Listening to Music Upside-Down

http://photosounder.com

In this video, we first load a sound into Photosounder, which is converted into an image. We first listen to that image by turning it back into a sound, then, by pressing buttons 180° and FLIP, we flip it vertically, as to make the image appear upside-down, and we turn that upside-down image into a sound, an 'upside-down' version of the original sound.

What it does is invert the notes of the tune, which creates a different sounding tune, but it also inverts the overtones, so the instruments also sound different. This effect is unique to Photosounder, which is the only program out there that treats sounds and music entirely as images.

Music from the South Park episode, Gnomes.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• music
• sound
• processing
• experiment
• spectrogram
• image
• photosounder

[plugexpert]

I'm not a big fan of the bandpassy / siney sound, fft-processing always seems to bring to the table, any chance of using other sounds to base the synthesis on? Like in audiopaint you can use samples instead of the typical sinewave sound.

[Photosounder]

@plugexpert no. And yes. Photosounder just make a sound as faithful as it can to the image you give it. If you want the sound that comes out to sound different you have to change the image you give it. If you give it an image with full areas it will sound like bandpassed noise (which it is). If you want something else you have to give it something else.

[Photosounder]

@plugexpert maybe my previous comment didn't properly answer your question. There are some artifacts that come with such methods for resynthesis so you'll always hear them. However with Photosounder you can change the tone of the sound. For example, if you have a bunch of lines but you don't want them to sound like sine waves, in Photosounder you can apply some harmonics to them using vertical propagation, and by changing your harmonics you can change the tone that comes out.

[flexyco]

Sounds scary. Sounds like something the band Coil could have produced.

[Photosounder]

@flexyco interesting that you should say that as they're made music using the ANS synthesiser which has many things in common with Photosounder as far as synthesis is concerned. In a way the ANS synth is the earliest precursor to Photosounder.

[k0is0king]

wow it sounds better upside down

[uncinarynin]

So that is how all the Chinese-sounding music is made!

[andrezlatin]

Now try to mix that togrther

?????? PROFIT

[anarcyboy12]

sounds like a carnaval

[IDeafpool]

silent hill.

[hellswings]

creepy

[BEASLAND000]

is there an online version?

[SuckItLily]

makes it better