameters for both types of files. You can use an image file to produce up to 64 harmonic partials and/or unlimited bands of noise, and you can adjust either the instantaneous amplitude of an individual partial or determine how it evolves over time using an intuitive interface for those purposes. You can also modify the frequencies of all or only some of the partials' frequencies using the Detune function, which could be useful, for example, for creating sounds with inharmonic spectra. Unlike some of the other programs, Cameleon doesn't handle stereo position (only the height and brightness of pixels are used), so color images will be interpreted as black and white.

Once you've imported a graphics file, you can make edits to selected groups of partials (only odd or only even partials, for instance), or use the Formant Filter (with its various presets) to sculpt out a portion of the sound. Cameleon also provides a number of preset spectra for both harmonic partials and noise components, so you could easily combine the spectrum generated by a graphic image with the noise components of a vocal preset and adjust the relative amounts of each.

You can use Cameleon's Morph Square to morph among four different sets of sound parameters that you've generated using up to four different graphics files, or mix and match sounds that you've created in different ways. It's easy to build your own pathways for automated morphing or use any of the Morph Timeline presets that come with the program. You can also adjust the Morph position in real time and capture that output to disc.

Cameleon will export a discrete time-domain plot (frequency versus amplitude) and convert it into a sonogram display. You can then manipulate this image with a graphics program or simply examine it to better understand the spectral components of your sounds. This technique, and others related to image-to-sound conversion, is nicely covered in a thorough text-based tutorial.

I wasn't very familiar with Cameleon before writing this roundup, but I found it to be one of the best-sounding soft synths I've come across in a long time. If you're looking for a professional soft synth that includes respectable image-to-sound features, Cameleon is a good place to start.

Rasmus Ekman's CoagulaLight 1.66 (Win, free)

FIG. 4: Coagula has a robust set of brushes for drawing or modifying images.

CoagulaLight has been in “late beta” for some time but remains under active development. Though it won't replace Photoshop on your desktop, the program offers a wide range of brushes for creating new images as well as a rich set of tools for processing new or imported graphics files (see Fig. 4). Open an existing bitmap image, and you'll immediately have access to the Move, Zoom-rotate, and Skew-flip features. Couple those tools with the ability to create mirror images in a single step, and you can quickly create complex mosaics and other highly transformed variations on your pictures before rendering them into sound.

Coagula lets you map the extracted image data to any arbitrary frequency range (between 0.001 Hz and any frequency) and adjust the new sound file's duration from a fraction of a second to several hours. You can enable the Soft Envelope Sweep feature to produce very smooth transitions between pixel values (with the trade-off of slightly longer render times), and you can choose to render only a selected portion of the image or stop the render midway (the portion that is rendered will be playable). A slider lets you dial in the amount of noise you want added to each sine wave individually before the final render.

If you're a fan of granular synthesis, you'll find the Spray brush very handy (note that Ekman is also the developer of Granulab, a very powerful, real-time granular-synthesis application). You can control the size and shape of the brush by clicking-and-dragging in the small window in the Brush dialog box — the brush will update as you move the mouse — and you can create color gradients that will translate into panning parameters of your new sound.