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Figure 1. A collection of drones tracing the famous chinese symbol of yin & yang: the Taijitu
Figure 2. DIN opens with the instrument called the keyboard-keyboard. Keys of the computer keyboard are assigned to notes of the scale. Press a key. Hear a note. Easy!
Figure 3. When you press a key, you hear a note and see a randomly colored box on the screen. As the note decays, the box fades. Press many keys at the same time to hear many notes at the same time: plain_notes.mp3
Figure 4. The violet dotted line marks the mouse position when you press a key. If you move your mouse to the left of this dotted line, the pitch of the note lowers and if you move to the right of the dotted line the pitch of the note rises. This is pitch bending and you can set the amount per pixel on the UI. Btw, if you put your mouse back on the dotted line, you will hear the original note. If you play many notes at the same time and move your mouse all the notes are bent (except when Show nearby notes is ON, see Figure 5.)
bent_notes.mp3
Figure 5. You can use your mouse to accurately bend your notes into other nearby notes (or far away notes if you set a long decay time!). Sound like blues guitar or even the Rudra Veena, an ancient Indian plucked string instrument: bent_to_nearby_notes.mp3
Figure 6. The Microtonal Keyboard. Move your mouse inside the playing area to play the tone under your mouse cursor. Move left or right to change pitch. Move up or down to change volume. You can think of DIN as a Theremin. But unlike a Theremin, you can easily and accurately intone a note. You can easily slide between notes (glissando) or shake your mouse at a note (vibrato & tremolo). The mouse cursor is marked with a cross on this image. DIN is sounding a tone with pitch 281.117 Hz. This is not a known note. It is a tone between two notes called a Microtone. You can change the space between two notes and change the number of microtones between them. Oscilloscope is visible too. Cyan is Left channel & yellow is the Right channel.
Figure 7. The default waveform for the lead voice on the microtonal-keyboard, the notes of the keyboard-keyboard and Mondrian. This waveform is made of Bezier curves. Change the shape of this waveform to change the timbre of the sound. The Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) shows the strength and the number of harmonics in this waveform.
Figure 8. DIN Is Noise solves the Bezier curve waveform in real-time to make samples to send to the loudspeakers. The samples above were sent when intoning a tone at 441 Hz. Very close to the concert A (440 Hz).
Figure 9. A Bezier waveform can accurately model a sine waveform. The FFT shows that only the 1st harmonic is present! It thinks its a sine waveform!
Figure 10.
Figure 11.
Figure 12.
Figures 10, 11, 12: Bezier curves can accurately model classical waveforms like Pulse (or Square), Triangle & Saw. Simply fold the tangents of Bezier curves!
Figure 13.
Figure 14.
Figure 15.
Figures 13, 14, 15: Bezier curves are very powerful when you start with a classical waveform and continue sculpting!
Figure 16.
Figure 17.
Figures 16, 17: Or you can dial the harmonics you want in your Bezier curve waveform on the Sine Mixer and continue sculpting! The magenta curve is the output of the Sine Mixer and the white Bezier curve waveform traces that output until your edits!
Figure 18. Use the gater to make beats in DIN Is Noise. The Bezier curve pattern envelopes the volume of the lead voice on the microtonal-keyboard. You can change the Gater BPM and cursor movement style using Menu > Parameters.
Figure 19. Bezier Frequency (Cyan) and Amplitude (Magenta) modulator waveforms applied to the Bezier carrier waveform [ie] the lead voice on the Microtonal Keyboard. When the curve is flat, there is no modulation. When the curve goes up, voice modulates up. When the curve goes down, voice modulates down. Unlike continous modulation with classical waveforms, modulate only parts of the carrier waveform! Edit the modulation depth & rate with Menu > Parameters
Figure 20. While feedback and volume are mere parameters on other sound synthesizers, in DIN Is Noise, they are envelopes you can shape to influence how different parts of the delay buffer are mixed with live sound. Left & Right channels have their own feedback (Cyan, Yellow) & volume (Red, Green) envelopes. Edit the delay duration in Settings.
Figure 21. While octave shift is a quickie from tone to octave in other synthesizers, in DIN Is Noise, you travel on a curvy rail thru the entire tonal space between tone and octave over BPM! You can actually modulate to an arbitrary pitch. And while this is taking place, you can play the microtonal keyboard or the keyboard-keyboard.
Figure 22. Use Morse code to make waveforms & envelopes! The dot is a short pulse & dash is a long pulse. Represented here with red and green Bezier curves (what else!). Intra & inter letter & word spacing patterns are also seen.
Figure 23. Morse code for SOS applied to the gater pattern causing the lead voice to sound SOS on the microtonal keyboard!
Figure 24. Drop as many drones as you want on any microtone on the microtonal keyboard. Height of a drone determines its volume. Increase the number of octaves in Settings to drop drones thru out the audible range! Change the drone waveform to adjust the timbre of all drones in real-time!
Figure 25. Visual drone modulation. Automagically move drones left and right to modulate their pitch and up and down to modulate their volume. Adjust the depth & rate with Menu > Parameters. Adjust the shape of this automagical movement on the Drone Modulation editor. And also adjust visual effects like size of drone handles, length of trails and drone anchors.
Figure 26. Visual drone modulation of a drone. Pitch and volume modulation both driven by Bezier curve Sine waveforms. Drone trail leaves a Lissajous curve behind!
Figure 27. Compressor. X is the input audio sample. Y is the output audio sample. The compressor's Bezier curve envelope lets you control how DIN massages audio samples to keep them between -1 and +1. In this pattern, the audio samples are left alone until they hit 0.7 or -0.7 when they get crushed to stay between -1 to +1.
Figure 28. Attack curve editor to edit the attack of notes on the keyboard keyboard. This attack curve includes sustain too which begins at the section marked by the blue triangle / dotted line and continues to the end. So, the note first attacks then enters the sustain section where it decays rapidly and then attacks back and then enters the sustain... This is why DIN does not have ADSR. It has ASDA instead!
Figure 29. Decay curve editor to edit the decay of notes on the keyboard-keyboard. When you release the key that launched the note, it decays rapidly but then attacks back rapidly, holds, decays rapidly to half power, holds and finally gives up the ghost. This is why DIN does not have ADSR. It has DADSAD instead :)

Shapeforms
DIN Is Noise 8 introduces shapeforms to sound synthesis. A shapeform is any continuous and closed 2d shape that DIN can turn into a waveform. You can make shapeforms using Bezier curves on DIN's waveform editors.

Plugins

DIN Is Noise has 12 geometry to sound plugins:

Regular Polygon Waveforms

You can use the plugin Circler to create regular polygons eg., Triangle, Square, Pentagon, Hexagon ... N-gons ... Circle and turn them into Bezier curve waveforms. To turn a regular polygon into a waveform, DIN moves a point around its perimeter and outputs its height as a sample. For example, you get a sine waveform when you move a point around a Circle.
Figure 30. Triangle turned into a Bezier curve waveform (tangents are folded and hence unseen :) Listen to triangle.wav
Figure 31. Square turned into a Bezier curve waveform. Listen to square.wav
Figure 32. Pentagon turned into a Bezier curve waveform. Listen to pentagon.wav
Figure 33. Hexagon turned into a Bezier curve waveform. Listen to hexagon.wav
Figure 34. Circle (approximated with 64 points!) turned into a Bezier curve waveform. The resultant waveform is very close to a sine waveform and the FFT detects only the 1st harmonic! It thinks its a sine waveform! Listen to circle.wav

Rose Curve Waveforms

You can use the plugin Rose Milker to turn Rose Curves into waveforms. Different parameters make different Rose curves, different kinds of waveforms and give different colors to the sound!
Figure 35. Listen to rose_21.wav
Figure 36. Listen to rose_31.wav
Figure 37. Listen to rose_32.wav
Figure 38. Listen to rose_41.wav
Figure 39. Listen to rose_43.wav
Figure 40. Listen to rose_49.wav
Figure 41. Listen to rose_51.wav
Figure 42. Listen to rose_53.wav
Figure 43. Listen to rose_59.wav
Figure 44. Listen to rose_65.wav
Figure 45. Listen to rose_73.wav

Star Polygon Waveforms

You can use the plugin Starrer to make a Star Polygon out of an existing Shapeform and the result is another shapeform.

Figure 46. Listen to pentagram.wav
Figure 47. Listen to star_72.wav
Figure 48. Listen to star_73.wav
Figure 49. Listen to star_83.wav
Figure 50. Listen to star_92.wav
Figure 51. Listen to star_94.wav
Figure 52. Listen to star_103.wav

Bat Symbol Waveform:

A waveform is a vertical trace of a point moving around a circle. The bat symbol can be turned into a waveform because it can be squashed and stretched into a circle (ie the bat symbol is homeomorphic to a circle). The bat symbol is a Shapeform

Figure 53. Listen to batsymbol.wav

Spiral Waveforms
Using the plugin Spiraler you can turn an Archimedes Spiral into a waveform. Play with the number of points and turns for interesting effects!
Figure 54. 1 turn, 68 points Listen to spiral1.wav
Figure 55. 2 turns, 128 points Listen to spiral2.wav
Figure 56. 3 turns, 128 points Listen to spiral3.wav
Figure 57. 24 turns, 1024 points. Playing G at 3.062 Hz and 6.124 Hz ie below human audible range! we rely on the higher harmonics to make the audible sound! 14th harmonic is strong! Listen to spiral24.wav, Listen to spiral24_1.wav
Figure 58. 10 turns, 48 points only! 6th harmonic is strong! Listen to spiral10t_48pt.wav
Figure 59. 8 turns, 64 points only! 5th harmonic is strong! Listen to spiral8t_64pt.wav

Fractal Waveforms!

Using the plugin Fractaliser, you can create a fractal waveform by repeatedly substituting segments of a Bezier curve shapeform with a seed curve.

Figure 60. Segments of a pentagram replaced with a seed segment that generates the koch curve fractal. Listen to pentagram_koch.wav
Figure 61. Segments of a pentagon replaced with 3 different seed curves (called mount, splitter and namaste) one after another to produce this fractal Bezier curve waveform. Listen to pentagon_mount_splitter_namaste.wav
Figure 62. The iconic fractal, Koch Snowflake turned into a waveform. Made by substituting the sides of an initial Triangle made using the Circler plugin 4 times with a Koch curve pattern as seen on the Fractaliser plugin. Listen to snowflake.wav In this sound sample, the drones & notes from the keyboard both use the Koch Snowflake waveform.

2D non-linear space warping

Using the XY Warper plugin, you can non-linearly warp the 2D space a waveform inhabits thus warping its shape and how it sounds!

Figure 63. An unwarped shapeform, made by replacing a many sided regular polygon made with the Circler plugin once by a custom koch curve pattern using the Fractaliser plugin, then turned into a waveform. Listen to sun_normal.wav
Figure 64. Specify the non-linear space warp by editing 2 Bezier curves. The red curve maps old X to new X and the green curve maps old Y to new Y
Figure 65. The unwarped shapeform now warped non-linearly using the XY Warper plugin. Listen to sun_warped.wav

Lissajous Curve

Using the plugin Lissajous, you can turn Lissajous curves into shapeforms

Figure 66. A Lissajous curve turned into a shapeform. Listen to lissajous.wav
Figure 67. The Lissajous curve in Figure 66 used as input to the plugin Starrer which turns it into a Star polygon.
Figure 68. Result in Figure 67 used as input to the the plugin XY Warper that non-linearly warps the 2D space to produce this waveform which sounds like this.

Orbiting Drones

Since DIN Is Noise 8, you can orbit a bunch of drones - the attractees - around another drone - the attractor. You can change their speed and acceleration. Move the attractor and the attractees home in.

Figure 69. A bunch of drones orbit the drone in the centre. Drone trails are on. About 60 drones a minute are launched from orbiting drones. The Green arrows indiciate the direction of the drones, the launched drones are accelerated by youser defined gravity. When they reach the bottom of the microtonal-keyboard they disappear.
Figure 70. A bunch of drones orbit the drone in the centre. The central drone is moving horizontally and vertically so its pitch and volume are changing ie modulating. The drones that orbit the central drone continuously adjust their acceleration (red arrows) so they can continue orbiting.
Figure 71. Same setup as in Figure 70 but now we modulate the position of the orbiting drones in addition to them orbiting the central drone. Interesting shapes and sound result. Listen to orb+mod.wav

Drone launchers & gravity driven drones

Since DIN Is Noise 8.5, you can automatically launch drones from other drones along any direction. These drones are accelerated along gravity you can edit live. When they reach the bottom of the microtonal-keyboard they disappear.

Figure 72. A stack of drone launchers launch drones that move under gravity.
Figure 73. Like Figure 72 but with bigger drone handles, velocity vectors turned off and trails turned on. The drone launchers are marked with a X

Figure 74, 75. Hi-speed, Hi-volume, Omni-directional drone launches with live changes to gravity and launch directions yeild exciting drone flying displays!

Drone Meshes

From DIN Is Noise 9, you can create a mesh of drones. A 2x2 mesh has 2 rows and 2 columns with 4 drones situated at its points, a 7x3 mesh has 7 rows and 3 columns with 21 drones and so on. The mesh doesnt influence the sound, it only aids in the visualisation of drone movements.

Figure 76. Different kinds of drone meshes. Bunches of drones are orbiting some drones of the mesh (marked with a +). Drones are also launched from one of the orbiting bunches.
Figure 77. An 8x8 mesh with extra large drone handles. Colors are random.Listen to 8x8.wav

Countries > Waveform

A map of any country (we consider just the mainland if the country is an archipelago) is a polygon we can transform into a shapeform using the plugin Countries since DIN Is Noise 11.
Figure 78. We take a high resolution vector map of Chile, reduce its resolution and apply two different seed patterns using the Fractaliser plugin to make a shapeform, transform into a waveform and assign them to balls of Mondrian to make sounds. Listen to chile.wav
Figure 79. Srilanka waveformed.
Figure 80. Apply a spiky Bezier curve based seed pattern on Srilanka.
Figure 81. Then warp the XY space Srilanka is defined in with the XY Warper plugin, assign them to balls of Mondrian to make sounds. Listen to srilanka.wav
Figure 82. A low-res map of Australia converted into a Star Polygon using the Starrer plugin thus waveformed. 16th harmonic dominates.
Figure 83. DIN Is Noise 12 introduces a Scale parameter on the Fractaliser plugin that scales the seed pattern along Y before applying to the input shape. Here Scale = 1
Figure 84. Here Scale = 3
Figure 85. We take the shapeform from Figure 84 and warp it with the XY warper plugin to produce this insecty shapeform
Figure 86. From DIN Is Noise 12, you can turn the summed harmonics of a Sine waveform into a shapeform. The Y of this shapeform is equal to the summed samples of the Sine harmonics while the X equals the summed Cosine samples of the harmonics. When only the 1st harmonic is involved, we get a Circle. You may recall that a point going around a Circle outputs a Sine wave.
Figure 87. Shapeform with 1st & 2nd harmonics.
Figure 88. Shapeform with 1, 2 & 3rd harmonics.
Figure 89. Shapeform with 1, 2, 3 & 4th harmonics.
Figure 90. Shapeform with just 5th and 6th harmonics.
Figure 91. Shapeform with 5th and 8th harmonics only.
Figure 92. Shapeform with 5, 9, 11, 13 & 15th harmonics.
Figure 93. Shapeform with 5, 9, 11, 13, 15 and 17th harmonics.
You may notice that the FFT agrees with Figure 86 but not from Figure 87-93. I expected it would agree but it doesnt. If you know why, please e-mail me. Looks and sounds good tho!

Morphing

Figure 94. From DIN Is Noise 13, you can morph a shapeform into another shapeform using the plugin Morpher. Here one shapeform made with Circler and Fractaliser plugin morphs into another shapeform also made with Circler and Fractaliser.
Figure 95. Same as Figure 94 with points display turned on.
Figure 96. A 1-turn Spiral shapeform morphing into an 8-turn Spiral shapeform.
Figure 97. Australia morphing into China. Both are shapeforms made with the Countries plugin.
Figure 98. Morpher can also morph one classical waveform (not so classical as its made of Bezier curves :) into another!
Figure 99. Australia morphing into a 30-turn spiral shapeform. About 50-50.
Figure 100. Same setup as Figure 99, but more towards Australia than the spiral.

Numbers to Waveforms, Shapeforms, Envelopes and Modulation patterns!

A computer only knows 1 and 0. This 1 or 0 is a bit of information. Using the Number plugin introduced in DIN Is Noise 14, you can transform the unique bit pattern of alpha-numeric characters, literally billions and billions of numbers and 16.7 million colours into unique waveforms, shapeforms, envelopes and modulation patterns!
Figure 101. Bit pattern of famous number Pi transformed into a shapeform.
Figure 102. Bit pattern of 24-bit digital color 255 255 39 transformed into a shapeform.
Figure 103. Bit pattern of U transformed into a traditional waveform. 1 maps to 1 while 0 maps to -1.
Figure 104. Bit pattern of U transformed into an envelope and applied to the lead voice on the Microtonal-Keyboard. 1 maps to 1 while 0 maps to 0.1.

Inserting drones into orbit.

From DIN 18, drones launched from a launcher can orbit other drones.
Figure 105. Drones launched from one drone launcher orbit the other drone launcher. Green arrows indicate centrifugal velocity of the drones.
Figure 106. Modulating drone launcher at the bottom supplys drones that orbit 2 drones.
Figure 107. Modulating drone launcher at the bottom supplys drones that orbit a modulating drone. Red arrows indicate the centripetal acceleration of the orbiting drones.
Figure 108. Drones launched by the launcher orbit the same launcher. Both centrifugal velocity (Green arrows) and centripetal acceleration (Red arrows) are seen.

Mondrian

Mondrian is an instrument in DIN Is Noise inspired by the works of Dutch artist Piet Mondrian. A box on the screen goes from tone to octave along both its width and height. You can split this box vertically or horizontally to create two new boxes. You can keep on going and make a Mondrian like painting. You can also bounce a ball inside one of these boxes and when it hits a wall or a ceiling sounds a note [or a microtone depending on where it hit]. You can bounce more balls, in different boxes, speed them up or slow them down, move them from one box to another, change their course as they travel, change the attack, decay times and octaves of the notes triggered by each ball, break walls or ceilings to make slits or heal these slits as they pass thru them, the slits can open and close, the balls can also turn randomly, speed up or slow down randomly, teleport and clone. Boxes can split themselves on their own, at notes of the scale or anywhere. They can trap bouncing balls too!

Figure 109. A ball bouncing in a box. It triggeres C, G and Ab and C notes. Circles mark the triggered notes, their size tracks their rise and fall.
Figure 110. A bouncing ball changes course as it travels. Sounds C, C, Ab and G and C notes. If it didnt change course as it traveled, it would still sound these notes but at a different tempo.
Figure 111. Balls bouncing in boxes. Each ball can move at different speeds and can trigger notes with different attack and decay times at different octaves
Figure 112. Short intervals and fast moving balls can trigger a lot of notes :) Red circles indicate a sound limit warning, but with the Compressor turned on, you can keep on going.
Figure 113. Turn off the balls and boxes [press F2 from Mondrian or Menu > File > Turn Off UI] to just see the triggered notes.
Figure 114. A note grid: a grid of boxes with boundaries on notes of the C minor scale. Change the scale's notes in the Settings screen.
Figure 115. A 16x16 grid: the boundaries of the boxes fall on microtones (some may fall on notes)
Figure 116. Mondrian has 3 kinds of balls. Wreckers break walls and ceilings to make slits, Healers close slits they pass thru and Bouncers simply bounce off walls and ceilings and pass thru slits. Here a Wrecker (Red), a Healer (Blue) and a Bouncer (Gray) bounce around the 16x16 grid of boxes from Figure 115 (boxes drawn unfilled for better view). A ball combination like this produces emergent and unpredictable sound/music.
Figure 117. A Wrecker (drawn Green because its selected) with its 3 clones (all Red) breaking walls and ceilings sounding notes/microtones. They also turn, accelerate and brake at random looking like crawling ants
Figure 118. We convert the selected Wrecker from Figure 117 into a Healer and then clone it twice. We also let all the balls bounce in a box whose boundaries fall on the notes of C minor

Custom sin and cos functions

From DIN Is Noise 24, you can edit the sin and cos functions used in geometry to shapeform plugins like Circler, Rose Milker and Spiraler to produce interesting warping effects on the shapeforms output by these plugins.
Figure 119. Circle made with standard sin and cos functions turned into a shapeform.
Figure 120. 'Circle' made with a custom sin function but standard cos function turned into a shapeform
Figure 121. The sin function made with Bezier curves used to generate 'Circle' in Figure 120.
Figure 121. 'Circle' made with standard sin but custom cos function turned into a shapeform.
Figure 122. The cos function made with Bezier curves used to generate 'Circle' in Figure 121.
Figure 123. 'Circle' made with custom sin and custom cos functions seen above and turned into a shapeform
Even on the plugin Sine Mixer that mixes pure sine harmonics and turns them into Bezier curve based waveforms & shapeforms, you can replace the standard sin function used to generate the pure harmonics with a Bezier curve based sin function :)
Figure 124. 1st & 4th harmonic on Sine Mixer turned to Bezier curve waveform. FFT matches.
Figure 125. 1st & 4th 'harmonics' on Sine Mixer generated by a custom sin function. Look at the FFT :)
The custom sin function made with Bezier curves that makes the 'harmonics' in Figure 125
Figure 126. Spiral shapeform with 3 turns. Radius increases linearly with angle, but its customisable :)
Figure 127. Spiral shapeform with 3 turns and non-linearly increasing radius. Radius rises fast, then slows.
Figure 128. Spiral shapeform with 12 turns, non-linearly increasing radius. Radius rises slow, then fast.
Figure 129. Spiral shapeform with 24 turns, 'reversed' non-linearly changing radius. Radius drops fast, then slows
Figure 130. Spiral shapeform with standard sin but custom cos function, non-linearly increasing radius. Radius rises slow, then fast
Figure 131. Same as Figure 130 but with custom sin.
Figure 132. sin and cos functions and radius are all customised.

WIP & Unclassified



NB: The screenshots above were made over the years with different versions of DIN Is Noise. While all presented features are available, their look and feel maybe different.

DIN Is Noise is Copyright (c) 2006-2023 Jagannathan Sampath.
DIN Is Noise for GNU+Linux, FreeBSD and NetBSD is Free Software.
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See also: https://dinisnoise.org/pics/