Pd for Airports (Creating Ambient Music in Pure Data) | Simon Hutchinson

Create a patch for generative ambient music in Pure Data (Pd) in the style of Track 2 from Brian Eno's "Music for Airports."
Brian Eno coined the term "ambient music" to describe music that is "intended to induce calm and a space to think," and "as ignorable as it is interesting." We can make a simple patch in Pd that recreates one of Eno's techniques, creating a system that endlessly generates ambient music for us with the notes that we choose.
Give it a try and make your own interesting and ignorable music.
#puredata #ambient #generativemusic
0:00 Opening demo
1:13 Introduction, What is "Ambient Music?"
3:14 Making one synth tape loop
8:46 Prepping for duplication
10:35 Making multiple loops
14:47 Revisiting the demo patch, Ideas for expansion
Tero Parviainen's introduction on "How Generative Music Works": teropa.info/loop/#/title
More Pure Data Tutorials : • Pure Data Tutorials | ...
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I’m a composer, sound-designer, and new media artist trying to bring a global perspective to music technology. This channel contains performances, experiments, and instructional videos for artists and audiences searching for new ideas and avenues of musical expression.

[@UnterDerSonneOhUnterDerSonne]

Cool, thanks! You might (if you haven't already) mention though, that the phasor~ object ramps from 0 to 1 and as such introduces a DC offset, if directly sent to the output. You could simply center it by offsetting via [-~ 0.5], I believe, or apply a highpass filter at a low frequency, e.g. 5 Hz, before the dac~. Just discard this, if you did mention it in your video.

[@SimonHutchinson]

Good point!

[@rhialto39]

I've literally just started getting into PD and your videos are extremely clear and well-paced. Thank you and looking forward to many more.

[@SimonHutchinson]

Thanks. Glad you like them! Right now I'm just making the Pd videos when I have ideas (no overarching plan). There's tons more fun stuff to do, though. I'll have to start thinking about it!

[@Mungo13]

Just wanted to say thanks so much for your tutorials. It's helping me a ton!

[@FactsForKidsYT]

Brian Eno! Nice. This is excellent. Love the historical background.

[@SimonHutchinson]

Thank you kindly!

[@dvbtune]

This is great! thank you!

[@AlexSimesky]

Great tutorial! My teacher gave me a tip a while ago: in order to optimize the patch, it's a good idea not to connect the number boxes between objects, instead connect them only to the output of the object that you want to monitor (and make a direct connection between the objects themselves). That way it's much easier to delete the number boxes if unnecessary or in the way. I'm saying this as I had an issue with the LFO because of the number box connected to the snapshot~, it made the whole patch totally unresponsive (my computer is not especially slow, but maybe on Windows it's just laggier). Thank you anyway, subscribed!

[@SimonHutchinson]

Good point. I’m almost always teaching or working with students, so, in my habits, monitoring is usually more important to me than optimization. Great tip!

[@AlexSimesky]

@@SimonHutchinson My pleasure and thanks again!

[@timandrew4515]

really nicely explained. I'm new this year to PD. Thank you for taking the time to make and share this example. fantastic

[@SimonHutchinson]

Glad it was helpful! Pure Data is great, not just because it's free and open-source, but also because, once you've started it's really straightforward to keep building on your knowledge incrementally.

[@hundovir]

Very very helpful for a beginner like me. Thanks very much.

[@SimonHutchinson]

Glad to hear it! Thanks for watching.

[@loganp82]

dude I have no idea what Im doing but since you listed your keyboard shortcuts as you did them I was able to follow along and build the patch. Great teacher. Thank you.

[@SimonHutchinson]

Glad I could help!

[@0kV94]

Awesome!

[@SimonHutchinson]

Thanks!

[@MattJoyce01]

Super interesting. Coming from knowledge of VCV Rack, I was not aware of PD, but can understand what you're doing quite clearly.

[@SimonHutchinson]

Great to hear! I think a transition from the electronics-modeling approach of VCV Rack to a more digital programming approach of Pure Data would probably be a pretty easy transition. You should check it out!

[@shaofu424]

very cool video good work be safe, be happy, work hard peace \m/

[@geohashi]

Super complicated patch but I feel like I learned a lot! Thanks!

[@SimonHutchinson]

Glad to hear it! Hopefully it's not too complicated. The trick is to build something simple, then just duplicate it until it becomes something complicated!

[@WARDISWARD]

no it's not complicated ,it's prett damn easy You want complicated , check out acreil on you tube

[@JDTrottier]

Thank you very much for this tutorial. I am thankful for your patient and detailed descriptions. Although I have minimal PD experience, I was able to follow along easily. I love Eno's Music for Airports (I have a vinyl copy) and now I am enjoying getting to know it better. I followed along to make the patch, which works very well. The only problem is a "beating" noise that occurs pretty regularly. I assume it has something to do with the comment below from UDSOUDS, so I have applied offsets and a highpass filter, which helped somewhat, but at high volumes the beating is still noticeable. Any thoughts?

[@SimonHutchinson]

Hmmm. Not sure what you mean by "beating" here. Like pops and clicks? Make sure you're attenuating your volumes with [*~], and then you might check to make sure that your sample rate in Pd is the same sample rate as your sound card (in Audio Preferences).

[@JDTrottier]

​@@SimonHutchinson thanks for your quick reply! It's my fault. I made a dumb mistake. My sixth oscillator was not receiving a midi note, so it was playing midi note 0 (I mistyped the name of the midi send) thanks so much for your help!

[@joshuacossette8545]

Great video! Really inspiring for me as I'm just getting into PD. Not sure if you answered already but how do you make the Master Toggle switch? Is it just a toggle switch object connected to the s toggle object?

[@SimonHutchinson]

[s toggle] sends the toggle, then every metro has a [r toggle] which receives it. Hope that helps!

[@nicholasarmstrong8994]

Hi Simon, this patch is very helpful; I like brian eno's work especially his contributions for generative music genre; I've been trying to recreate your PD patch from scratch but having some technical difficulties apparently; would you mind sharing the PD patch so I can try to see what's wrong with mine ?

[@SimonHutchinson]

Hmmm. I don't think I have the patch kicking around anymore. I just put it together for the video. The best way to troubleshoot is to isolate things -- Build things one at a time, and see when it stops working (kind of like I do in the video). When in the workflow did it stop working for you?

[@sivoltage]

Wow. Love this. Is it possible to control Pure Data from an external trigger, like midi, or CV?

[@SimonHutchinson]

Absolutely! - kzbin.info/www/bejne/gF7Taoijn7qBZrM

[@mindfact303]

that is an amazing tutorial, thank you. One question: how can I send this out to the external instrument?

[@SimonHutchinson]

Thanks! More info on how to send MIDI to external devices here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/r4aTfnyGjs9go8U and here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/a3bNqp6efZ6jm7M

[@b4rtir4]

thank you so much for this video! I did my own patch and worked fine but when I try to open it again the sound is all glitchy and sort of breaking up, totally different from how it should sound. Anyone had the same issue?

[@SimonHutchinson]

I betcha you need to re-set all of the note numbers or lengths. In the initial patch I make here, there's nothing that keeps those values when you quit (like a [loadbang]). Try setting those numbers, and let me know if it fixes it.

[@b4rtir4]

@@SimonHutchinson you were absolutely right. Thanks a lot for answering and sorry for the silly question, you had mentioned that in the video.

[@SimonHutchinson]

@@b4rtir4 Glad that helped! I like questions like that, because they make me seem smart when I can answer them!

[@SoundAuthor]

I'm a Reaktor nerd but I'm really interested in PD. Only thing is I can only stand to look at it for a few minutes until I have a headache. Are there any dark themes or GUI tweaks so I don't have to look at all that blinding white?

[@P2020pudding1]

im havingn trouble at 6:02 putting 60 and 261, it won't let me, also even when I put the DSP on I don't hear annything

[@axolotoshiny6570]

Did you create a "number cell" ? It won't work with an object cell ! You can spawn it with ctrl + 3 I think ! btw I am not a PD senior so it could be something else !

[@brentonrowland8613]

Love your work SImon. I am looking to have some students follow your PD tutorials but I am having a problem with this patch. Once I add the LFO section with only 2 of the 6 notes, PD's response to mouse and keys really slows down. If I try to run the full patch I cannot get PD to respond at all and have to end the task (Windows 10). My laptop is not ne, but handles everything else I throw at it. Anyone having this problem? Any way of optimising the PD environment ? My school Macbooks have the same problem. I think it is the LFO snapshots and delwrite/reads that bog it down.

[@SimonHutchinson]

Thanks for your message. This video is 3 years old now, so I don't completely remember what I did, but your issue might have something to do with the number boxes. I like having them in there for pedagogical purposes, but they can cause issues, especially the way that I run them in series with the flow. When you get the problem with the LFO, do you have the number box under the snapshot like I do in the video? If so, try deleting it. (and you could also consider deleting the ones under the [line] in each note.

[@brentonrowland8613]

As I removed number boxes, PD response time just kept improving. With all the non essential number boxes removed the PD patch works perfectly. Perhaps a snapshot of values could be used?@@SimonHutchinson

[@beatnikcafe]

What would be the way to set the note via midi and have it setup so when you play the notes on a keyboard it would just take the notes in order and populate the 6 note fields? So that way, if you were intimately familiar with the note lengths and volumes etc.. you could be thoughtful about playing in the notes to get the best effect. An analogy would be if you had a synth that had an arp and hold function, you would be entering the notes in the order that you want the arp to play, in the example in the video, this is like a very customized (and slow) arp sequence. Second thought is, what is the method to use audio files for playback instead of and oscillator? In the way I'd use this I would want to treat the audio library as if it were a bunch of one shots.

[@SimonHutchinson]

It's definitely doable to set the notes by keyboard. You'd just have to have a [notein] object, and a clever way to rotate through where you're sending the pitches. As for playing audio files, check this out - kzbin.info/www/bejne/aH-0hoODnJtgn5o

[@beatnikcafe]

@@SimonHutchinson Thanks for the tip and link. Heading there now to learn more.

[@beatnikcafe]

@@SimonHutchinson Another question if you don't mind. What would be the way to use live audio as the sound source and so instead of the synth playing periodically the audio coming into the system would play instead? For example, if I had an interface with 6 inputs and so instead of notes being played, it's the audio from one or more of those 6 inputs. I'd still want the live audio sources to be processed through an ADSR, for context the sources could be ambient looped tones and the purposes of this system is to create a generative music mixing system. The loops would playback from hardware loopers, so the harmonic content would be decided solely by what is recorded onto the loopers. Source could be loopers, synths drones, other recordings, etc. doesn't even need to be loops, but for what I have in mind I would be using at least 4 loopers, or more and maybe a couple synths.

[@SimonHutchinson]

@@beatnikcafe Check out that same video. I do some live input from the "Pocket Miku". Also more here - kzbin.info/www/bejne/aJ-UiZ6Qar1rasU

[@beatnikcafe]

@@SimonHutchinson Thanks, I appreciate it.

[@SOD155]

Hi, Simon! I've been following this tutorial step by step, but I can't seem to make it produce a clean note (60 - mtof - 261.6 - phasor~). Any ideas as to what might be the problem?

[@SimonHutchinson]

Is you audio turned on?

[@SOD155]

@@SimonHutchinson Yeah, it's making a sound, but it's quite harsh.. It's cool, but I'm looking to make a bit softer sounds, haha.

[@SOD155]

Sounds almost multi phonic..

[@sebalzat]

how do I make zoom ?

[@WARDISWARD]

Phasor~is really not a good example for on oscillator since it's range is 0-1(only ositive enrgy ) , adding a couple of these and you will have a hugge dc offset Remedy this by either using a saw wave or using a gentle hp filter (5hz) at the dac~stage