In this assignment, you are going to use MSP to make your own audio instrument. You can tell MSP objects because their names end in a tilde (~). If you’d like, you can also include some MIDI elements in your patch.

User Interface

As with the first assignment, you are welcome to use special-purpose musical UI objects (like kslider and/or nslider), or general-purpose UI objects like dial and slider. The user will probably play your instrument with the mouse or keyboard or some combination of the two. If the user interaction is limited to clicking a toggle, then your instrument probably won’t be very fun to play, so be sure to give users something to adjust, manipulate or twiddle with. You might also want to put some of the elements of your patch into presentation mode, to make your instrument easier to play.

Audio Output

To create audio output, you will probably want to use an ezdac~ object. It is usually a good idea to include a slider so the user has some control over the output volume, too. You are welcome to use objects like scope~ to visualize the waveforms being generated.

Randomness

As with the first assignment, you will want to explore ways to introduce limited randomness to frequency, amplitude, timing, wave shape, or other parameters.

Audio Goodness

Your patch doesn’t have to be musically sophisticated, as long as it sounds interesting to you.

Please e-mail me if you have any questions or concerns.