An empirical example demonstrating the use of harmonics to generate music from noise

support-for-harmonic-theory.sc

/**
How to Emperically measure the Quality of Music,
or Applying Harmonics to Non-Musical Source to Produce a Musical Signal

When people ask for empirical evidence that Harmonic Theory works,
we must first agree on a method to measure the "musicality" of a signal.



Generally we can agree that a pure White Noise signal (even distribution of frequencies across the given range in Hertz) is not musical. In the domain of sound, it is the antithesis of music because there is no discrete rhythmic structure and no discrete harmonic structure (example 1)

The same may be said for any type of constant noise, with some argument being made for harmonic favoritism for noises and how their frequencies distributed.

To make any noise signal musical:

Choose one arbitrary root value in hz
Then select some harmonics at random
And apply a bandstop filter to the noise at those selections.
You will get a new signal that begins to have musical quality.
(example 2)

For more still musical results using only harmonics:
Filter the selected harmonics to only values which are prime numbers less than 8.
(example 3)


*/

(
var root = 500;
SynthDef(\noise, { Out.ar(0, WhiteNoise.ar * Env.perc.ar!2) }).add;
SynthDef(\monic_noise, {|root, monic| Out.ar(0, BPF.ar(WhiteNoise.ar, root * monic, rq: 1/4, mul: 4) * Env.perc.ar!2) }).add;

TempoClock.tempo = 4;


// Example 1
// Pbind(\instrument, \noise, \dur, 1).play;


// Example 2
// Pbind(\instrument, \monic_noise, \dur, 1, \root, root, \monic, Prand((1..16), inf)).play;

// Example 3
// Pbind(\instrument, \monic_noise, \dur, 1, \root, root, \monic, Prand([2,3,5,7], inf)).play;

)