thOnk_0+2

The Manual
© 1996-1999 Arjen van der Schoot/Audio Ease :
http://www.audioease.com

Use SimpleText if you'd like to enjoy a readable layout.



What is thOnk_0+2?

thOnk_0+2 provides the sonic treasure-chest composers can turn to to harvest fresh, unanticipated material to solve their writers blocks with, without having to think at all.

It is an extremely simple to use Freeware Macintosh application, running native on both 68K and PowerPC machines that produces very diverse sounds based upon a sound file provided by the user, where you have NO CONTROL WHATSOEVER over the process.

Richard Boulanger once commented that he especially liked the narrative quality of thOnk_0+2's output. 
thOnk_0+2 tends to create fluent, logical, almost improvisatory sounding Ômini compositionsÕ.
Besides on the algorithms used in the bowels of thOnk_0+2, this ÔnarrativenessÕ depends, as do most aspects of the output sound, on the input file. 

Feed thOnk_0+2 a mono 16 bit AIFF file of any length or sample rate. You will then be asked to save the output file. You now leave thOnk_0+2 rendering. thOnk_0+2 runs smoothly in the background and most users have made it a good habit to launch it in the morning and leave it running for hours.
At the end of the day you bring thOnk_0+2 to the front, and quit the process. You now have a stereo AIFF file filled with extremely diverse sound derived from your input material.
Select the best stuff from this completely unpredictable output file for further use in your compositions.

If you the same input sound twice with the same score, you get two completely different files.

What's new ?

thOnk_0+2 Lets you choose between a number of scores instead of the original two: flowing and hectic. The original two are still in there though.
thOnk_0+2 adds a new interface, that was designed by =cw4t7abs (antiorp). Get your kicks at http://m9ndfukc.com.
Except from the 1 and 5 minute stretch scores, and  unless prematurely stopped, the outfiles will become 20 minutes long.
thOnk_0+2 runs up to 50% less slow than Thonk. 


System requirements

Macintosh PowerPC or a Macintosh 680x0 with a mathematical coprocessor (FPU), with 1 megabyte of free RAM and system 7.0 or higher.




Inside thOnk_0+2


The sound synthesis technique used is Granular Synthesis. 
Let's hear it for the nestors:

     All sound is an integration of grains, of elementary sonic particles, 
     of sonic quanta. All sound, even continuous musical variation, 
     is conceived as an assemblage of a large number of elementary sounds 
     adequately disposed in time. (Yannis Xenakis)


     Granular synthesis of sounds involves generating thousands of very short sonic 
     grains to form larger acoustic events. Granular synthesis is a fruitful technique 
     for the exploration of a different class of computer-generated sound spectra 
     than those produced by additive, subtractive, or modulation techniques.  (Curtis Roads)


     Granular synthesis is a sound synthesis model based on the assumption 
     that sound can be considered as a sequence, possibly with overlaps, 
     of elementary acoustic elements called grains. 
     Granular synthesis constructs complex and dynamic acoustic events 
     starting from a large quantity of grains . (Giovanni de Poli)


     Luck is not the hand of God.
     Luck is the way the wind swirls, 
     and the dust settles, eons after God has passed by.  (Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan)


thOnk_0+2 manipulates the following parameters of a rather inefficient granular synthesis model: 

In file time - the place where a grain comes from in the input file
Granular Frequency - the amount of written graines per second at a given out file time
attack and decay time - the portion of the grain that is faded in and out.
Grain length - the length of the grain
Transposition - a statistical four voice transposer of grains
balance - left to right location of the grain
and separately controlled band limited randomisers for all these parameters.

For every parameter Thonk drops a certain amount of randomish values at randomish times in a score. During execution, there is a constant interpolation between these values. The parameters fight for the attention of the listener, while one ear catcher fades to the background another takes over.

Granular frequency can reach values up to 6000 grains per second, while the grain length can become 1/10 of a second, resulting in a maximum vertical density of 600 layers of sound.

thOnk_0+2 was written in C, with some early help of Peter Bakker.



Operation


1. Create your Input file.

First you have to create your input sound. It has to be a 16 bit mono AIFF file, of any sample rate.
If you have never used Thonk before, it is a good idea to keep this file fairly short ( 5 to 15 sec),  with a lot happening inside. This way you can learn best how input affects output in Thonk.


2. Launch Thonk


3. Select your score

The only actual control (besides the complete input file of course) is the score selctor popup.  When a score is selected, some info about it appears in the textbox below it.

Although much care has been taken to take every bit of control out of the users hands, I must admit here that there are actually a few more things you can do to influence the result. 

Hint 1: The less transitions there are in the input file, the less there will be in the output. Mind that the length of the file does not matter in this respect, merely the amount of transitions in total.
Hint 2 : The output file will, very roughly, follow the frequency content of the input.



4. Hit ÔThonkÕ

A standard file selector box appears, you now select your input file (16 bit mono AIFF file).
Then a standard save dialog appears. Here you have to save your output file.
When you have hit Save,  it is possible that you see a ÔOne moment please...Õ sign. DonÕt panic, this moment can take up to about a minute on slower macs. Then the thOnk_0+2 Console appears, keeping you updated during the process.

For smoother background performance (thOnk_0+2 is designed to run in the background of your regular work) more calls to the update window are done when thOnk_0+2 is in the background, so it looks like thOnk_0+2 runs faster in the background than in the foreground. Of course this is not actually true. 



5. Quit

When you think thOnk_0+2 has rendered enough output, hit Quit.
You will be asked to confirm this.  thOnk_0+2 closes the output file and quits. You can now play the 16 bit  stereo AIFF file thOnk_0+2 has created. 
Except when you select the 1 and 5 minute stretch scores, and  unless prematurely stopped, thOnk_0+2 will quit when the outfile becomes 20 minutes long.


Notes on speed

thOnk_0+2 runs faster with a disk cache of 512 K or so (in the memory control panel) . 
On PowerPCÕs thOnk_0+2 can run well over ten times less slow as on 68K machines. 
Always disable the Ôcalculate folder sizesÕ option in the ÔviewsÕ control panel.
thOnk_0+2 runs faster in the foreground than in the background.
Speed doubler on PowerPC also speeds up thOnk_0+2's performance.
Outpufile generation speed depends on the density of the texture being calculated, hence it varies enormously throughout the process.







Q & A

Q: What if I want to listen to the output file without quitting thOnk_0+2?

A: For this, you need the Freeware utility ÔFix 16bit AIFFÕ by Matthew Xavier Mora. This application sits next to thOnk_0+2 , or you can download it from:
ftp://ftp.best.com/pub/bakalite/daw-mac/
You can probably also contact Mr Mora directly: mxmora@unix.sri.com

This is what you do:
¥ Go to the finder and select the output file.
¥ choose duplicate from the file menu.
¥ Launch Fix 16bit AIFF, hit Fix File and select the copy of the output file.
The AIFF header information is now supplied to the output file just as if Thonk did it itself by quitting. You can now playback the copy without quitting Thonk.


Q: If The Mac crashes or looses power while thOnk_0+2 is busy, do I loose the 	output file?

A:Nope, again use ÔFix 16bit AIFFÕ to fix the output file. (see the above Q)
After restart do this:
¥ Launch Fix 16bit AIFF, hit Fix File and select the output file.
The AIFF header information is now supplied to the output file just as if Thonk did it itself by quitting normally. You can now playback the output file.


Q: Stuff clips. What can I do ?

A:Attenuate your input file.  
With the amount of data that goes to disk (up to 600 layers) it is too time consuming to perform clip checking. 
Therefore if thOnk_0+2 goes over 0dB Thonk wraps. Compared to which clipping is a picnic.

Q: What is a "Thonk"
A: ...



Contact and disclaimer

Contact me

I would appreciate to hear your results or find out about your experiences.
This is where you can find me:

Audio Ease
Arjen van der Schoot
Esdoornstraat 14
3551 AJ Utrecht
Netherlands
E-mail: thonk@audioease.com
www.audioease.com
Fax: ++31-30-2438500


Legal Stuff

Finder and Macintosh are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
Thonk is supplied as is.  Arjen van der Schoot hereby disclaims all warranties relating to this software, whether express or implied, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Arjen van der Schoot will not be liable for any special, incidental, consequential, indirect or similar damages due to loss of data or any other reason, even if Arjen van der Schoot has been advised of the possibility of such damages.The person using the software bears all risk as to the quality and performance of the software.