Several people were asking about the process for converting images into sound for our "Never Ending Noise" sample pack.
Never Ending Noise was created using 12 different hardware setups. In the setups labeled "10" and "11" we used an Elektron Octrack and Gotharman Little Deformer to play back and mangle audio files (both are hardware samplers.) For the samples, we created sound files from images. The software used to do this was MetaSynth by UIsoftware. Metasynth offers a lot of sound design possibilities. It will "play" an image file from left to right. A pixels vertical position is read as a pitch, brightness is read as volume, and color as its position across the stereo field. It takes this information and plays it back as a wavetable synth, fm synth, granular synth, or sampler. To make interesting use of these features, we thought that abstract paintings would provide lots of information for the synth to interpret.
Below are pictures of the paintings used.
