About the Spectral Toolbox
The Spectral Toolbox is a suite of analysis-resynthesis programs that locate relevant partials of a sound and allow them to be resynthesized at any specified frequencies. This enables a variety of techniques including spectral mappings (sending all partials of a sound to fixed destinations), spectral morphing continuously interpolating between the partials of a source sound and a destination) and dynamic tonality (a way of organizing the relationship between a family of tunings and a set of related timbres). A complete application called the TransFormSynth concretely demonstrates the methods using either a one-dimensional controller such as a midi keyboard or a two-dimensional control surface (such as a MIDI guitar, a computer keyboard, or the forthcoming Thummer controller).
The Spectral Toolbox is featured in the Computer Music Journal paper Spectral tools for Dynamic Tonality and audio morphing. The paper describes the following sound examples, as well the software available for download below.
Audio examples
Maple Leaf Rag Scot Joplin's famous ragtime piece is used to demonstrate some of the processing techniques
Noisy Leaf Rag Both melody and harmony are removed from the Maple Leaf Rag, leaving only the underlying rhythmic pattern.
multiphonics morphs #1 (type 1) Different kinds of audio morphings are demonstrated by morphing between various clainet multiphonics.
multiphonics morphs #1 (type 2)
multiphonics morphs #2 (type 1)
multiphonics morphs #2 (type 2)
multiphonics morphs #3 (type 1)
multiphonics morphs #3 (type 2)
harmonic gong with all partials mapped to 65 Hz
65 Hz Rag Maple Leaf Rag with all harmonics mapped to multiples of 65 Hz
Maple-makeharm Maple Leaf Rag mapped to harmonic sound with changing fundamentals
Maple 5-TET Maple Leaf Rag mapped to 5-TET
Make Believe Rag (many different n-TET mappings)
Four versions of clarinet + harmonics:
Legend (melody morphed into the multiphonics #1)
Legend (melody morphed into the multiphonics #2)
Legend (melody morphed into the multiphonics #3)
Legend (melody morphed into the multiphonics #4)
Shred, Magic Traveller, Lighthouse: This is a live performance of the three pieces: Shred is from 0:00-3:18, Magic Traveller is from 3:18-06:26, and Lighthouse is from 06:26 - end. Performance by Andrew Milne (Thummers), Anthony Prechtl (QWERTY keyboard and oud), Aki Tulikari (drums), at the Music Mind Technology Concert, Jyväskylä University, April 22nd 2008. Studio versions of these pieces are in preparation.
Download
First download these installation instructions
You'll need these java classes
plus either the:
Spectral Toolbox for Max/MSP runtime code—use this if you have Max/MSP runtime installed, but not if you also have the full version of Max/MSP.
or the
Spectral Toolbox for Max/MSP (source code)—use this if you have the full version of Max/MSP installed.
Documentation
Find out about the TransFormSynthFind out about the Spectral Toolbox
The Spectral Toolbox was designed by William Sethares with the help of Stefan Tiedje, Andrew Milne, and Anthony Prechtl. It is released under the GNU General Public License v2.0.