Chopin: Étude Op. 10, No. 1 (synthesized)

YouTube Published on Sep 3, 2012 by ScrollingMusic

Matlab software synthesizer.

"Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849): Étude in C major, Op. 10, No. 1 (1829).

This étude is the first of a set of 12 (called Opus 10), published in 1833. It is particularly famous for its study in right-hand arpeggios often ascending and descending more than four octaves per chord. Running sixteenth notes dominate the texture of the right hand, supported by heavy octaves in the left. The study is in ternary form (ABA), and features some remarkable instances of transposition in its middle section. A harmonic reduction of this study usually leads to a smoothly step-wise 5-voice texture, reminiscent of Bach's C major Prelude from his first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier. Vladimir Horowitz considered this Chopin étude his most difficult.

The principal timbre in this synthesized rendition is generated through phase distortion synthesis - that is modulating the phase component of a standard sinusoidal wave with time. This technique creates a rich harmonic texture quite efficiently compared to additive synthesis. We programmed this phase distortion "voice" to generate more harmonic distortion as the fundamental frequency decreases. Therefore, the low octaves in the left hand have far more harmonics than those at the top of the right hand arpeggios.

The visualization is a combination between our standard scrolling "piano-roll" score and a third-party spectrogram visualization (a graphical plot of harmonic content vs. time in the.synthesized audio)."