Light and Sound

Published on Dec 6, 2014 IMHUL

"As the image on the screen changes, different frequencies are induced in the telephone pickup coil. The software measures those changes once per second. If the difference in frequency crosses a certain threshold, the software either triggers a MIDI note-on event or randomizes all of the synthesizer parameters, or both."

The software synthesizer used is Sophia by Audiobulb.

"The pickup coil is going to the sound card input on my laptop. The software hosting the Sophia VST is called Analog Box 2.42. It can act as a modular synth/effect software in its own right a la PureData, Reaktor, etc. I put together a 'circuit' in ABox2 that measures the frequency of the signal coming into the sound card. That measurement is taken every second and compared with the previous measurement. If the difference exceeds a specific threshold value (ex. a difference of 30Hz or more), it triggers the synth, or changes its parameters, or does both.

Those pickup coils can be great for getting interesting sounds out of electronic devices. In fact, I got the idea to do this from another post on the Matrixsynth site where someone was feeding sounds from the coil into a small hardware modular setup. :)"