The goal of the assignment was the creation of foley sounds by means of granular synthesis in the SuperCollider environment. The synthesis was implemented along with an application provided with a GUI, in order to allow the user to partially customize the sounds via the synthesis parameters.
The synthesis process started with the selection of the environment to which the synthesized sounds would belong. The choice fell on an ordinary life soundscape: the one of a kitchen.
Even though granular synthesis is, to an extent, affected by the micro-sampled track, the choice of said track was solely based on the audio context and fell on "Le Festin" by Camille and Michael Giacchino, a song from the soundtrack of the hugely popular animated movie "Ratatouille" (2007), which is set in a kitchen for the most part.
The GUI that has been designed for the assignment is shown in the figure. The GUI is divided in four vertical sections, one for each of the synthesized sounds, and designed to resemble a kitchen top - an oven, specifically. The "Play" starts the selected sound playback, while the sliders allow the user to control the volume and the panning of the played sound. The square corresponding to the oven door is the plot of the stereo sound (left and right channel) either in the time domain or in the frequency domain. The yellow button is deputed to switch the domain of representation of the sound. The two rows of knobs control the sound parameters that are customizable by the user: the first row controls the granular synthesis parameters, while the second contains the reverb controls.
Nicolò Chillè, Rocco Scarano, Enrico Dalla Mora, Federico Caroppo