A small Fortran synthesizer to explore sound synthesis, sound effects, electronic music, algorithmic music, etc. But ForSynth could also be used for scientific data sonification, for acoustic simulations or for teaching programming in a fun way.
Humbly follow the steps of Stockhausen, Kraftwerk and the Daft Punk.
- ForSynth is a semi-analog semi-digital studio: time is discretized (44100 samples/s) but the amplitude is coded as a Fortran real and digitized as a 16 bits signed integer only after the final mixing, when generating the output WAV file.
- You can use as many stereo tracks as you need. The track 0 is used for the final mix and some algorithms also use it as an auxilliary track. Do you know The Beatles used a 8 tracks tape recorder the first time in August 1968 to record Hey Jude? The second song was Dear Prudence.
- Basic music theory elements (scales, circle of fifths, chords...).
- Various signals and Karplus-Strong algorithms (guitar and drums).
- Envelopes generators: ADSR, fade in, fade out.
- Some audio effects: delay, fuzz, tremolo, reverse and autopan.
- Final mixing with the level and panoramic of each track.
- Various examples.
- You just need a modern Fortran compiler and a media player, whatever your OS.
- GPL-3.0-or-later license.
If you are more interested by composing than sound synthesis, you may also be interested by its twin project ForMIDI.
You can easily build the project using the Fortran Package Manager fpm (https://github.com/fortran-lang/fpm) at the root of the project directory:
$ fpm build
Or if you don't have fpm, you can use the build.sh script (the examples will be built inside the build/ directory).
The examples can be found in the example/ directory. For example, the chords_and_melody.f90 example can be run with the command:
$ fpm run --example chords_and_melodyBut you can also use the optimization flags of your compiler, for example with GFortran:
$ fpm run --example chords_and_melody --flag "-Ofast -static-libgfortran"A WAV file was generated in the root directory of the project:
$ file chords_and_melody.wav
chords_and_melody.wav: RIFF (little-endian) data, WAVE audio, Microsoft PCM, 16 bit, stereo 44100 Hz
$ hexdump -C chords_and_melody.wav
00000000 52 49 46 46 a4 ff 42 01 57 41 56 45 66 6d 74 20 |RIFF..B.WAVEfmt |
00000010 10 00 00 00 01 00 02 00 44 ac 00 00 10 b1 02 00 |........D.......|
00000020 04 00 10 00 64 61 74 61 80 ff 42 01 3d 0e 3d 0e |....data..B.=.=.|
00000030 56 03 56 03 d4 f5 d4 f5 9d 0e 9d 0e 91 f6 91 f6 |V.V.............|
...You can listen to your WAV using any media player, for example the SoX play command (or the ALSA command aplay):
$ play chords_and_melody.wav
chords_and_melody.wav:
File Size: 21.2M Bit Rate: 1.41M
Encoding: Signed PCM
Channels: 2 @ 16-bit
Samplerate: 44100Hz
Replaygain: off
Duration: 00:02:00.00
In:2.32% 00:00:02.79 [00:01:57.21] Out:123k [!=====|=====!] Hd:0.0 Clip:0You can also use Audacity or Sonic Visualiser to visualise your music, either as a waveform or a spectrogram.
- Post a message in the GitHub Issues tab to discuss the function you want to work on.
- Concerning coding conventions, follow the stdlib conventions: https://github.com/fortran-lang/stdlib/blob/master/STYLE_GUIDE.md
- When ready, make a Pull Request.
A WAV comprises a header with metadata then the soundtracks in PCM (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse-code_modulation), written in little endian. This program asserts your machine is little endian. If you are big endian, please use the -fconvert=big-endian flag with gfortran, or -convert big_endian with ifort. Or contribute to the code to allow an automatic detection of endianness.
- https://fortran-lang.discourse.group/t/writing-a-binary-file-in-little-endian/719/4
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endianness
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Interchange_File_Format
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAV
- http://www-mmsp.ece.mcgill.ca/Documents/AudioFormats/WAVE/WAVE.html
- https://sites.google.com/site/learning4synthesizer/home
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karplus%E2%80%93Strong_string_synthesis
- Jean-Claude Risset, "Computer music: why ?", 2003.
- Dave Benson, Music - A Mathematical Offering, 531 pages, 2008.
- David A. Jaffe and Julius O. Smith, “Extensions of the Karplus-Strong Plucked-String Algorithm.” Computer Music Journal 7, no. 2 (1983): 56. https://doi.org/10.2307/3680063.
- Kevin Karplus and Alex Strong, “Digital Synthesis of Plucked-String and Drum Timbres.” Computer Music Journal 7, no. 2 (1983): 43–55. https://doi.org/10.2307/3680062.
- Jarmo Lähdevaara, Science of Electric Guitars and Guitar Electronics. Helsinki, Finland: Books On Demand, 2012.
- Diana Deutsch, "The Paradox of Pitch Circularity"’. Acoustics Today 6, no. 3 (July 2010): 8–14. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.3488670.
- M.V. Mathews, "The Digital Computer as a Musical Instrument", Science 142, no. 3592 (1963): 553–57.
- "The First Computer Musician", by R. Luke DuBois, NYT, June 8, 2011.
- M.V. Mathews, F.R. Moore and J.-C. Risset, "Computers and Future Music", Science, New Series, Vol. 183, No. 4122 (Jan. 25, 1974), pp. 263-268.
- Vincent Magnin, "Format WAV : créez des ondes sonores en C", GNU/Linux Magazine n°190, février 2016.
- Vincent Magnin, "Format WAV : des sons de plus en plus complexes", GNU/Linux Magazine n°190, février 2016.
- Some sounds created with the C version of the program: http://magnin.plil.net/spip.php?article131
- Laurent de Wilde, Les fous du son - D'Edison à nos jours, Editions Grasset et Fasquelle, 560 pages, 2016, ISBN 9782246859277.
- Laurent Fichet, Les théories scientifiques de la musique aux XIXe et XXe siècles, Vrin, 1996, ISBN 978-2-7116-4284-7.
- Guillaume Kosmicki , Musiques électroniques - Des avant-gardes aux dance floors, Editions Le mot et le reste, 2nd edition, 2016, 416 p., ISBN 9782360541928.
- Bibliothèque Tangente n°11, Mathématiques et musique - des destinées parallèles, Paris : Éditions POLE, septembre 2022, ISBN 9782848842462.
- Blog Devenir Ingeson.