The art of rendering sounds from emergent behaviour: cellular automata granular synthesis

Abstract

The author introduces Chaosynth, an innovative sound synthesis system that employs a granular synthesis method coupled with cellular automata modelling. The system is capable of producing sounds that cannot be realised with physical acoustic instruments and yet the results sound pleasing and musical. After a short introduction to granular synthesis, we demonstrate how we employed cellular automata to control the parameters of the synthesiser and justify the reasons for doing so. Next, we propose an alternative taxonomy for Chaosynth's sounds. The paper is illustrated with auditory examples and the results are backed up by a prize winning piece of electroacoustic music composed using Chaosynth sounds.